Information on Powers

[Sean]

The facts about powers:

• One power per character, or two closely related powers.
  
• Powers usually manifest at puberty. There have been a few cases when it manifests earlier, and some involuntary powers manifest from birth, but gain strength in puberty. We are not currently accepting characters whose powers manifested before puberty.
  
• Most powers are voluntary. Though it takes training to control them, once they're trained, they are skills to be practiced. Examples include memory manipulation, shapeshifting, and elemental powers.
  
• Some powers are involuntary. Like breathing, they can be trained for control, but in the end, the character has to do it. Gesalt pairs, super-enhanced perception, and super-strength are all involuntary.
  
• All powers have side-effects. Though the side-effects lessen with time and training, they are a life-long affliction. Involuntary powers have fairly constant side-effects. Voluntary powers' side-effects usually get worse with the use of the power, and better with the training.
  
• If you want a different power that is not on this list, inform the staff. Powers are often approved, as long as they are not too overpowered, do not break the tone and setting, and are accompanied by proper limitations and balancing side effects.
  
• Powers are divided into five categories: Dimensional, Kinetic, Mental, Meta, and Physical. Physical abilities are the most prevalent, while dimensional powers are the rarest.
  

Banned powers:
Powers cannot make characters ageless, immortal, or age at a rate different from normal humans. This includes aging backwards or otherwise out of typical sequence.

All meta-humans must be able to “pass” as baseline. This means that nobody will be born with skin tones outside of the typical spectrum, additional limbs, or become “stuck” in a shapeshift or otherwise changed form. Any physical additions or enhancements, such as wings or claws, must be retractable. Although there are some aspects of physiology that might differ based on power (e.g. a matter ingester’s digestive system), meta-humans otherwise have the same physiology as baseline humans. No meta has a blast furnace in their abdomen or reproduces like a bee colony.

All characters must have natural eye colors. We do not allow powers that change eye color of the character, either generally or when using their power. There are no exceptions to this rule.*

*Shapeshifters can change eye color as is appropriate for their power. This means that human shapeshifters can change eye color when shifting to other colors within the normal human color spectrum (e.g. blue to brown). For animal shapeshifters, their eyes will become whatever is typical for their animal form. This will not carry over into human form.

Similarly, all characters must have natural hair colors. They may dye their hair any shade, but their powers or meta-human status cannot confer pink, blue, green, rainbow, prematurely white/silver hair, or any other color or texture (e.g. vines, snakes) not found in nature. Characters with prehensile hair still must abide by this rule.

A character with a disability may not possess a power that functions to undermine that disability. E.g. a deaf character may not have enhanced hearing that counteracts their deafness.

Other Banned powers:

• Any ability that allows for flight as part of the ability, without that power being winged or wingless flight itself. (E.g. flight as a sub-power of magnetism or weather manipulation or telekinesis.
• Adamantium/vibranium, any non-existent material
  
• Channeling/Mediumship
• Cosmic Powers
• Death Touch
• Dimensional Travel
• Genetic Manipulation
• Healing (as its own power)
• Intuitive Aptitude/Innate Capability
• Invincibility
  
• Lycanthropy (wolf shapeshifters are allowed, but they cannot be werewolves)
  
• Magic
• Molecular Manipulation
• Nanotechnology and nanobots
  
• Non-Human Physiology (e.g. vampire physiology, angel physiology, animal physiology)
  
• Omnipotence
• Omnipresence
• Omniscience
• Permanent Other Appearance (any power that makes a meta-human incapable of passing as human)
• Permanent Power Suppression
• Permanent Power Theft/Transfer/Mimicry
• Powers affecting the aging process
• Power Bestowal/Jump Start
• Reality Warping
• Self-Detonation and Reformation
• Self-Resurrection 
• Technology Suits (ala Iron Man)
• Time Travel

Possible Powers:

Adaptation: Ability to adapt to unconsciously adapt to one’s physical surroundings, speeding evolution on a situation-by-situation basis. For example, if underwater, one can filter air from the water, but would not be able to do this on land, or the ability to adapt to a dramatic temperature change. This is not as dramatic a power as cellular regeneration. Side effects could include a weakened immune system, migraines, full-body pain, or nausea with adaptation.

Aerokinesis: Ability to manipulate wind currents, including the ability to create wind tunnels or wind storms. This ability does not allow for flight via wind-riding. Side effects could include muscle weakness and being a bit of an airhead.

Alchemy: Ability to transmute metal from one element to another. This ability is limited to naturally-occurring elements. Side-effects could include fatigue, particularly when transmuting anything into gold.

Anatomic Separation: Ability to remove and reattach body parts, while maintaining control over the removed parts. Side-effects could include muscle fatigue and joint stiffness.

Animal Communication and Control: Ability to communicate with and control animals. Usually limited to one type of animal (e.g. birds, felines, rodents, fish) unless very well trained. Side-effects could include temporary loss of human communication skills and occasional animal habits (e.g. a rabbit communicator that is very skittish).

Animal Mimicry: Ability to take on the abilities of various animals (e.g. a bear’s strength or a cheetah’s speed), although not physical attributes. The power is limited to accessing only one animal at a time, so that abilities can’t be mixed. Side effects include taking on various animalistic personality traits, fatigue after using an animal ability, and the need to intake more calories than the average person, particularly after mimicking an ability.

Animation: Ability to temporarily bring inanimate objects to life. Side effects could include social awkwardness with actual human beings and becoming inanimate oneself when using over-using powers.

Assumed Muscle Memory: Ability to learn skills by observing others perform them. Can mimic even skilled actions perfectly after one observation. Side-effects could include severe fatigue and loss of trained skills.

Biological Manipulation: Ability to change the biology of what they touch. Can be used to heal. Limited to humans, animals, or plants, not more than one. Human biological manipulation has no effect on meta-human abilities. Side-effects include accidentally assuming injuries they were trying to fix. Also results in fatigue and occasional blackouts after healing significant injuries.

Bioluminescence: Ability to glow in the dark or otherwise emit a glow from one’s skin. This luminescence varies from person to person. Side effects can include luminescent sweat, insomnia, and a tendency to attract insects.

Bone Manipulation: Ability to manipulate the bones in one’s body, including the ability to grow new bone mass, rearrange one’s bone shapes, and protrude bones from one’s body. Side effects can include fatigue, calcium deficiency, skeletal soreness, and early-onset osteoporosis.

Camouflage: Ability to blend into one’s surroundings; the skin taking on the patterns and colors of backgrounds, much like a chameleon. Backgrounds tend to stick when untrained. Side effects can include fatigue, nerve sensitivity, and color blindness.

Cellular Regeneration: Ability to regenerate cells quickly, healing oneself. An involuntary ability. Side-effects include hunger and fatigue after regenerating.

Clairaudience: Ability to hear conversations from a distance, where the user is not located. The conversations are in the present, not whispers from the past or from the future. Much like clairvoyance, but for sounds instead of visions. This is a great excuse to use snippets of conversation from other threads in one’s own posts. Side effects can include headaches, sensitive hearing, and a sense of paranoia.

Cold/Ice Manipulation (Cryokinesis): Ability to manipulate cold and ice. Side-effects include a sensitivity to heat and fire, and a low body temperature.

Density Manipulation: Ability to alter one's body density to make themselves heavier or lighter. Does not give ability to breathe underwater, so be careful if you're trying to walk across the ocean floor. Side-effects include fainting, nausea, and weird weight gain.

Dimensional Storage: Ability to put things in another dimension for later retrieval. Nothing "alive" can be put in the pocket dimension. Side-effects include losing things in alternate dimensions while one is learning.

Dream Walking/Astral Projection: Ability to project oneself into the dreams of another, or to appear to be physically beside someone when actually only in their mind. Side-effects include poor sleep, and as it's a two-way road, properly trained people can access the thoughts and dreams of the character.

Duplication: Ability to duplicate oneself. A user can have more than one duplicate but cannot create an army. Side-effects can include severe fatigue, confusion, and conflicting memories from the duplicates.

Echolocation: Ability to determine the location of objects via the use of reflected sound waves, the same way that a bat or dolphin can. Side effects can include poor vision, sensitivity to sounds, or sore throats.

Elasticity: Ability to stretch or twist one’s body into different shapes, or to extend one’s limbs or neck way beyond that of an average human. Side effects include joint and muscle pain and stiffness, and a predisposition to bone disorders. Not to be confused with size alteration.

Electric Form: Ability to change one's body into electrical energy. Can then travel over wires or power electrical appliances. Side-effects include hydrophobia, static cling, and a tendency to accidentally wipe hard drives and cause power surges.

Electricity Manipulation (Electrokinesis): Ability to control, absorb, and generate electricity. Side-effects include hydrophobia, static cling, and the tendency to overload or shut down anything that runs on electricity.

Empathy: Ability to read or sense the emotions of others. With great control, a user also has some limited ability to manipulate what others feel. Side effects include great emotional sensitivity, headaches, emotional exhaustion, and, when untrained, being far more overwhelmed by being a teenager than anyone else.

Energy Manipulation: Ability to manipulate pure energy into constructs with specific intentions or energy "blasts." Side-effects include severe fatigue, hunger, and dangerously-high metabolism.

Flight (Winged or non-winged): Ability to fly. Side-effects include early-onset osteoporosis.

Forcefields: Ability to generate force-fields. Side-effects include some loss of sensory functions while shielded. It is slowly regained.

Gestalt Pair: Individually, no powers. Together, they have average10 abilities. Super-strength and intelligence, and they act as one entity. This is an involuntary ability. Side-effect includes the gradual loss of individuality. By the time they have total control over their power, they will be one entity shared between two bodies. The individuals must always be blood siblings, and are usually twins; gestalt pairs comprised of different genders are allowed.

Gravitational Manipulation: Ability to manipulate gravity, although on a small scale. Can increase the gravitational pull of some objects or areas or to weaken that gravitational pull. Side effects include headache, fatigue, and greater physical weakness than the average person.

Hydrokinesis: Ability to manipulate water, including the direction of flow. Side effects could include headaches, nausea, excessive discomfort in dry heat, and hair that never dries.

Hypnotic Suggestion: Ability to place another person in a hypnotic trance, leaving them vulnerable to suggestion, which varies in strength depending on the will of the individual subject. This ability cannot overbear someone’s will to the point of death, or to change their core values, and must have a time limitation. Hypnotic suggestion can occur through voice, through touch, or through eye contact, or a combination thereof. Side effects can include headaches, drowsiness, mental backlash, and then sore throats, itchiness, or dry eyes depending on the method of hypnosis.

Illusions: Ability to create illusions. Side-effects could include a slight gap between perceived and actual reality.

Invisibility: Ability to become invisible. Side-effects could include becoming generally unnoticeable.

Iron Spike Protrusion: Ability to grow spikes from one’s skin. Side effects can include full body pain, pathological fear of intimacy, anemia, and an inability to pass through a metal detector.

Light/Darkness Manipulation: Ability to manipulate both light and darkness. Side-effects include poor night-vision and sensitivity to natural light.

Magnetism: Ability to control and general magnetic fields, within limits (manipulating the entire Earth’s magnetic field is not possible). Side effects include headaches, fatigue, and the tendency to make technology fail from being too close.

Matter Ingestion: Ability to consume any sort of matter without getting ill, often includes a high metabolism as a result. Side effects include an insatiable appetite with a need for high caloric intake, boundless energy, and insomnia.

Meta Sensing: Ability to sense meta-humans and their abilities within a certain radius. This power cannot be turned off. Side effects can include headaches that grow exponentially worse depending on the number of meta-humans around and fatigue.

Non-Fixed Matter State: Ability to switch from one state of matter to another (e.g. liquid or gas). Side-effects can include dizziness and nausea.

Object Mimicry: Ability to transform into a nearby object. Distance is limited by skill. Side-effects can include getting stuck as a table or something and stiff joints.

Omnilingualism: Ability to understand any language, including codes, signed and written languages, and spoken language. Side effects include switching between languages without realizing, temporarily forgetting one’s primary language, and headaches from overuse.

Phasing: Ability to phase through solid objects. Side-effects can include fainting, pain in the areas that passed through the object and leaving parts behind.

Pheromone Manipulation: Ability to produce and manipulate pheromones to alter people's emotions. A user cannot induce an emotion that did not exist previously (e.g. making someone angry who was happy) but can manipulate the seeds of what is already there (agitating through pheromones). Side-effects include a strange, though not unpleasant odor.

Photosynthesis: Ability to draw energy from the sun the same way that a plant does. Side effects include bad moods on cloudy and rainy days and over-sympathy with plant life.

Pixie Wings and Hallucinogenic Dust: Ability to sprout pixie wings, capable of flight and producing a hallucinogenic dust. Side-effects include back pain, a resistance to any mind-altering drug, and a decreased likelihood of anyone taking them seriously.

Plant Manipulation: Ability to manipulate plant matter, typically limited to certain types of plant matter (green plants, trees, fungi etc.) Side-effects include fatigue, low Vitamin D levels, and bad moods on cloudy and rainy days.

Power Augmentation: Ability to temporarily weaken or strength the powers of another meta-human, but not those of the user. Side effects can include headaches, fatigue, and weakened concentration.

Power Mimicry: Ability to mimic someone else’s powers. When young, contact is required to ‘copy’ the other power. When fully trained, they will only need to observe it. Length of time ability is copied also depends on training level, but it always temporary. Side effects are that their control of the ability depends entirely on the training level of the person mimicked, and subject to those ability’s drawbacks as well.

Power Suppression: Can temporarily weaken, or, with training, block another person’s abilities. Side effects include severe fatigue, and they need time to ‘recharge’ after performing this.

Precognition: Ability to tell the future. Can be through dreams or while awake, and is a more difficult power to recognize when young. Untrained, these visions are random and uncontrolled, but with training, they can scan the future at will. Side effects of this tend to manifest in paranoia, and severe migraines.

Prehensile Hair: Ability to control the hair on one’s head as though it is an appendage, and to be able to control its growth and shape. Side effects include the need a protein deficiency that requires taking protein supplements, headaches, and a lack of all other body hair.

Probability Manipulation: Ability to alter probability, causing unlikely things to happen, or likely things not to happen. When young, a person with this ability will have virtually no control over it, and chaos is usually the result.

Psionic Blasts: Ability to psionically overload another person’s mind via a psychic link to achieve a variety of effects including pain, loss of consciousness, and memory loss. Side effects include migraines, fatigue, and mental backlash. Frequent use causes the blasts to be less powerful/effective.

Pyrokinesis: Ability to create, manipulate, and absorb fire. Side effects include headaches, an elevated body temperature that makes the user uncomfortable during warmer months, or an acute sensitivity to cold, and often a quick temper.

Reanimation: Ability to bring something back to life. Acute fatigue follows the use of this ability, in direct proportion to the complexity of the reanimated life.

Remote Viewing: Ability to see images of events in the present, from a distance where the user is not located. The images are always events occurring in that very moment, as opposed to in the immediate past or the near future. Side effects can include migraines, disorientation and forgetting where one is presently located.

Retrocognition: Ability to see the past. Contact must be made with an object or a person, to ‘see’ the memories within them. Cannot manipulate, only watch. Tend to have trouble remembering details of their own past – what was really their own memories, or what they’d witnessed, and occasionally forget what year/month/day it is. As with most mental abilities, migraines result.

Shadow Manipulation: Ability to create and manipulate shadows for various effects, including the ability to blend into shadow. Side effects include fatigue, photosensitivity, and insomnia.

Shapeshifting: Ability to shift into other forms. A user can shift into one type of category: people, inanimate objects, or animals. If the user can shift into animals, they can shift into a certain type of animal or broad category of animals (e.g. birds, mammals under 60 pounds, jungle cats etc.) Shifting is extremely painful and difficult to sustain when untrained. Other variations do occur; please contact a staff member for more details. Side effects include pain while shifting, and specific side effects based on the types of shifting one does (e.g. warped sense of scale for a bug shifter).

Size Alteration: Ability to change the size of their body. Side effects include joint and muscle pain and stiffness, and a predisposition to bone disorders.

Sonic Manipulation: Ability to control sound waves - can make them stronger or weaker. Side effects include a sensitivity to noise, particularly loud sounds.

Substance Mimicry: Ability to turn into any substance absorbed through touching while otherwise retaining one’s human physical form (e.g. taking on the physical properties of steel after touching steel). This power is impossible to control without training. Side effects could include pain while shifting, dizziness, and fatigue.

Summoning: Ability to summon an object from a reasonable distance directly to the user. Typically, the user must have an idea of where the object is located and have encountered it before. Experienced users can send an object back as well. Side effects can include migraines, fatigue, a need to organization, and greater passiveness than the average person.

Super Agility: The user’s agility is more advanced than that of an average person. Someone with this ability has greater flexibility, greater coordination and a greater jumping capacity. Side effects can include muscle and joint pains and difficulty concentrating.

Super Enhanced Perception:The user’s five normative senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch) are far more attuned and powerful than those of an average person. The user is also more aware of her own body and mind, so that a user can sense when someone is using a mental power on them (but cannot resist such a power). This ability cannot be turned off. With training, such an individual can detect when someone is lying to them. Side effects include migraines, fatigue, sensory overload, and a greater potential to develop OCD.

Super Speed: Ability to move at much faster rates than normal human beings. Side effects include nausea, dizziness, impatience, and terrible penmanship.

Super Strength and Super Durability: Physical strength is much higher than a normal human being, and this particular person will be able to resist more damage before becoming injured. If they are injured, however, it takes them a much longer time to heal.

Tactile Adhesiveness: Ability to stick to any surface and cancel out friction, including the ability to climb walls. Side effects can include fatigue, excessive sweating, and itchiness.

Tactile Anesthesia: Can put someone to sleep simply by touching them. This power is uncontrollable without training. They will quite often inadvertently put themselves to sleep, particularly during inopportune moments.

Technopathy: Ability to communicate and control electronic device either with one’s mind or with a mere touch. Side effects could include an inability to relate to other human beings, withdrawal from emotions, migraines, and static cling.

Telekinesis: Ability to manipulate and control objects with the mind. Not an easy one to control without training. Side effects can include migraines, phantom limb sensations, or poor spatial awareness.

Telepathy: Ability to communicate with humans via thoughts. Can read the thoughts of others, or share their own. Requires training to deal with it effectively. Side effects include migraines, hearing voices in your head, learning things you didn’t want to know about others, and sharing things you didn’t want others to know.

Teleportation: Ability to move from one place to another instantaneously. Side effects include migraines, leaving body parts behind, and ending up in entirely the wrong place.

Terrakinesis: Ability to manipulate the earth (rocks, dirt, etc.). Limited to natural elements, nothing manmade. Side effects include the inability to keep themselves, or anything clean, fear of flying, fear of open water, and migraines.

Time Manipulation: Ability to affect the flow of time by slowing, accelerating, reversing, or stopping it. Side effects include the inability to recognize what year/month/day it is, nausea, and being annoying. The user cannot travel through time.

Tracking: Ability to locate another person anywhere they may be, provided that the user has their full name and a description of their appearance. Such a user cannot track herself and thus does not always know where she is located. Side effects can include poor spatial awareness and bouts of confusion.

Trans-Dimensional Perception: Ability to perceive other dimensions. For example: perceiving characters as other characters portrayed by their play by/face claim, or being able to hear post narrative. Side effects can include headaches, fatigue, paranoia, ennui, and not being believed by anyone around the user.

Underwater Breathing: Ability to breathe underwater. Side effects can include shortness of breath or asthma.

Vocal Mimicry: Ability to mimic any voice or sound. Side effects could include sore throats, hearing damage, and the inability to revert back to one’s original voice without training.

Weather Manipulation: Ability to control or mentally affect the weather. This includes the ability to generate various natural phenomena (rain, tornadoes, lightning, ocean currents, etc.) or control the intensity of the weather. This power requires intensive training to control. Side effects include involuntarily generating tornadoes or other violent weather patterns when angry, rain when sad, blazing sun when happy, and often gets headaches.

Common Power Pairings:

• Animal Communication (Fish) and Underwater Breathing
  
• Electricity Manipulation and Electric Form
  
• Enhanced Hearing and Echolocation
  
• Human Shapeshifting and Human Vocal Mimicry
  
• Light Manipulation and Bioluminescence
  
• Plant Manipulation and Photosynthesis
  
• Shapeshifting into a specific animal or type of animals and communication with those same animals (E.g. Snake shapeshifting and snake communication)
  
• Sonic Manipulation and Echolocation
  
• Sonic Manipulation and Superhuman Hearing
  
• Super Strength and Super Durability
  
• Super Strength and Super Stamina
  
• Tactile Anesthesia and Dream Walking
  
• Winged Flight and Eagle Vision
  
• Winged Flight and Echolocation