So one of the things I did while running the Freedom City Play-by-Post board was make a thread with sample starting characters. (Many of the Moderators, and some of the top players, did the same.) I gave each a very basic background, enough to get an idea of how the character might've gotten their powers and why they're a hero, but with enough room that a player could add their own spin and make it their own. I also did a few power writeups, things like "if you have [electrical/gravity/radiation/geokinetic] powers, these are some of the power stunts you might be able to do" (like the superspeed entry under House Rules).

I'm going to try doing some of those here. The biggest challenge, though, will be figuring out a good way to convert the characters. I probably won't do a stat-for-stat system conversion (which is always tricky), but rather something in keeping with the basic idea and spirit of the character. (Also bearing in mind it's been about eight years since I last looked at an MSH RPG book, so my memory of some of the finer rules is a bit fuzzy.) I may try to use some of the guidelines form the With Great Power alternate character creation system, since that's a point-based system and so is Mutants & Masterminds, and it might help ensure the characters are (roughly) of the same power level, maybe around 400 CPs. I'll also try to find ways to fit them to the Marvel Universe.

And if I'm very clever, I'll work out a way to have an index for the thread, so you can easily leap to a writeup, and which may also serve as a way to preview writeups-to-come!

Sample Characters
Atlantean Powerhouse (son of Namor and Sue Storm? Maaaybe...)
Benandante (Werewolves of God)
Biomancer (flesssh)
Blobbly McGee (pseudo-shapeshifter)
Coppertop (living battery)
Deadman Walkin', USMCorpse
Devil's Prosecutor ("Your honor, my client was forced to sign this contract in bad faith...")
Gravity Guy
Imaginaut (explorer & guardian)
Intergalactic Psi-Cop (Lensman, the proto-Green Lanterns)
Lemurian Ring Bearer (Serpent's Crown Ring)
Living Vampire Electrokinetic Gadgeteer (Nikola Tesla from Syfy's Sanctuary)
Martial Artist with a Power Ring
Mystic Librarian (Gupert Riles)
Paragon in Power Armor (What If... Superboy Wore Steel's Armor?)
Pharmacopeist (druuugs)
Poseur Mage (Jumped Up Dabbler)
Powerhouse with a Power Ring (yo, dawg, we heard you like green...)
Predator (shown a better a way)
Psi Soldier (Gun-Toting Mutant From The Future!)
Psychic Ninja (Elektra x Psylocke)
Quarantine (Disease Controller)
Speedster Scientist (build ALL the things!)
Speedster Sorcerer (cast ALL the spells!)
Thermovore (I vant to suck your BTUs)
Transhuman Cyborg (like post-Extremis Tony Stark)
Vampire Costumed Detective (V:tM - Nosferatu)
Vampire Martial Artist (V:tM - Toreador)
Vampire Paragon (V:tM - Brujah)
Vampire in Power Armor (sealed, like a coffin)
Vampire Psion (V:tM - Tremere)
Vampire Ring Bearer (V:tM - Lasombra)
Vampire Shapeshifter (V:tM - Gangrel)
Vampire Wealthy Thrillseeker (V:tM - Ventrue)
Vampire Weather Controller (V:tM - Tzimisce)
Vibreau Man (Vibranium Power Armor)

Sample Characters Inspired by Champions
Brainchild (Gadgeteer/Psion)
Dr. Silverback (Simian Scientist)
Grond (four-armed bruiser)
Hummingbird (miniscule mentalist; Wasp x Emma Frost)
Lady Blue (force field-focused bodysuit)
Lazer (Super-Merc with a fancy rifle & a jetpack)
Masquerade (Mystique Lite)
Mechassassin (Super-Merc in Power Armor)
Monster (too spoopy!)
Photon (astronomer-turned-crook with a body of light)
Steel Commando (Super-Merc in Power Armor)
Tesseract (Now you're thinking with portals)
Der Westgote/The Visigoth (martial artist x powerhouse)
ZigZag (Stretchy Guy)
Zorran the Artificer (Master of Mechano-Mysticism!)

FASERIPstravaganza
Hyper-Fighting Powers
Hyper-Agility Powers
Hyper-Strength Powers
Hyper-Endurance Powers
Hyper-Reasoning Powers
Hyper-Intuition Powers
Hyper-Psyche Powers

SCIENCE!
Electrical Powers
Electromagnetic Radiation/Spectrum (Radio, Microwaves, Light, X-Rays) Powers
Gravity Powers
Magnetic Powers
Radiation Powers
Sonic Powers
Time Powers

SCIENCE! Electrical Powers
Comics Examples: Black Lightning, Electro, Lightning Lad, Lightning Lass/Spark, Livewire, Static, Surge, Zzzax
Tropes: Electric Torture, Harmless Electrocution, Lightning Can Do Anything, Lightning Gun, Psycho Electro, Ride the Lightning, Shock and Awe

Quote
Wikipedia says:
Electricity is a general term encompassing a variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge (positively charged protons and negatively charged electrons). These include many easily recognizable phenomena, such as lightning, static electricity, and the flow of electrical current in an electrical wire. In addition, electricity encompasses concepts such as the electromagnetic field and electromagnetic induction.

POWER! UNLIMITED POWER!!! Though your heroic PC should not be emulating the Dark Lord of the Sith. But it does illustrate a point: electrical powers are flashy, which is why they're so prevalent in the visual medium of comic books! (Not just comics, of course: throughout history, lightning has been associated with the gods, particularly the heads of pantheons [like Indra and Jupiter/Zeus and Perun] and thus with royalty.) Electricity is also a hallmark of development and progress, since it powers so much technology, so the ability to manipulate electricity is the ability to manipulate the things that make life so much easier and more pleasant that it was for our grandparents.

Since electricity is so prevalent, there are a lot of terms used with it, many of which you may have heard.

• Amp / Ampere (A): Unit of measurement for electric current, or the amount of electric charge per second.
• Ohm (Ω): Unit of measurement for electrical impedance or resistance. If 1 volt of electricity causes a current of 1 ampere to flow in a device, that device has 1 ohm of resistance. Similarly, a device that uses 1 ampere of current to dissipate 1 watt of electric power has 1 ohm of resistance.
• Volt (V): Unit of measurement for electric potential difference, or electromotive force (the ability of electricity to "do stuff"). When a 1 ampere current releases 1 watt of power, you have 1 volt of electricity. (A bolt of lightning is about 100 megavolts, or 100 million volts.)
• Watt (W): Unit of measurement for the rate at which a device produces or uses electric power. A 60-watt light bulb converts electricity to light at the rate of 60 watts; power plants generate megawatts (millions of watts) of power. (The flux capacitor of Doc Brown's DeLorean time machine requires 1.21 gigawatts -- 1,210,000,000 watts -- of electrical power to operate.)

Current also comes in two flavors, Alternating (AC) and Direct (DC). With Direct Current (DC), a unidirectional flow of electric charge is produced by such sources as batteries, thermocouples, solar cells, and commutator-type dynamos; it is used in some telephone and communications lines and in subway "third rails." In Alternating Current (AC), the movement of electric charge periodically reverses direction, and is the form in which electric power is delivered to businesses and residences. When a person is hit with an AC charge, their muscles spasm and throw them away from the source of the attack; when a person touches a source of DC power, their muscles tend to lock themselves onto the source. Rectifiers are used to convert AC power to DC, and Inverters can change DC to AC.

Electrical batteries are electrochemical cells (or, more often, a collection of electrochemical cells) that convert stored chemical energy into electrical energy. It consists of a number of voltaic cells; each voltaic cell consists of two half cells connected in series by a conductive electrolyte (a substance containing free ions that make the substance electrically conductive) containing anions (negatively charged ions) and cations (positively charged ions). One half-cell -- the anode -- includes electrolyte and the electrode to which anions migrate. The other half-cell -- the cathode -- includes electrolyte and the electrode to which cations migrate. In the redox reaction that powers the battery, cations are reduced (electrons are added) at the cathode, while anions are oxidized (electrons are removed) at the anode. The electrodes do not touch each other but are electrically connected by the electrolyte. A separator between half cells allows ions to flow, but prevents mixing of the electrolytes.

Each half cell has an electromotive force (or emf), determined by its ability to drive electric current from the interior to the exterior of the cell. The net emf of the cell is the difference between the emfs of its half-cells. The electrical driving force across the terminals of a cell is known as the terminal voltage (difference) and is measured in volts. The voltage developed across a cell's terminals depends on the energy release of the chemical reactions of its electrodes and electrolyte: alkaline and carbon-zinc cells have different chemistries but approximately the same emf of 1.5 volts; likewise NiCd and NiMH cells have different chemistries, but approximately the same emf of 1.2 volts; the high electrochemical potential changes in the reactions of lithium compounds give lithium cells emfs of 3 volts or more.

Batteries are classified into two broad categories, each type with advantages and disadvantages. Primary batteries irreversibly (within limits of practicality) transform chemical energy to electrical energy. When the initial supply of reactants is exhausted, energy cannot be readily restored to the battery by electrical means. Secondary batteries can be recharged; that is, they can have their chemical reactions reversed by supplying electrical energy to the cell, restoring their original composition. Secondary batteries cannot be recharged indefinitely, due to dissipation of the active materials, loss of electrolyte, and internal corrosion. Batteries can also be wet cell (with a liquid electrolyte) or dry cell (in which the electrolyte immobilized as a paste, with only enough moisture in the paste to allow current to flow).

Three factors determine how bad an electric shock will hurt you: the volts, the amps, and how grounded you are. Electricity, being American by birth, prefers the lazy path of least resistance, with the end goal being to head down into the ground via the most conductive material. A grounded target (standing in a puddle, or in contact with a metal pole in the ground) is going to have more current flow through them than one who is insulated (flying, standing on a rubber mat, et cetera).

Speaking of water, pure water is actually a very good insulator. But you'll only find pure water in certain laboratories; water from lakes, rivers, and your kitchen sink contain enough impurities to be excellent conductors, and sea/saltwater is even better. A Judge could rule that any electrical attack used underwater affects an entire Area -- or several Areas!.

Electricity also generates heat whenever it flows through something with resistance; incandescent light bulbs work by passing an electric current through a metal filament until it gets so hot it glows. A Judge might rule that when an Electricity attack strikes something that's potentially flammable, it catches fire (which could lead to a loss of Popularity!). Electricity is bright due to its heat and thus can provide light to a character who can manipulate it; the passage of an electrical current through an appropriate electrolyte can also generate light (a phenomenon called galvanoluminescence). Electricity can interfere with nearby magnetic fields, which could possibly affect magnetic data storage (like computer hard drives and the magnetic strips on credit cards) and some types of sensitive electronic equipment.

Related Abilities

• Cyberkinesis/Cyberpathy: Controlling machines by controlling the flow of electricity to and within them, reading and altering data by sensing/manipulating electrons.
• Magnetic Manipulation: Electricity and Magnetism are closely related, hence the term "electromagnetic force." Moving metal through a magnetic field creates an electric charge (the technology behind metal detectors works on this principle), and running an electric current through a wire creates a magnetic field around that wire.
• Radiation Control: Certain forms of radioactive decay/transmutation are initiated when an atom takes in or gives off an electron. By manipulating electrons, you can cause certain materials to become radioactive, or certain radioactive materials to become stable/nonradioactive.

Electricity and Other Descriptors

• Chemical: Acids are excellent conductors of electricity. Electricity can break down certain compounds, via electrolysis. Some types of batteries generate electrical power from the chemical interaction between an acid and another chemical substance (such as lead). Depending on how an Acid-using character's powers work, their interaction with other substances might generate electrical energy that an Electricity Controller could use.
• Cold/Ice: Ice-based defenses are typically made of water ice, and water is a superb conductor. Additionally, for at least some conductive materials, such as some non-ferrous metals, cooling them reduces their resistance to electricity (drastically so, in the case of superconducting materials like tin, aluminum, and some ceramics).
• Earth/Stone: Earth & stone are excellent insulators.
• Light: Some Light-based attacks (such as lasers) may ionize the air, thus creating a "trail" for an Electricity attack to more easily travel down.
• Mental/Psionic: Nerve impulses are electrical, so Electricity Control could counter some mental effects.
• Metal: Metal is an excellent conductor of electricity. However, being wrapped in metal -- as in a Faraday Cage -- does offer better protection against electrical attacks.
• Water: As mentioned earlier, pure water is a good insulator, but pure water is something most character won't ever encounter. Impure water is an excellent conductor.

---

OFFENSIVE/ATTACK EFFECT/POWERS

Chemical Bond Breaking: Most molecules -- groups of two or more atoms -- are held together by covalent bonds or ionic bonds, both of which involve electrons. Electrons that you can control.

• Treat as the Disintegration power (MCo3 from UPB).
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Control/Generation rank -6 CS.

Conductivity Channeling: You can control the flow of your attacks involving Electricity so that they move through conductive materials (such as a metal floor or wall) to strike the target from an unusual angle, such as from behind or below.

• Target must make an Intuition FEAT to sense where the attack is coming from, or else be Blindsided by it.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Control/Generation rank.

Direct Current Paralysis: With a touch, you can project direct current (DC) electricity into a target's body, causing their muscles (or wiring) to lock up and prevent them from moving. You must maintain this touch on the subject; as soon as you let go, the effect ends.

• Target must make an Endurance FEAT or be rendered unable to move. Purely mental actions are still possible. Once contact is broken, the effect ends immediately.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Control/Generation rank.

Variant: Paralysis Field: Instead of having to touch your victim, you can project a field of direct current around yourself that paralyzes everyone nearby.

• As above, but the intensity of the Endurance FEAT that must make is -2 CS lower.

Electrical Arc: You can generate a blindingly bright arc of electricity between your hands, which can blind onlookers.

• Targets in front of the user, in an cone-shaped area of up to power rank size, must make an Endurance FEAT or be blinded. They may make an additional Endurance FEAT each round thereafter, with a cumulative +1 CS bonus, to shake off the effect.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Control/Generation rank -2 CS.

Electroconvulsive Therapy: Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), formerly known as electroshock, is a psychiatric treatment in which seizures are electrically induced in anesthetized patients for therapeutic effect. ECT is most often recommended for use as a treatment for severe depression which has not responded to other treatment, and is also used in the treatment of mania and catatonia.

• Treat as Emotion Control but only to induce calm, or Nullifying Power but only to nullify Emotion Control powers, with a range of Touch.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Control/Generation rank.

Variant: Memory Mangling: One nasty side-effect of ECT is amnesia, both retrograde (for events occurring before the treatment) and anterograde (for events occurring after the treatment). The vast majority of these effects are short lived.

• Target must make an Psyche FEAT to resist having their memories -- of up to [power rank] rounds before or after the attack -- erased. The target gets another Psyche FEAT every [power rank minutes], with a cumulative +1 CS bonus at each check, to regain their memories. Range is touch.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Control/Generation rank.

Ionize: You can electrically charge an opponent's body, making them easier to hit with electrical, magnetic, or metal-based attacks.

• Target must make an Endurance FEAT or else have their Fighting and Agility reduced, for the purposes of evading or dodging electrical, magnetic, and metallic attacks, by the user's power rank. This effect fades at the rate of one point per round.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Control/Generation rank.

Jangled Nerves: You can confuse a target by messing with the electrical impulses in their brain.

• Target must make a Psyche FEAT or become mentally befuddled and unable to act normally, unable to tell the difference between friend & foe and treating all creatures as enemies. The target gets another Psyche FEAT every round thereafter, with a cumulative +1 CS bonus at each check, to regain their composure.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Control/Generation rank.

Lightning Blast: A straightforward blast of electricity.

• Does power rank damage at power rank range.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Control/Generation rank.

Variant: Ball Lightning: A sphere or field of electrical energy, projected from yourself, big enough to hit many targets once.

• Does power rank damage to all targets (foes & friends) in an area with radius of power rank feet, centered on the user.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Control/Generation rank.

Variant: Bright Lightning: The flare of your Lightning Blast is powerful enough to blind your opponents.

• Acts as a damaging Lightning Blast, plus potentially blinds the target, as with the Electrical Arc power above.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Control/Generation rank -4 CS.

Variant: Chain Lightning: You can project a bolt of lightning that hits multiple targets in a given area of effect one after the other. The bolt hits the first target, then the second, and so on, and in the process it travels over or around any obstacles or targets the character wishes it to ignore.

• Does power rank damage to all foes (not friends) in an area with radius of power rank feet, centered on a point within power rank range.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Control/Generation rank -4 CS.

Variant: Lightning Barrage: You can fire several bolts of electrical energy at once.

• User is at +2 CS to make an Agility FEAT to make multiple combat actions with their Lightning Blast, but the Lightning Blast is at -2 CS for damage and range.

Variant: Thunderbolt: Your Lightning Blast is accompanied by a deafening clap of thunder.

• Acts as a damaging Lightning Blast at -2 CS for damage & range, plus potentially deafens the target, using the same mechanics as the Electrical Arc power above, at -2 CS.

Lightning Touch: You have a shockingly powerful touch. Or perhaps you can generate an elegant blade of plasma (ionized gas), less clumsy and random than a ranged Lightning Blast.

• You can do [power rank] electrical damage with a touch, or add [power rank] electrical damage to your unarmed strikes.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Control/Generation rank.

Ozone Suffocation: Ozone (O₃) is a triatomic molecule, consisting of three oxygen atoms. It has a vast range of industrial and consumer applications (more on those later). It is also an air pollutant, with harmful effects on the respiratory systems of animals and will burn sensitive plants. By generating a high voltage alternating current charge around a target, you can split the diatomic oxygen (O₂) and water vapor around them into single atoms, which recombine into ozone (and hydrogen gas).

• Does power rank damage at power rank range. However, instead of using Agility to dodge this, the target must use Endurance to resist suffocating. Targets who do not need to breathe are unaffected by this.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Control/Generation rank.

Personal Electric Field: You can surround your body with a potent field of electrical energy that injures anyone who touches you, or with whom you Grapple.

• Does power rank damage to those you touch and who touch you. At the end of each round in which you grapple or are grappled by someone, they take this damage.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Control/Generation rank -4 CS.

Power Down: You have such control over electricity that you can inhibit or shut off the flow of electrical power to a device, or do the same to another metahuman's electricity powers.

• A target within range must make an Endurance FEAT or have their electrical powers reduced by an amount equal to this effect's power rank. Most technological items are affected automatically, but some hardened electronics may be able to resist. Drained abilities return at the rate of one point per round.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Control/Generation rank -2 CS.

Variant: Long-Lasting Power Down: You can keep a device or power from receiving or using electricity for as long as your are conscious and able to give a small amount of concentration to maintain the effect.

• Functions as Power Down, above, but at -2 CS.

Variant: Power Down Touch: You must touch a device or person to drain their electricity-based powers.

• Functions as Power Down, above, but at +2 CS.

Taser Touch: With a touch, you can create high voltage, low amp electrical discharges that, while not strong enough to kill or seriously harm anyone, can knock someone out.

• Target must make an Endurance FEAT or be knocked unconscious. They may make an additional Endurance FEAT each round thereafter, with a cumulative +1 CS bonus, to shake off the effect.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Control/Generation rank.

Variant: Taser Blast: You can generate such electrical discharges at range.
Jack Cover, a NASA researcher, began developing the Taser in 1969. By 1974, Cover had completed the device, which he named after his childhood hero Tom Swift (book "Thomas A. Swift's electric rifle", by "Victor Appleton", a house pseudonym of the Stratemeyer Syndicate). Most Tasers operate at Remarkable/30 rank.

• As Taser Touch, above, but at -2 CS.

Thunder Boom: You can generate a deafening burst of thunder.

• Targets in front of the user, in an cone-shaped area of up to power rank size, must make an Endurance FEAT or be deafened. They may make an additional Endurance FEAT each round thereafter, with a cumulative +1 CS bonus, to shake off the effect.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Control/Generation rank.

DEFENSIVE EFFECT/POWERS

Absorb Power: You can absorb electrical energy, using it to increase your own power and resilience. Typically you absorb the power from other metahumans' electricity attacks, but you can also absorb from things like ordinary household current if necessary.

• You can absorb electrical energy, up to power rank, and convert it to Health. This is an unconscious reaction, so it is effective against any form of electrical energy that contacts your body, be it an electrical socket you intentionally stick your finger in, or a lightning bolt that strikes you while you're unconscious.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Control rank -6 CS.

Electric Shield: A shimmering field of electrical energy to protect you from attacks.

• Provides power rank protection vs. energy attacks, and [power rank -1 CS] protection vs. physical attacks.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Control/Generation rank.

Mental Static: Your control over your own neuroelectricity makes you resistant to mental/psionic influence.

• This is the Psi-Screen power, at a rank generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Generation power.

Ohm Effect: It is impossible to hurt you with electricity.

• You have Resistance to Energy, but only to electrical damage, equal to your Electrical Generation rank.

Variant: Ohm Effect, Alternate: It is very difficult to hurt you with electricity.

• Use you Electrical Generation rank instead of Fighting or Agility to evade of dodge electrical attacks.

Variant: Ohm Effect, Enhanced: It is impossible to effect you with electricity.

• You have Resistance to Energy, but only to electrical damage, equal to your Electrical Generation rank, AND you may use you Electrical Generation rank instead of any FASERIP score when defending against any electrical effect.

MOVEMENT EFFECT/POWERS

Arc Travel: You can transform you body to electricity, arc over to another location, and re-form as your normal self. To do this, you'll need some sort of conductive material or wires to travel along or between. For example, you could Teleport from one room to another using the electric wiring in the walls, or from one end of a metal handrail to another, through a metal vault door, or along the metal floors of a supervillain's secret satellite headquarters. But you couldn't Teleport through a wooden door, along a wooden floor or ordinary ground, or through the open air unassisted, as none of those substances are sufficiently conductive.

• Works as the Teleport power, but you must teleport through a sufficiently conductive medium, at a rank generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Generation power.

Lightning Bolt Form: You turn into a bolt of lightning, and go wherever you want!

• Works as the Teleport power, at a rank generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Control/Generation power -2 CS.

Ride the Lightning: You uses you control of electricity to "latch onto" the electricity in cables or wires and travel along with it. You can only fly where such cables and wires exist. This usually isn't too much of a problem in urban areas (though it may lead to some unusual flight paths), but it's often a significant problem in rural regions or unusual locales.

• Works as a combination of Wall Crawling and Lightning Speed, at a rank generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Generation power.

SENSORY EFFECT/POWERS

Detect Corpses: The chemicals given off by rotting bodies are electrically charged. This is why it's so hard to get the smell of rot & decay out of an area: the compounds stick to surfaces like lint to a balloon after you rub it against a carpet. Groundwater from the soil above a freshly-interred corpses is approximately 30 times more conductive than groundwater from non-corpse grounds, due to these compounds seeping into the soil. Some electrokinetics can sense electrically-charged compounds, and use this ability to find hidden bodies, or locate unmarked graves.

• You can detect corpses with power rank ability, at power rank range.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Control/Generation rank.

Electrosense: You have the innate ability to detect electrical fields, those given off by electrical current or technological devices, and those emitted by living bodies. This makes it difficult to "blind" you in combat or at night.

• Treat as the Radarsense power (DT15 from UPB).
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Control/Generation rank.

MISCELLANEOUS EFFECT/POWERS

Body of Electricity: You can convert your body to electricity, thus allowing you to pass through conductive materials. For example, you could "walk" right through a metal vault door, or the metal hull of a battleship, but not through a wooden door, a brick wall, or the rubber padding of an asylum cell.
A character with this power should also buy several other powers Linked to or otherwise dependent on it. Examples include Lightning Touch, Personal Electric Field, and Electric Shield (and Immunities such as Life Support), but they could buy just about any other power in this section.

• See Body Transformation - Self.

Defibrillation: You've seen it at least once in some media: a character flatlines (technically speakings, 'goes into asystole'), medical professionals wheel out the shock cart, place two paddles on the patient, and shock him back to health. In reality, defibrillators are used only in certain cases -- and "flatlined" is generally not one of them. Defibrillators are used when a patient's heart is beating erratically; the shock (of direct current) 'resets' the heart to a standard rhythm. (Why two paddles? Because electricity flows in a circuit, and the two paddles make a circuit, with the heart in the middle. Which is also why it's an extremely bad idea to use them on someone wearing an underwire bra...) These can be used as part of a treatment for a flatlined patient: administer epinephrine to the heart to get it beating again, but the patient then goes into ventricular tachycardia/fibrillation (an uncoordinated series of very rapid and ineffective heart beats/contractions), so a shock is administered to stop the fibrillation (hence 'de-fibrillator').

• Target can use this power's rank instead of their Endurance when making the check to avoid Endurance loss while dying.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Control/Generation rank.

Electrolysis/Ozonolysis: Ozone (see Ozone Suffocation, above) has a vast array of uses and applications. It will oxidize most metals (causing iron to rust) and polymers, breaks carbon-carbon bonds, can combine with sulfur and water to form sulfuric acid (H2SO4), detoxify cyanide by turning it into cyanate (and eventually to carbon dioxide), deodorize air and objects, and more. By electrolytically creating ozone from the oxygen and water vapor in the atmosphere, you can do many of these things, too!

• Treat as the Catalytic Control power (EC2 from UPB), limited as detailed above.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Control/Generation rank -4 CS.

Variant: Chemical Bond Breaking & Making: your control over covalent & ionic bonds allows you to create a wide variety of substances.

• You can transmute inanimate matter, making and breaking chemical bonds to create and reshape matter as your will.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Control/Generation rank -6 CS.

Mental Enhancement: Some Australian researchers have found that transcranial direct-current stimulation -- for example, applying electricity to left brain in order to suppress its "linear" style of thinking while applying a different kind of current sent to the right brain in order to increase cognitive flexibility -- has been shown to not only help people with certain forms of brain injuries, but also enhance language and mathematical ability, attention span, problem solving, memory, and coordination in otherwise healthy individuals.

• Treat as the Hyper-Intelligence power (M13 from UPB).
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electrical Control/Generation rank.

Science!: Electromagnetic Radiation/Spectrum (Light+) Powers
Comics Examples: Captain Marvel/Photon/Pulsar/Spectrum, Doctor Light (Arthur Light and Kimiyo Hoshi), Doctor Spectrum, Firestar, Green Lanterns (and most of the other Lanterns), Halo, Quasar, Rainbow Raider
Tropes: Frickin' Laser Beams, Hard Light, Hologram, Light 'Em Up.

Electromagnetic radiation (often abbreviated E-M radiation or EMR) is a form of energy exhibiting wave-like behavior as it travels through space. EMR has both electric and magnetic field components, which oscillate in phase perpendicular to each other and perpendicular to the direction of energy propagation.

Quote
Wikipedia says
Electromagnetic radiation (often abbreviated E-M radiation or EMR) is a form of energy exhibiting wave-like behavior as it travels through space. EMR has both electric and magnetic field components, which oscillate in phase perpendicular to each other and perpendicular to the direction of energy propagation.
Electromagnetic radiation is classified according to the frequency of its wave. The electromagnetic spectrum, in order of increasing frequency and decreasing wavelength, consists of radio waves, microwaves, infrared radiation, visible light, ultraviolet radiation, X-rays, and gamma rays. The eyes of various organisms sense a small and somewhat variable window of frequencies called the visible spectrum. The photon is the quantum of the electromagnetic interaction and the basic "unit" of light and all other forms of electromagnetic radiation, and is also the force carrier for the electromagnetic force; photons are massless but are still affected by gravity. Electromagnetic radiation carries energy and momentum that may be imparted to matter with which it interacts.

Electromagnetic radiation contains a lot of different types of energy, most of which you use every day.

Radio waves -- which you use to listen to music in your car or to control RC models -- have the shortest frequency, ranging from 3 Hz (hertz, or cycles/second) to 300 GHz (Gigahertz), and the longest wavelength, ranging from 100 Mm (Megameters) to 1 dm (Decimeter). Radio wave are further divided into "bands":

• ELF: Extreme Low Frequency, the band from about 3-30 Hz (100-10 Megameters wavelength), used to transmit signals to submerged submarines because those frequencies penetrate water well. However, the low frequency means messages take longer than normal to send, so they're usually restricted to short phrases and/or codes.
• VLF: Very Low Frequency, from about 6,000 Hz (or 6 kHz/kilohertz) to 30 kHz (100-10 km wavelength), used primarily for maritime communication and navigation signals, and wireless heart monitors.
• LF: Low Frequency, from 30-300 kHz (10-1 km wavelength), also used primarily for maritime communication and navigation signals, and RFID (radio frequency identification) tags.
• MF: Medium Frequency, from 300 kHz to 3 megahertz (MHz; 1 km-100 m wavelength). AM broadcasting uses this band, as do avalanche beacons.
• HF: High Frequency, from 3-30 MHz (100-10 m wavelength). Ham radios, CB (citizen's band) radios, law enforcement radios, international shortwave broadcasts, most alarm systems, over-the-horizon radar and radio, garage door openers, most cordless phones, walkie-talkies, baby monitors, and RC (radio-controlled) toys use this band. (Some versions of some of these technologies use the VHF band instead.)
• VHF: Very High Frequency, from 30-300 MHz (10-1 m wavelength). Most covert listening devices ("bugs") use the VHF band, as does FM radio and most television stations. For example, FM radio is assigned the band of frequencies between 88 and 108 MHz.
• UHF: Ultra-High Frequency, from 300 MHz to 3 GHz (1m-100 mm wavelength). UHF television broadcasters, police repeaters, and mobile phones use this band, as do radio telescopes, wireless LANs, and Bluetooth.
• SHF: Super High Frequency, from 3-30 GHz (100-10mm wavelength), is a microwave band used for various high-end communications and navigation purposes, satellite transmissions, the GPS system, and the like.
• EHF: Extreme High Frequency, from 30-300 GHz (10-1 mm wavelength), approaching the realm of infrared light, is also used in high-end communications and satellites.

Lower frequency radio waves are "ground waves," meaning they follow the curvature of the Earth and so tend to have limited range (though shortwave signals, such as in ham radio, can go all around the world). However, they can bounce off the "Heaviside layer" in the ionosphere ("skywave") and thus travel further, especially at night. (The seasons and sunspot activity also affect how far a radio transmission can travel.) In the upper bands used with satellite transmissions and the like, a radio broadcast can reach anywhere in the world. Radio waves can be made to carry information by varying a combination of the amplitude, frequency and phase of the wave within a frequency band. When EM radiation impinges upon a conductor (like an antenna), it couples to the conductor, travels along it, and induces an electric current on the surface of that conductor by exciting the electrons of the conducting material. EM radiation may also cause certain molecules to absorb energy and thus to heat up, causing thermal effects and sometimes burns. This is exploited in microwave ovens.

Microwaves are typically defined as electromagnetic energy with frequencies ranging from 1 to 1,000 GHz (Gigahertz), though alternate definitions exist and there's some overlap with Radio waves (SHF and EHF, 3-300 GHz) and infrared light (300+ GHz). The most common uses for microwaves are in the 1-40 GHz range, well-known to modern humans because of microwave ovens, which pass microwaves through food to heat the water, fat, and sugar molecules in them. (Volumetric heating, as used by microwaves, transfers energy through the material electromagnetically, not as a thermal heat flux; the benefit of this is a more uniform heating and reduced heating time.) Other uses include broadcasting and communications (mobile phone networks use 1.8-1.9 GHz, satellites use 4-40 GHz), some radar applications, some wireless and networking technology (mobile broadband uses 1.6-2.3 GHz range, and wireless LAN protocols such as Bluetooth use microwaves in the 2.4-5 GHz range), radio astronomy, masers (which are like lasers, but operate at microwave frequencies), long-range power transmission (at least experimentally), and cable television/Internet access.

Terahertz radiation (sometimes called Tremendously High Frequency, or THF, radiation) is a region of the spectrum between far infrared and microwaves, with frequencies from 300-3,000 GHz (or 0.3-3 Terahertz, THz) and wavelength from 1 mm to 0.1 mm. Until recently, the range was rarely studied and few sources existed for microwave energy at the high end of the band, but applications such as imaging (especially medical imaging, as this radiation does not damage living tissues as X-rays do but penetrates almost as well) and communications are now appearing. Scientists are also looking to apply terahertz technology in the armed forces, where high frequency waves might be directed at enemy troops to incapacitate their electronic equipment.

Infrared light/radiation is the part of the electromagnetic spectrum covers the range from roughly 300 GHz (1 mm wavelength) to 400 THz (750 nm wavelength), and includes most of the thermal radiation emitted by objects near room temperature. It can be divided into three parts:

• Far-infrared, from 300 GHz (1 mm) to 30 THz (10 µm). The lower part of this range may also be called microwaves. This radiation is typically absorbed by gas-phase molecules, by molecular motions in liquids, and by phonons (a collective excitation in a periodic, elastic arrangement of atoms or molecules in condensed matter) in solids. The water in the Earth's atmosphere absorbs so strongly in this range that it renders the atmosphere effectively opaque. However, there are certain wavelength ranges ("windows") within the opaque range which allow partial transmission, and can be used for astronomy. The wavelength range from approximately 200 µm up to a few mm is often referred to as "sub-millimetre" in astronomy, reserving far infrared for wavelengths below 200 µm. Humans at normal body temperature radiate chiefly at wavelengths around 12 µm.
• Mid-infrared, from 30 to 120 THz (10 to 2.5 µm). Hot objects (black-body radiators) can radiate strongly in this range. It is absorbed by molecular vibrations, where the different atoms in a molecule vibrate around their equilibrium positions. In guided missile technology, the 3-5 µm portion of this band is the atmospheric window in which the homing heads of passive IR 'heat seeking' missiles are designed to work, homing on to the infrared signature of the target aircraft (typically the jet engine exhaust plume). This range is sometimes called the fingerprint region since the mid-infrared absorption spectrum of a compound is very specific for that compound.
• Near-infrared, from 120 to 400 THz (2,500 to 750 nm). Physical processes that are relevant for this range are similar to those for visible light. CD players focus a 780 nm wavelength laser through the bottom of the polycarbonate layer of the disc, which as a spiral track of "pits" molded into it, each 100 nm deep, 500 nm wide, and 850 nm - 3.5 µm long. The change in height between pits and "lands" (the space between the pits) results in a difference in the way the light is reflected; by measuring the intensity change with a photodiode, the data can be read from the disc. Near-Infrared is also commonly used in fiber optic telecommunication, and some image intensifiers such as night vision goggles.

Infrared radiation is popularly known as "heat" or sometimes known as "heat radiation", since many people attribute all radiant heating to infrared light and/or all infrared radiation to heating. This is a widespread misconception, since light and electromagnetic waves of any frequency will heat surfaces that absorb them. Infrared light from the Sun only accounts for ~50% of the heating of the Earth, with the rest being caused by visible light that is absorbed then re-radiated at longer wavelengths. Visible light or ultraviolet-emitting lasers can char paper and incandescently hot objects emit visible radiation. Objects at room temperature will emit radiation mostly concentrated in the 8 to 25 micrometer (μm) band, but this is not distinct from the emission of visible light by incandescent objects and ultraviolet by even hotter objects. Heat is energy in transient form that flows due to temperature difference. Unlike heat transmitted by thermal conduction or thermal convection, radiation can propagate through a vacuum. The concept of emissivity (how its thermal emissions deviate from that of an ideal black body) is important in understanding the infrared emissions of objects: two objects at the same physical temperature will not "appear" the same temperature in an infrared image if they have differing emissivities.

Visible light, with a frequency of 400-790 THz (wavelength 760-380 nm), is the range in which the sun and stars similar to it emit most of their radiation, and the range to which the human eye is most sensitive. Visible light (and near-infrared light) is typically absorbed and emitted by electrons in molecules and atoms that move from one energy level to another. The light we see with our eyes is really a very small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. A rainbow shows the optical (visible) part of the electromagnetic spectrum; infrared (if you could see it) would be located just beyond the red side of the rainbow with ultraviolet appearing just beyond the violet end.

Color --- Frequency --- Wavelength
red --- 400-484 THz --- 620-750 nm
orange --- 484-508 THz --- 590-620 nm
yellow --- 508-526 THz --- 570-590 nm
green --- 526-606 THz --- 495-570 nm
cyan --- 606-630 THz --- 476-495 nm
blue --- 631-668 THz --- 450-475 nm
violet --- 668-789 THz --- 380-450 nm
(Indigo was in the 420-450 nm range, but modern color scientists do not usually recognize indigo as a separate division and generally classify wavelengths shorter than about 450 nm as violet.)

If radiation having a frequency in the visible region of the EM spectrum reflects off an object -- say, a bowl of fruit -- and then strikes our eyes, this results in our visual perception of the scene. Our brain's visual system processes the multitude of reflected frequencies into different shades and hues, and through this (not-entirely-understood) psychophysical phenomenon, most people perceive a bowl of fruit. At most wavelengths, however, the information carried by electromagnetic radiation is not directly detected by human senses. Natural sources produce EM radiation across the spectrum, and our technology can also manipulate a broad range of wavelengths. Optical fiber transmits light which, although not suitable for direct viewing, can carry data that can be translated into sound or an image. The coding used in such data is similar to that used with radio waves. DVD players use a 650 nm red laser to read discs, and Blu-ray machines use a 405 nm "blue" (really violet) laser to read its discs.

Ultraviolet (UV) light comes next, at 800 THz -30 PHz (400-10 nm wavelength). This is radiation whose wavelength is shorter than the violet end of the visible spectrum, and longer than that of an X-ray. It can be further broken down into

• UVA: Ultraviolet A, aka long wave UV, aka black light, in the 400-315 nm wavelength range.
• NUV: Near Ultraviolet, in the 400-300 nm wavelength range.
• UVB: Ultraviolet B, aka medium wave UV, in the 315-280 nm wavelength range.
• MUV: Middle Ultraviolet, in the 300-200 nm wavelength range.
• UVC: Ultraviolet C, aka short wave UV, in the 280-100 nm wavelength range.
• FUV: Far Ultraviolet, in the 200-122 nm wavelength range.
• VUV: Vacuum Ultraviolet, in the 200-100 nm wavelength range.
• LUV: Low Ultraviolet, in the 100-88 nm wavelength range.
• SUV: Super Ultraviolet, in the 150-10 nm wavelength range.
• EUV/XUV: Extreme Ultraviolet, in the 121-10 nm wavelength range.

Although ultraviolet is invisible to the human eye, most people are aware of the effects of UV through the painful condition of sunburn (caused by the disruptive effects of UV radiation on skin cells) and skin cancer (caused when the radiation irreparably damages the complex DNA molecules in the cells; UV radiation is a proven mutagen). However, the UV spectrum has many other effects, both beneficial and damaging, to human health. It can cause chemical reactions (being very energetic, UV can break chemical bonds, making molecules unusually reactive or ionizing them), and causes many substances to glow or fluoresce. Most ultraviolet is classified as non-ionizing radiation.
The sun emits ultraviolet radiation in the UVA-UVC bands. The Earth's ozone layer blocks 97-99% of this UV radiation from penetrating through the atmosphere. Of the ultraviolet radiation that reaches the Earth's surface, 98.7% is UVA. Ordinary glass is partially transparent to UVA but is opaque to shorter wavelengths, whereas Silica or quartz glass can be transparent even to vacuum UV wavelengths. Ordinary window glass passes about 90% of the light above 350 nm, but blocks over 90% of the light below 300 nm. UVB exposure induces the production of vitamin D in the skin, which has regulatory roles in calcium metabolism (vital for normal functioning of the nervous system, as well as for bone growth and maintenance of bone density), immunity, cell proliferation, insulin secretion, and blood pressure. An appropriate amount of UVB (which varies according to skin color) leads to a limited amount of direct DNA damage; this is recognized and repaired by the body, then melanin production is increased, which leads to a long-lasting tan. UVA and UVB have also been used in treatment of skin conditions such as psoriasis and vitiligo. Too little UVB radiation may lead to a lack of vitamin D, but too much UVB radiation may lead to direct DNA damage, sunburn, and skin cancer; UVA, UVB, and UVC can all damage collagen fibers and therefore accelerate aging of the skin, and both UVA and UVB destroy vitamin A in skin, which may cause further damage. High intensities of UVB light are hazardous to the eyes, and exposure can cause photokeratitis ("wleder's flash", or "arc eye"; a corneal sunburn) and may lead to cataracts, conjunctival pterygium, and pinguecula formation.
"Vacuum UV" is so named because it is absorbed strongly by air and is, therefore, used in a vacuum. In the long-wave limit of this region, roughly 150-200 nm, the principal absorber is the oxygen in air. Work in this region can be performed in an oxygen-free atmosphere, pure nitrogen being commonly used, which avoids the need for a vacuum chamber. Technology for VUV instrumentation has been largely driven by solar physics for many decades, and more recently used in some photolithography applications for semiconductors.
Extreme UV is characterized by a transition in the physics of interaction with matter. Wavelengths longer than about 30 nm interact mainly with the chemical valence electrons (the electrons of an atom that can participate in the formation of chemical bonds with other atoms) of matter, whereas wavelengths shorter than that interact mainly with inner shell electrons and nuclei. EUV/XUV is strongly absorbed by most known materials, but it is possible to synthesize multilayer optics that reflect up to about 50% of XUV radiation; this technology has been used to make telescopes for solar imaging and for nanolithography (printing of traces and devices on microchips).

X-rays (or Roentgen rays, after the German physicist generally credited with discovering them) are a form of electromagnetic radiation with frequencies ranging from 30 PHz (petahertz) to 30 EHz (exahertz), and a wavelength in the range of 0.01 to 10 nm (nanometers). X-rays from about 10 to 0.10 nm wavelength are classified as "soft" X-rays, and from about 0.10 to 0.01 nm wavelength as "hard" X-rays, due to their penetrating abilities. (Hard X-rays can penetrate solid objects, soft X-rays hardly penetrate matter at all.) X-Rays are also measured in rems, measuring the absorbed dose of the radiation. Because they can pass through solid matter and make images of it on a medium behind that matter, "hard" X-rays are often used for medical and dental imaging. Exposure to X-rays, which are a form of ionizing radiation, can be dangerous, though the average person is exposed to about 360 millirems of X-rays every year from various background sources. Neutron stars and accretion disks around black holes emit X-rays, which enable us to study them. X-rays are given off by stars and are strongly emitted by some types of nebulae. X-rays can be seen by a dark-adapted eye under certain conditions, and when broadcast with sufficient intensity ionize the air with a white glow.

The distinction between X-rays and gamma rays has changed in recent decades. Originally, the electromagnetic radiation emitted by X-ray tubes had a longer wavelength than the radiation emitted by radioactive nuclei (gamma rays). Older literature distinguished between X- and gamma radiation on the basis of wavelength, with radiation shorter than some arbitrary wavelength defined as gamma rays. However, as shorter wavelength continuous spectrum "X-ray" sources such as linear particle accelerators and longer wavelength "gamma ray" emitters were discovered, the wavelength bands largely overlapped. The two types of radiation are now usually distinguished by their origin: X-rays are emitted by electrons outside the nucleus, while gamma rays are emitted by the nucleus.

Gamma rays, famed among comic book fans for having created the Hulk and many of his foes, have the shortest wavelength (1 picometer) and the highest frequency (300+ EHz, or exahertz) and energy (300+ keV, or kiloelectronvolts), of any part of the electromagnetic spectrum. This also makes them the most dangerous: as a form of ionizing radiation, exposure to them can lead to leukemia and many other forms of cancer. People are exposed to low amounts of gamma radiation normally; shielding people from higher doses usually requires lots of mass (such as soil, concrete, or lead). Gamma rays are used commercially to sterilize equipment, for some types of medical imaging, astronomy and astrophysics, and similar purposes. Gamma rays are produced by high energy sub-atomic particle interactions in natural processes and man made mechanisms, including electron-positron annihilation (i.e., matter/antimatter interactions), neutral pion decay (pions are the lightest mesons [subatomic particles] and play an important role in the low-energy properties of the strong nuclear force), nuclear fusion and fission, lightning strikes, and synchrotrons. Gamma ray production events range from production of a single gamma photon to explosive bursts that are the most powerful observed in the visible universe.

All forms of electromagnetic energy have several properties in common. All except visible light are invisible to the human eye (which could justify Blindside attacks). All penetrate most physical barriers easily (and the higher the frequency of the Electromagnetic Energy, the better the penetration), which can justify an "armor piercing" effect or a way to set up a blindside attack (sending a bolt of microwave energy through a wood-and-plaster to damage the person on the other side). However, it can be relatively easy to shield oneself against them: conductive metal surrounding the target can block harmful EM radiation, even if it's just a metal mesh like the ones in microwave oven doors -- the mesh's openings just have to be smaller than the radiation's wavelength (12 mm for a 2.45 GHz microwave oven). The effects of exposure to electromagnetic radiation usually follow a spectrum based on the intensity of the energy, the length of the exposure, and similar factors; these effects result from the Electromagnetic Energy heating up tissue (i.e., depositing energy into it). From least to worst harmful, they can include the following: temporary sterility; erythema (redness of the skin, i.e., minor burning); burns (potentially very bad ones from ionizing radiation like x-rays and gamma rays, relatively mild ones from radio waves or microwaves); cataracts; permanent sterility; cancer. Obviously, in the real world most of these effects don't manifest themselves right away, taking days, months, or years to show themselves. But in a comic book/superhero universe, where characters can manipulate EM radiation in ultra-intense amounts, they might show up within seconds -- in other words, they might be combat-effective Electromagnetic Energy powers, with a variety of effects in addition to direct loss of Health points.

Related Abilities

• Electrical Control: Compton scattering is a type of scattering that X-rays and gamma rays undergo in matter. The inelastic scattering of photons in matter results in a decrease in energy (increase in wavelength) of an X-ray or gamma ray photon, called the Compton effect. Part of the energy of the X-ray or gamma ray is transferred to a scattering electron, which recoils and is ejected from its atom (which becomes ionized). In other words, bombarding an object with X-ray or gamma rays can generate an electric current.
• Light Control/Manipulation: a subset of Electromagnetic Radiation Control/Manipulation.
• Microwave Control/Manipulation: a subset of Electromagnetic Radiation Control/Manipulation.
• Radiation Control/Manipulation: X-ray and Gamma rays are forms of both Electromagnetic Radiation and Ionizing Radiation.
• Radiowave Control/Manipulation: a subset of Electromagnetic Radiation Control/Manipulation.

Electromagnetic Energy and Other Descriptors

• Biological: UV and higher frequency energies are known mutagens, so can be used to counter certain biokinetic powers.
• Chemical: Many natural and synthetic polymers are attacked by ultraviolet radiation and products made using these materials may crack or disintegrate (that is, if they are not UV-stable). The problem is known as UV degradation, and is a common problem in products exposed to sunlight. Many pigments and dyes can also be affected, and organic fibres and textiles lose strength and flexibility when exposed to UV light, a phenomenon known as phototendering.
• Darkness: Normal darkness is the condition of a very small amount or even an absence of visible light. In conditions of insufficient light, perception is achromatic and ultimately, black. Characters (usually) can't see into, out of, or through it, light generated inside it by Illusions or other sources cannot be seen at all, a blinding/dazzling effect that targets sight can't penetrate it, and so forth. However, that doesn't mean darkness stops all powers with a Light descriptor; just because it blocks ordinary light doesn't convert it into a "Drain/Nullify/stop all Light-based powers" ability. A Light-based attack, such as a light-based Energy Blast, will penetrate normal darkness to affect a target inside it (assuming the attacker is able to accurately sense their target!). The Judge can rule otherwise if desired, but normal darkness is not an absolute defense to Light powers (particularly those that can cause physical damage). Similarly, just putting something opaque -- be it a shield, a wall, an opaque Created Object, a piece of thick cloth, or something else -- does not automatically stop a Light-based power. If a Light attack has physical effects and can cause actual injury, it's not going to be stopped just because ordinary light can't pass through some obstacle; damaging Light is a far cry from normal illumination. On the other hand, just because a defense is transparent to light doesn't mean it offers no protection against Light-based attacks -- most Force Fields are not opaque, but they still stop Light-based energy blasts as effectively as any other energy blast.
• Electricity: Electricity has no special interaction with Electromagnetic Energy. In fact, in a technical sense it's simply a subset of Electromagnetism.
• Light: Electromagnetic Energy has no special interaction with Light (which, as discussed above, is a form of electromagnetic radiation itself).
• Radiation: Electromagnetic Energy has no special interaction with Radiation; technically speaking they're all basically the same thing.

---

OFFENSIVE/ATTACK EFFECT/POWERS

Aiming Pulse: You can emit a short, extremely low-power laser pulse microseconds before firing your Laser Beam (or any other attack you choose) so that you can adjust you aim for maximum accuracy.

• A possible manifestation of having the Marksman talent.

Electromagnetic Pulse: You can generate a burst of electromagnetic radiation, and the resulting rapidly changing electric & magnetic fields couple with electrical/electronic systems to produce damaging current and voltage surges. This will cause anything with an electronic circuit -- that is, most electronic devices, including cybernetics and power armor -- to short out and shut down.

• Treat as Nullifying Power, affecting an area of power rank size centered on the user.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank.

Flare Blast: You project a beam of concentrated light so bright that it temporarily blinds the target.

• The target struck by this effect must make an Endurance FEAT or be blinded. They may make an additional Endurance FEAT each round thereafter, with a cumulative +1 CS bonus, to shake off the effect.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank.

Variant: Flare Burst: You can project a short-range burst of blinding light.

• As Flare Burst, above, but affecting all targets in the same area.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank -4 CS.

Variant: Stunning Flare: This beam of light is so intense that it overloads the victim's optic nerves, causing pain as well as temporary blindness.

• Acts as the blinding Flare Blast, plus the target must make an Endurance FEAT (vs. the adjusted Flare Blast's rank) or be knocked unconscious. They may make an additional Endurance FEAT each round thereafter, with a cumulative +1 CS bonus, to shake off the effect.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank -6 CS.

Gamma Blast: You can project a powerful blast of deadly gamma rays.

• Treat as the Disintegration power (MCo3 from UPB).
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank -6 CS.

Hard Light Constructs: You can create constructs of 'solid light' energy. You are limited to simple geometric shapes or common object (such as a cube, sphere, dome, hammer, lens, disk, etc.). The Judge has final say on whether or not a particular object is too complex for this effect. Generally, your objects can’t have any moving parts more complex than a hinge. They can be solid or hollow, opaque or transparent, as you choose when you use the effect.

• You can create immobile objects of with an effective material strength equal to this power's rank; the objects are affected by gravity but otherwise can only be moved is someone picks it up or shoves it. You can trap a target inside a large enough hollow object (a cage or bubble, for example); the target gets an Agility FEAT to avoid being trapped, and a trapped character can break out of the construct normally. You can drop a hard light construct on a target -- or several in an area, if you can make one large enough! The construct inflicts damage equal to its rank, and targets get an Agility FEAT to evade the falling object; success results in no damage. If a construct needs to support weight -- created as a bridge or support a weakened structure, for example -- treat the object’s effective Strength as being equal to its power rank.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank.

Variant: Light Creatures/Mobile Constructs: You can move the constructs you create, and/or create quasi-living beings of "solid light" which you can control.

• You can create mobile objects of with an effective material strength equal to this power's rank, which you can move and manipulate as if you had telekinesis, and/or creatures with Fighting and Agility scores equal to your own and Strength and Endurance scores equal to this power's rank.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank -2 CS.

Holograms: You control over light allows you to create holograms so real that they fool most people. However, they're not tangible and emit neither odors nor sounds, which may give them away if you aren't careful.

• You can create visual illusions at power rank range, filling up to one area. Viewers interacting with one may need to make an Intuition FEAT to realize the hologram is not real.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank.

Hot Zone: You can create a field of intense ionizing radiation, equal to standing next to a poorly-shielded nuclear reactor.

• The field covers an area equal to your power rank, and can be created at range. Targets in the area must make an Endurance FEAT or contract radiation sickness. Every twelve hours, they must make another Endurance FEAT or lose a rank of Endurance, dying once they reach Shift 0.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank.

Ionize: You can bombard a target with high frequency UV rays/X-rays/Gamma rays to ionize them, making him easier to hit them with electrical, magnetic, or metal-based attacks.

• Target must make an Endurance FEAT or else have their Fighting and Agility reduced, for the purposes of evading or dodging electrical, magnetic, and metallic attacks, by the user's power rank. This effect fades at the rate of one point per round.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank.

Laser Beam: A laser (an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) is a specially-generated beam of light. A laser device uses a gain medium and an optical cavity to emit a beam of coherent light, one in which all the light waves are in phase with one another. This makes the "laser beam" perfectly straight, allowing it to remain tightly concentrated over long distances, and gives it a defined color (based on the medium) and significant burning power. Higher-powered lasers use more energetic photons, like ultraviolet light, x-rays, or gamma rays. As weapons, lasers do damage by suddenly superheating the surface of whatever they hit. The energies are modest, but concentrated into so tiny an area that they cause significant damage. Solid materials melt and shatter, living tissue burns. More powerful lasers pierce better, and x-rays do additional damage from radiation effects. A sufficiently powerful laser can "cut" through almost anything, leaving a tiny hole the size of the beam; move the beam slowly across an object and it will cut through that object.

• You can do power rank energy damage to a target at power rank range.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank.

Variant: Blinding Laser: You have trained to aim your laser blasts at/near the eyes of a target, inflicting blindness as well as damage.

• As Laser Blast, above, plus the effect of the blinding Flare Blast, above.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank -4 CS.

Variant: Invisible Laser: Contrary to what's seen in the movies, laser beams aren't visible to the naked eye. A spot of light can be seen where they're generated, and a spot of light where the light impacts a solid object, but there's no "beam" connecting the two points; they only show up in the air if smoke or other particulates render them visible. The Laser Beams of metahumans and super-science devices often are visible, but you can make one that is not.

• A descriptor/justification for making Blindside attacks with your Laser Blast.

Variant: Light Bolt: Instead of a burning laser beam, you unleash a bolt of 'densely packed' light energy, like a Hard Light Construct, that hits with Physical force.

• You can do power rank shooting damage to a target at power rank range.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank.

Variant: Reflected Laser: You can "bounce" your Laser Beam off highly reflective surfaces (such as mirrors, polished metal, or calm bodies of water) to strike at a foe from any angle.

• A descriptor/justification for making Blindside attacks with your Laser Blast.

Laser Sword: You can generate a blade of laser light (or hard light).

• You can do power rank energy damage with at Touch range.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank.

Mesmerizing Lights: You can create a pattern of swirling, hypnotic lights that weakens the will of anyone who looks at it, making that person more susceptible to Mental Powers (by lowering their Psyche) and other forms of suggestion/social hacking (by lowering their Intuition), as well as making them more likely to overlook things happening around them.

• Targets who can see you must make an Endurance FEAT or else have their Intuition and Psyche reduced by the user's power rank. This effect fades at the rate of one point per round.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank -4 CS.

Microwave Blast: You can project a powerful blast of microwave radiation, which bypasses non-metallic armor and cooks the target from the inside out.

• You can do power rank energy damage to a target at power rank range. However, this blast ignores non-metallic body armor/resistance (such as that possessed by Luke Cage or Ben Grimm or Namor) of up to this blast's power rank; armor of that level or lower is treated as no armor.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank -4 CS.

Radar Ghosts: You can generate false images on radar screens.

• You can generate false images with power rank intensity at power rank range.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank.

Radiation Accident: You can project a blast of radiation that can mutate a target, changing their mutation-derived powers. You have no control over what their powers will change to, and their body's self-repair mechanisms will eventually reverse the change, but it can be a great too for sowing chaos and confusion!

• The target struck by this blast must make an Endurance FEAT or else have their mutation-based superpowers changed to something different (determined by the Judge). They may make an additional Endurance FEAT each round thereafter, with a cumulative +1 CS bonus, to shake off the effect.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank -4 CS.

Radio Static: You project a beam of radio frequency static at a target, temporarily 'blinding' their radio senses.

• The target struck by this effect must make an Endurance FEAT or have their radio senses "blinded". They may make an additional Endurance FEAT each round thereafter, with a cumulative +1 CS bonus, to shake off the effect.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank.

Variant: Radio Jamming: You create radio static in an area, 'blinding' all radio senses in the area.

• You create an area of power rank size, up to power rank range away, in which no radio signals can enter, go out of, or pass through.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank.

Variant: Radio Static Burst: You emit a burst of radio frequency static, temporarily 'blinding' the radio senses of all in the area. (The Radio Jamming variant, above, affects are area, and devices taken out of it work normally. This affects the devices in an area, which may still be affected even if removed from the area.)

• All targets in an area of power rank size, up to power rank range away, must make an Endurance FEAT or have their radio senses "blinded". They may make an additional Endurance FEAT each round thereafter, with a cumulative +1 CS bonus, to shake off the effect.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank -2 CS.

DEFENSIVE EFFECT/POWERS

Electromagnetic/Photonic Shield: You can surround yourself with a "shield" of electromagnetic force/glowing light that protects you from attacks.

• Provides power rank protection vs. energy attacks, and [power rank -1 CS] protection vs. physical attacks.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank.

Eyes of Light: Because you have a body (including eyes) made of or sheathed in light, or simply due to long exposure to bright lights, you are less vulnerable to the effects of bright lights than others.

• You may use this power's rank instead of your Endurance or Psyche when resisting the effect of light-based sensory effects (such as Flare Blast).
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank.

Laser Point Defense: You use laser beams to destroy incoming projectiles.

• This could be another descriptor for how a light-based force field protects against physical projectiles.

Lightbending: You can conceal yourself by bending light waves around his body. Unless someone hears you or happens to bump into you accidentally, no one will ever know you're there.

• You can make yourself invisible to senses relying on visible light.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank.

Variant: EM Bending: You can blend light and radio waves around yourself, making you invisible to both sight and radar.

• You can make yourself invisible to both visible light and radio waves.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank.

MOVEMENT EFFECT/POWERS

Electromagnetic Flight: By either transforming your body into EM energy, or sheathing it in a field of EM energy that heats the air to provide lift and propulsion, you can soar through the air!

• You can move through the air at power rank air speed, as per the Flight power.

Electromagnetic Teleportation: You transform you body to pure electromagnetic energy, nigh-instantaneously travels to any location, and then rematerialize.

• You move instantaneously from point to point without physically crossing the distance between, as per the Teleportation power.

Lightspeed Travel: You transform our body into vacuum UV radiation (or some form of EM energy of a higher frequency/shorter wavelength), and can move at the speed of light! But only when in the vacuum of space, not in a planetary atmosphere.

• You can travel at near light speed. Effectively this means travel within a solar system in minutes. Travel to other stars will take years (or centuries!).

SENSORY EFFECT/POWERS

Detect Invisibility: Your innate awareness of light and its properties allows you to detect when someone is bending light to become invisible.

• If you succeed at a power rank FEAT vs. the rank of a target's invisibility, you can see them normally.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank.

Electromagnetic Sense: You can naturally perceive all sorts of electromagnetic waves, allowing you to receive radio and television broadcasts, sense radar emissions, and so forth. You cannot yourself broadcast, only receive.

• You can perceive the above at power rank range.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank.

Light Manipulation, Sensory: This ability represents a suite of powers; Light-based characters can purchase as many of them as they wish, in whatever order they wish. All involve bending and manipulating light waves to carry visual information to the character. The Far-Off Light power is particularly useful for characters who can travel at lightspeed.

• Distant Light: Enhanced Senses (Telescopic Vision; reduce penalties to vision-based checks due to distance by half)
• Enhanced Light: Enhanced Senses (Nightvision; ignore penalties for normal darkness)
• Far-Off Light: Clairvoyance (M2 from UPB)
• Starlight Eyes: Enhanced Senses (Ultravision; can perceive ultraviolet light, ignore penalties for normal darkness if moonlight/starlight is available)
• Surrounding Light: Super-Senses 2 (radius for all vision) [2PP]
• Thermal Vision: Enhanced Senses (Infravision; can perceive infrared light)
• X-Ray Vision: X-Ray Vision; can see through one inch of matter if material strength is equal to or less than this sense's power rank; for thicker objects, increase effective material strength by +1 CS for each doubling of thickness.
  Power rank for these stunts are generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank.

Radar: By sending out radiowave emissions that bounce off solid surfaces, you can build an accurate picture of your surroundings.

• Treat as the Radarsense power (DT15 from UPB).
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank.

Radio Communication: The ability to emit and control radio waves gives you the ability to broadcast and receive like a living radio.

• You can receive and transmit messages on radio wave bands, from ELF to EHF.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank.

MISCELLANEOUS EFFECT/POWERS

Body of Light: You can convert your body into pure light, thus allowing you to pass through solid objects that aren't opaque (like glass or plexiglass) as well as through tiny spaces of air (such as through a pipe or between the bars of a jail cell).
A character with this power should also buy several other powers Linked to or otherwise dependent on it, such as the assorted Movement power (and Immunities such as Life Support), but they could buy just about any other power in this section.

• See Body Transformation - Self.

Nuclear Transmutation: Though manipulation of ionizing radiation, you can convert one chemical element or isotope into another.

• You can transmute inanimate matter, making and breaking chemical bonds to create and reshape matter as your will.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank -6 CS.

Science!: Gravity Powers
Comics Examples: Alex Power, Geo-Force, Graviton, Gravity, Light Lass, Star Boy, Starman (especially Ted Knight)
Tropes: Artificial Gravity, Gravity Is A Harsh Mistress, Gravity Master, Gravity Sucks, No Gravity For You, Selective Gravity

Quote
Wikipedia says
Gravity, or gravitation, is a natural phenomenon by which physical bodies attract with a force proportional to their mass. In everyday life, gravitation is most familiar as the agent that gives weight to objects with mass and causes them to fall to the ground when dropped. Gravitation causes dispersed matter to coalesce, and coalesced matter to remain intact, thus accounting for the existence of the Earth, the Sun, and most of the macroscopic objects in the universe. Gravitation is responsible for keeping the Earth and the other planets in their orbits around the Sun; for keeping the Moon in its orbit around the Earth; for the formation of tides; for natural convection, by which fluid flow occurs under the influence of a density gradient and gravity; for heating the interiors of forming stars and planets to very high temperatures; and for various other phenomena observed on Earth.
Gravitation is one of the four fundamental interactions of nature, along with electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force. Modern physics describes gravitation using the general theory of relativity by Einstein, in which it is a consequence of the curvature of spacetime governing the motion of inertial objects. The simpler Newton's law of universal gravitation provides an accurate approximation for most physical situations.
In the decades after the discovery of Einstein's general relativity, it was realized that general relativity is incompatible with quantum mechanics (a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interaction of matter and energy). It is possible to describe gravity in the framework of quantum field theory like the other fundamental forces, such that the attractive force of gravity arises due to exchange of gravitons, in the same way as the electromagnetic force arises from exchange of photons. This reproduces general relativity in the classical limit (i.e., this seems to work in accordance with the physical laws with which most people are familiar), but this approach fails at short distances of the order of the Planck length (i.e., "subatomic weirdness"), where a more complete theory of quantum gravity (or a new approach to quantum mechanics) is required. Many believe the complete theory to be string theory (which posits that the electrons and quarks within an atom are not 0-dimensional objects, but rather 1-dimensional oscillating lines or "strings"), or more currently M-theory (an extension of string theory in which eleven dimensions are identified); on the other hand, it may be a background independent theory such as loop quantum gravity ("space can be viewed as an extremely fine fabric or network 'woven' of finite quantised loops of excited gravitational fields called 'spin networks'") or causal dynamical triangulation.

"Gravity. It Isn't Just a Good Idea. It's the Law."

Gravity is one of the fundamental forces of reality. It's responsible for the creation of the galaxies and their contents (and thus for the existence of life on Earth), and it affects everything: all matter, all energy. All objects have a gravitational field that exerts an attracting force on all other things. In other words, all objects constantly try to pull all other things to themselves (or, in more scientific terms, apply acceleration to them in the direction of the object). The strength of an object's gravitational field depends on the object's size & mass, is proportional to the target's size & mass, and varies inversely with the square of the distance from the object. The gravitational field is constant: it keeps applying and applying its acceleration to the target object. Thus, a person falling falls at increasing speed, every second (on Earth, 9.81 meters [32.2 feet] per second per second), until they reach a "terminal velocity" dictated by wind resistance. Furthermore, according to Newton's Third Law of Motion ("to every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction"), the object doing the gravitational attracting experiences an equal and opposite force to the target. To put it another way, as gravity makes a person fall toward the Earth, Newton's Third Law makes the Earth fall toward that person. It's just that the Earth has so much mass that its actual movement in this situation is practically imperceptible.

A note on mass and weight: In everyday usage, the mass of an object is often referred to as its weight, though these are in fact different concepts and quantities. In scientific contexts, mass refers loosely to the amount of "matter" in an object, whereas weight refers to the force experienced by an object due to gravity. In other words, an object with a mass of 1.0 kilograms will weigh 9.8 newtons (newton is the unit of force, while kilogram is the unit of mass) on Earth (its mass multiplied by the gravitational field strength). Its weight will be less on Mars (where gravity is weaker, ~38% of Earth's), more on Saturn (where gravity is stronger, 1.065 times that of Earth), and negligible in space when far from any significant source of gravity. While the weight of a mass is a function of the strength of gravity, the mass of an object is constant for any given observer, so long as no energy or matter is added to the object.

A better scientific definition of mass describes it as having inertia, the resistance of an object to being accelerated when acted on by an external force. Gravitational "weight" is the force created when a mass is acted upon by a gravitational field and the object is not allowed to free-fall, but is supported or diminished by a mechanical force, such as the surface of a planet. Such a force confers weight.

Modeling Gravity in game terms can prove tricky due to the fundamental and absolute nature of gravity as a force: if they affect a character, they do so to an extreme degree -- either normal gravity applies to them, or it doesn't. For many forms of gravity manipulation, the most applicable effect is Telekinesis. The gravity manipulator simply alters one or more gravitational fields to move the target around, hold them in place, or the like. This isn't an entirely accurate model of how gravity works -- among other things, it gives the victim a chance to break free from the gravity field(s), which technically is impossible -- but for most in-game circumstances it works perfectly well. Gravity-based defenses often involve moving physical objects (bullets, biological spores, clouds of gas, thrown rocks, etc.) to the side or dragging them to the ground. In this case, the substance in question isn't necessarily dissipated or neutralized; it may remain in the environment, still able to affect anyone who contacts it (at least until the substance fades way, "burns out," or is otherwise rendered ineffective).

Related Abilities

• Density Alteration: You cannot affect the mass of a target, but you can alter its weight. On the other hand, if you're altering gravity by manipulating mass (instead of some exotic particle), then you are manipulating density!
• Electromagnetic/Light Control/Manipulation: Gravity affects everything, including energy -- sufficiently intense gravitational fields can even bend electromagnetic energy. Since a character's control over gravity usually allows for rather intense, focused uses, that could justify a wide range of primarily defensive powers, such as Force Field, Deflect, and even Concealment (bending light and radio waves so they go around the character), and the ability to counter them.
• Telekinesis: Your manipulation of gravitic fields could allow you to do many of the tricks telekinetics can do.

Gravity and Other Descriptors

• Dimensional: It's possible that opening dimensional portals and otherwise altering the "fabric of reality" will interfere with gravitational fields in ways that none of the characters involved can predict.
• Time: Since gravity can distort spacetime, the intense gravitic fluctuations caused by Gravity powers may weaken Time attacks and defenses.

---

Black Hole Field: You create an area where gravity pulls in all electromagnetic radiation, including radio waves, microwaves, and visible light.

• You can create an area of up to power rank size, at power rank rage away, that no form of (normal) light or radio energy can pass into, out of, or through.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Gravity Control/Generation rank -2 CS.

The Big Squeeze: Through Gravitic Manipulation, you squeeze the target throughout their body, disrupting many of their metabolic processes, driving the air from their lungs, and inflicting intense pain.

• You do power rank Energy damage at power rank range. However, this attack ignores Body Armor and Force Fields, and possibly some forms of Body Resistance. True Invulnerability protects as normal.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Gravity Control/Generation rank -2 CS.

Gravitic Blast: You can project a blast of concentrated gravitic energy that hits the target like a sledgehammer.

• You do power rank Force damage at power rank range.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Gravity Control/Generation rank.

Variant: Disabling Blast: The lingering gravitic effects of your blast make it difficult for the target to move their limbs.

• As Gravitic Blast, above, and also acts as an Ensnaring Missile.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Gravity Control/Generation rank -4 CS.

Variant: Tenpins Blast: The gravitic force of your blast has a much greater chance than normal of knocking the target head over heels.

• As Gravitic Blast, above, but for purposes of calculating Slam results, the effective rank is doubled.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Gravity Control/Generation rank -2 CS.

Gravitic Drag / Too Heavy to Move: You manipulate gravity to interfere with another character's ability to move. In effect, you increase the effect of gravity of an opponent to the point where they, dragged down by their own weight, can barely move.

• This is the Ensaring Missile power.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Gravity Control/Generation rank.

Gravitic Manipulation: You can alter or manipulate gravitic forces to move objects without having to touch them.

• This is the Telekinesis power, which can be used to move and Grapple targets at power rank range with power rank Strength.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Gravity Control/Generation rank.

Variant: Attraction/Repulsion: You can only pull objects towards you (by increasing gravity's pull on targets towards you) or push them away (by generating 'anti-gravity' that repels them from you).

• This is the Telekinesis power, but can only pull targets directly to or push them away from yourself.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Gravity Control/Generation rank +2 CS.

Gravitic Vertigo: You manipulate gravity to interfere with the bones and tissues in the target's inner ear so that they can't maintain their balance, doesn't know which way is "up" or "down," and otherwise loses control of their body. Alternately, you grab a target with Gravitic Manipulation and spin them like a top, inducing severe dizziness.

• Target must make an Endurance FEAT or else have their Agility reduced by the user's power rank. This effect fades at the rate of one point per round. This is a ranged attack, using Agility to hit.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Gravity Control/Generation rank.

Variant: Group Vertigo: You can make everyone in a wide area around him suffer the same disorienting effect.

• As Gravitic Vertigo, above, but affecting all targets in an area of up to power rank size.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Gravity Control/Generation rank -2 CS.

Variant: Vertigo Sickness: Your vertigo also makes targets sick and nauseous.

• As Gravitic Vertigo, above, with an additional effect. If you failed the Endurance FEAT by one color (needed red but got yellow, needed yellow but got green), you are sickened, at -2 CS on all FEATS; this lasts until you regain half your lost Agility points. If you failed the Endurance FEAT by two colors (needed red but got green, needed yellow but got white), you are nauseated, unable to do anything except move; this lasts until you regain half your lost Agility points, at which point you are sickened until the rest of your Agility points return. If you failed the Endurance FEAT by three colors (needed red but got white), you are helpless, unable to take any actions and at -6 CS Fighting to avoid melee attacks and -4 CS Agility to avoid ranged attacks; this lasts until you regain one third of your lost Agility points, then you are nauseated until you regain the second third, then sickened until you regain the final third.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Gravity Control/Generation rank -6 CS.

Gravity Alteration: You can create a field of altered gravity. You can either increase the gravity, pinning everyone inside the affected area to the ground, or you can cancel gravity and hold them all motionless off the ground. You must choose one or the other each time you use the power; you cannot pin some people down while holding others up in the air.

• This is the Telekinesis power, which can be used to move and Grapple targets at power rank range with power rank Strength, applicable to all targets in an area of up to power rank size, but only to pull objects directly down to Earth or hold them off the ground.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Gravity Control/Generation rank.

Variant: Gravitic Pressing: When you increase gravity to pull something down, you can increase the pull so much it damages them.

• As Gravity Alteration, above, but while pulling targets down you can also inflict up to power rank Force damage to them.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Gravity Control/Generation rank -2 CS.

Variant: Selective Gravity Alteration: You can choose who to affect within the area covered; some people can walk through it freely, others cannot.

• As Gravity Alteration, above, but you can choose to leave some targets in the area unaffected.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Gravity Control/Generation rank -2 CS.

DEFENSIVE EFFECT/POWERS

Gravitic Point Defense / Gravitic Shield: You can manipulate gravitic energy to create a protective field around yourself. You can instantly make any physical missile fired at you so heavy that it drops to the ground. Since gravity can also affect energy, this can protect you from energy attacks, too.

• This is the Force Field power.

Gravitic Stabilization: If you do not want to move from a spot, you gravtically anchor yourself to the surrounding region of spacetime, and you do not move.

• You can use the rank of this power, which is always at least +1 CS higher than the character's initial Endurance, to resist being Slam'd.

Variant: Gravitic Destabilization: If you want others to move, you manipulate gravity to disconnect them from the surrounding region of spacetime.

• When you score a Slam result on someone with a Slugfest attack, when they make their Endurance FEAT to resist being Slam'd, subtract a number of points from their Endurance equal to this power's rank (which is always at least +1 CS higher than the character's initial Strength) to determine their effective Endurance for resisting your Slam. If they get a White/Grand Slam, use this power's rank instead of your Strength to determine how far they go.

Lightbending: Your control over gravity allows you to bend light waves so they go around you.

• This is the Invisibility power.

Variant: EM Bending: You can blend light and radio waves around yourself, making you invisible to both sight and radar.

• As above, applicable to light and radio/radar, at -2 CS.

MOVEMENT EFFECT/POWERS

Graviton Manipulation: Your control over the effects of gravity on your own body is so fine that you can fly!

• This is the Flight power, allowing you to move through the air at power rank air speeds.

Moonleaping: You minimizes the effect of gravity on yourself so that you can make prodigious leaps.

• This is the Leaping power, which is always at least +1 CS higher than the character's initial Strength.

Personal Gravity Bubble: You can create a gravity well in a thin field around yourself (or at least your hands and feet) that lets you walk up walls and along ceilings.

• This is the Wall-Crawling power.

Wormhole: You manipulate gravity to connect two points in spacetime, and move instantaneously between them.

• You move instantaneously from point to point without physically crossing the distance between, as per the Teleportation power.

Variant: Wormhole Portal: You can create and maintain a wormhole, and allow other to go through it.

• As Wormhole, above, but you can transport anyone (or everyone!) in your area, at -4 CS.

Variant: Transdimensional Wormhole: Your wormhole crosses more than space, it can cross dimensions!

• This is the Dimensional Travel power.

SENSORY EFFECT/POWERS

Gravity Lens: You can use gravity to bend light so you can easily see things at a distance.

• This can be the Enhanced senses (Vision) power, or even the Clairvoyance (M2 from UPB) power.

Sense Gravitic Field: You have the innate ability to sense the local gravitic field. You can evaluate its strength, determine what (if anything) is manipulating it, and so on.

• Treat as the Radarsense power (DT15 from UPB), using gravity waves rather than electromagnetic waves.

SCIENCE!: Magnetism Powers
Comics Examples: Cosmic Boy, Doctor Polaris, Magneto, Polaris, Static
Tropes: Selective Magnetism, and Green Lantern Ring and Superpower Lottery (due to how much Marvel's Mutant Master of Magnetism Magneto has done with his powers). Has nothing to do with Chick Magnet or Weirdness Magnet.

Quote
Wikipedia says
Magnetism is a property of materials that respond at an atomic or subatomic level to an applied magnetic field. Ferromagnetism is the strongest and most familiar type of magnetism. It is responsible for the behavior of permanent magnets, which produce their own persistent magnetic fields, as well as the materials that are attracted to them. However, all materials are influenced to a greater or lesser degree by the presence of a magnetic field. Some are attracted to a magnetic field (paramagnetism); others are repulsed by a magnetic field (diamagnetism); others have a much more complex relationship with an applied magnetic field. Substances that are negligibly affected by magnetic fields are known as non-magnetic substances. They include copper, aluminium, gases, and plastic. However, the magnetic state (or phase) of a material depends on variables (such as pressure and temperature) so that a material may exhibit more than one form of magnetism, depending on its conditions and environment.
A magnetic field is a field of force produced by moving electric charges, by electric fields that vary in time, and by the 'intrinsic' magnetic field of elementary particles (bosons, leptons, and quarks) associated with the spin of the particle. There are two separate but closely related fields to which the name 'magnetic field' can refer: a magnetic B field (magnetic flux density/magnetic induction, measured in teslas) and a magnetic H field (magnetic field intensity/magnetic field strength, measured in webers). The magnetic field at any given point is specified by both a direction and a magnitude (or strength); as such it is a vector field. The magnetic field is most commonly defined in terms of the Lorentz force it exerts on moving electric charges.
The relationship between the magnetic and electric fields, and the currents and charges that create them, is described by the set of Maxwell's equations. Both magnetism lacking electricity, and electricity without magnetism, are inconsistent with special relativity, due to such effects as length contraction, time dilation, and the fact that the magnetic force is velocity-dependent. However, when both electricity and magnetism are taken into account, the resulting theory (electromagnetism) is fully consistent with special relativity. In particular, a phenomenon that appears purely electric to one observer may be purely magnetic to another, or more generally the relative contributions of electricity and magnetism are dependent on the frame of reference. Thus, special relativity "mixes" electricity and magnetism into a single, inseparable phenomenon called electromagnetism, analogous to how relativity "mixes" space and time into spacetime. However, in quantum physics, the electromagnetic field is quantized and electromagnetic interactions result from the exchange of photons.

F*ckin' magnets, how do they work? Spinnin' 'lectrons, foo'!

Magnetism, at its root, arises from two sources:

• Electric currents, or, more generally, moving electric charges (see Maxwell's equations).
• The nonzero "intrinsic" (or "spin") magnetic moments inherent to many subatomic particles (bosons, leptons, and quarks).

In magnetic materials, sources of magnetization are the electrons' orbital angular motion around the atomic nucleus, and the electrons' intrinsic magnetic moment (a quantity that determines the force the magnet can exert on electric currents and the torque that a magnetic field will exert on it) caused by the spin of the electrons themselves. (The neutrons and protons in the nucleus of the atom have their own "nuclear" magnetic moments; these are so much smaller than the electron's magnetic moments that they are negligible in the context of the magnetization of materials, but these nuclear magnetic moments are important in other contexts, particularly in nuclear magnetic resonance [NMR] and magnetic resonance imaging [MRI]). Ordinarily, the enormous number of electrons in a material are arranged such that their magnetic moments (both orbital and intrinsic) cancel out. This is due, to some extent, to electrons combining into pairs with opposite intrinsic magnetic moments (as a result of the Pauli exclusion principle), or combining into filled subshells (electron "orbits") with zero net orbital motion. However, sometimes -- either spontaneously, or owing to an applied external electric or magnetic field -- each of the electron magnetic moments will be, on average, lined up. Then the material can produce a net total magnetic field, which can potentially be quite strong. The magnetic behavior of a material depends on its structure, particularly its electron configuration, and also on the temperature: at high temperatures, random thermal motion makes it more difficult for the electrons to maintain alignment.

A very common source of magnetic field shown in nature is a dipole, with a "South pole" and a "North pole", terms dating back to the use of magnets as compasses, interacting with the Earth's magnetic field to indicate North and South on the globe. (Since opposite ends of magnets are attracted, the north pole of a magnet is attracted to the south pole of another magnet. The Earth's North Magnetic Pole -- currently in the Arctic Ocean, north of Canada -- is physically a south pole, as it attracts the north pole of a compass.) A magnetic field contains energy, and physical systems (being lazy) move toward configurations with lower energy. When diamagnetic material is placed in a magnetic field, a magnetic dipole tends to align itself in opposed polarity to that field, thereby lowering the net field strength; when ferromagnetic material is placed within a magnetic field, the magnetic dipoles align to the applied field, thus expanding the magnetic domain.

Different materials have different magnetic properties:

• Diamagnetism -- the tendency of a material to oppose an applied magnetic field, and therefore, to be repelled by a magnetic field -- appears in all materials. However, in a material with paramagnetic properties (that is, with a tendency to enhance an external magnetic field), the paramagnetic behavior dominates. Thus, despite its universal occurrence, diamagnetic behavior is observed only in a purely diamagnetic material. In a diamagnetic material, there are no unpaired electrons, so the intrinsic electron magnetic moments cannot produce any bulk effect. In these cases, the magnetization arises solely from the electrons' orbital motions. Notable diamagnetic materials (from least to strongest diamagnetic) include water, Copper, graphite (Carbon), Lead, diamond (Carbon), Silver, Mercury, Gold, and Bismuth. Superconducting materials are also diamagnetic.
• In a paramagnetic materials, there are unpaired electrons, i.e. atomic or molecular orbitals with exactly one electron in them. While paired electrons are required by the Pauli exclusion principle to have their intrinsic ("spin") magnetic moments pointing in opposite directions, causing their magnetic fields to cancel out, an unpaired electron is free to align its magnetic moment in any direction. When an external magnetic field is applied, these magnetic moments will tend to align themselves in the same direction as the applied field, thus reinforcing it. (In other words, paramagnetic materials are only magnetic when in the presence of an externally applied magnetic field.) Notable paramagnetic materials include Sodium, Magnesium, Lithium, Aluminum, Cesium, and Tungsten.
• Ferromagnetic materials, like a paramagnetic substance, have unpaired electrons. However, in addition to the electrons' intrinsic magnetic moment's tendency to be parallel to an applied field, there is also in these materials a tendency for these magnetic moments to orient parallel to each other to maintain a lowered energy state. Thus, even when the applied field is removed, the electrons in the material maintain a parallel orientation, and the material remains magnetic. (These small regions of more or less uniform alignment are called magnetic domains.) Ferromagnetism is a property not just of the chemical makeup of a material, but of its crystalline structure and microscopic organization: there are ferromagnetic metal alloys whose constituents are not themselves ferromagnetic, and nonmagnetic alloys (such as some types of stainless steel) composed almost exclusively of ferromagnetic metals. Notable ferromagnetic materials include Nickel, Iron, Cobalt, and Gadolinium.
• In antiferromagnetic materials, unlike a ferromagnet, there is a tendency for the intrinsic magnetic moments of neighboring valence electrons to point in opposite directions. When all atoms are arranged in a substance so that each neighbor is 'anti-aligned', the substance is antiferromagnetic. Antiferromagnets have a zero net magnetic moment, meaning no field is produced by them. Antiferromagnets are less common compared to the other types of behaviors, and are mostly observed at low temperatures. In varying temperatures, antiferromagnets can be seen to exhibit diamagnetic and ferrimagnetic properties.
• Ferrimagnetic materials, like ferromagnetic ones, retain their magnetization in the absence of an external magnetic field. However, like antiferromagnets, neighboring pairs of electron spins like to point in opposite directions. These two properties are not contradictory, because in the optimal geometrical arrangement, there is more magnetic moment from the sublattice of electrons that point in one direction, than from the sublattice that points in the opposite direction. The oldest-known magnetic substance, magnetite (iron(II,III) oxide; Fe3O4), is actually a ferrimagnet; other ferrimagnetic materials are YIG (the Father of Serpents yttrium iron garnet) and ferrites composed of iron oxides and other elements such as Aluminum, Cobalt, Nickel, Manganese and Zinc.

As mentioned earlier, all moving charged particles produce magnetic fields. Moving point charges, such as electrons, produce complicated but well known magnetic fields that depend on the charge, velocity, and acceleration of the particles. Magnetic field lines form in concentric circles around a cylindrical current-carrying conductor, such as a length of wire. Bending a current-carrying wire into a loop concentrates the magnetic field inside the loop while weakening it outside, and ending a wire into multiple closely-spaced loops to form a coil or helix (or solenoid) enhances this effect. A device so formed around an iron core (called an armature) may act as an electromagnet, generating a strong, well-controlled magnetic field.
Similarly, moving metal through a magnetic field creates an electric charge, a property used in dynamos (which produces direct current with the use of a commutator) and alternators (which convert mechanical energy to electrical energy in the form of alternating current).
A dynamo consists of a stationary structure, called the stator, which provides a constant magnetic field, and a set of rotating windings (called the armature) which turn within that field. The motion of the wire within the magnetic field causes the field to push on the electrons in the metal, creating an electric current in the wire. On small machines the constant magnetic field may be provided by one or more permanent magnets; larger machines have the constant magnetic field provided by one or more electromagnets, which are usually called field coils. The first dynamos actually produced alternating current -- when a loop of wire rotates in a magnetic field, the potential induced in it reverses with each half turn, generating AC power -- but in those early days AC power had no known uses. Thus was developed the commutator, essentially a rotary switch consisting of a set of contacts mounted on the machine's shaft, combined with graphite-block stationary contacts (called "brushes", because the earliest such fixed contacts were metal brushes). The commutator reverses the connection of the windings to the external circuit when the potential reverses, so instead of alternating current, a pulsing direct current is produced.
An alternator generates electricity using the same principle as DC generators: when the magnetic field around a conductor changes, a current is induced in the conductor. Typically, a rotating magnet (called the rotor) turns within a stationary set of conductors wound in coils on an iron core (the stator), the field cuts across the conductors, generating an induced emf (electromotive force) as the mechanical input causes the rotor to turn. The rotating magnetic field induces an AC voltage in the stator windings. Often there are three sets of stator windings, physically offset so that the rotating magnetic field produces a three phase current, displaced by one-third of a period with respect to each other; a three-phase system transmits 73% more power than a single-phase system, but uses only 50% more wire.
Alternators are used in modern automobiles to charge the battery and to power the electrical system when its engine is running. Early cars used DC generators to recharge the batteries (which store/convert chemical energy into DC electrical energy), but alternators are simpler, lighter, less costly and more rugged than a DC generator. (A set of rectifiers is used to convert the AC power generated by the alternator to DC power for the battery.)
Speaking of motors, many simple electric motors use magnetic torque in their operation. In one simple motor design, a magnet is fixed to a freely rotating shaft and subjected to a magnetic field from an array of electromagnets; by continuously switching the electric current through each of the electromagnets, thereby flipping the polarity of their magnetic fields, like poles are kept next to the rotor, and the resultant torque is transferred to the shaft.

The Earth's magnetic field, also called the geomagnetic field, which effectively extends several tens of thousands of kilometres into space, forms the Earth's magnetosphere. The Earth is largely protected from the solar wind (a stream of energetic charged particles emanating from the Sun) by its magnetic field, which deflects most of the charged particles. Some of the charged particles from the solar wind are trapped in the Van Allen radiation belt, but a smaller number of particles from the solar wind manage to travel, as though on an electromagnetic energy transmission line, to the Earth's upper atmosphere and ionosphere in the auroral zones. The only time the solar wind is observable on the Earth is when it is strong enough to produce phenomena such as the aurora: bright auroras strongly heat the ionosphere, causing its plasma to expand into the magnetosphere, increasing the size of the plasma geosphere, and causing escape of atmospheric matter into the solar wind. The Earth's magnetic field is mostly caused by electric currents in the liquid iron-nickel outer core. Convection of molten iron within the outer liquid core, along with a Coriolis effect caused by the overall planetary rotation, tends to organize these "electric currents" in rolls aligned along the north-south polar axis. When conducting fluid flows across an existing magnetic field, electric currents are induced, which in turn creates another magnetic field. When this magnetic field reinforces the original magnetic field, a dynamo is created, and it sustains itself.

The human body contains as much as 3-4 grams of iron, a substance that's necessary for life but toxic in high concentrations. (A poorly-nourished person might have significantly less than 3-4 grams.) About 2.5 of those grams are in hemoglobin, which allows blood to carry oxygen throughout the body; another 400 milligrams are used by cellular proteins for various biological processes like storing oxygen or performing redox reactions. Iron is crucial for oxygen transportation; anemia (iron deficiency) can become severe enough to cause death or organ damage.

"Realistically," a Magnetic Manipulator should only be able to affect ferromagnetic (and paramagnetic and ferrimagnetic) materials, but most Magnetic Manipulators in comics have been shown to use their powers to equal effect on any metal, even diamagnetic ones.
A sufficiently broad definition of Magnetism powers, even ones restricted to only ferrous materials, would allow a Magnetism-based character to manipulate aspects of the human body by affecting the iron in the body. At the simplest level the iron would let a Magnetism character magnetokinetically pick up or affect someone even if that person wasn't wearing/carrying any ferrous metal. More sophisticated or delicate uses could include:

• altering the blood flow to the brain to cause unconsciousness, hallucinations, loss of memories, or even outright Mind Control
• cause aneurysms, heart attacks, strokes, and similar medical conditions (note: heroes should not do this!)
• killing someone by removing all the iron from his body, inducing fatal anemia, or the like (heroes should not do this, either!)

As many of Magneto's writers have shown, you can do a lot with Magnetism!

Related Abilities

• Cyberkinesis/Cyberpathy: Given how many machines feature metallic parts, and how modern information systems often uses magnetic technology to store data, Magnetism powers may allow a character to control machinery in Cyberkinesis-like ways.
• Electricity Manipulation: Technically speaking, Electricity and Magnetism are closely related (hence the term "electromagnetic force"). Moving metal through a magnetic field creates an electric charge -- the technology behind metal detectors works on this principle -- and running an electric current through a wire creates a magnetic field around that wire.

Magnetism and Other Descriptors

• Cold/Ice: Typically Magnetism has no special interaction with Cold/Ice; it neither gains nor loses against this special effect. But extreme cold might actually enhance Magnetism powers by making the Magnetism-based character into a sort of "living superconductor" or the like. As a rule of thumb, when a Magnetism-based character is exposed to Cold/Ice powers in a way that would make them extremely cold, all their Magnetism powers gain a boost equal to 1/5 the power rank cost of the Cold/Ice power. (Ex.: hit by an Am/50 cold Blast, Magnetic powers increase by 10 points.) The gained points do not fade as long as the character remains exposed to the extreme cold, then fade at the rate of one pint per round; for instantaneous effects (like a blast), the boost lasts for one full round, then starts to fade at the rate of one point per round.
• Earth/Stone: In general, Earth/Stone has no special interaction with Magnetism; it neither gains nor loses against this special effect. However, if the Judge rules that a mass of soil or rock contains a high concentration of ferrous material or particles, that soil/rock may be more susceptible to Magnetism powers.
• Fire/Heat: Just as cold temperatures can enhance magnetism, high temperatures can reduce them. Heating a ferromagnetic and ferrimagnetic material beyond its Curie point makes it become paramagnetic, and lose its magnetism; heating an antiferromagnetic material beyond its Néel temperature will have a similar effect. (Heat-induced ferromagnetic-paramagnetic transitions is used in magneto-optical storage media, such as the Sony Minidisc format, for erasing and writing of new data.)

---

Atomic Discorporation, Offensive: Atoms are held together by the attraction of the negatively charged electrons in orbits to the positively charged protons in the nucleus. By disrupting that attraction, you disrupt matter.

• Treat as the Disintegration power (MCo3 from UPB).
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Magnetic Control/Generation rank -6 CS.

Electromagnetic Pulse: You can generate a burst of electromagnetic radiation, and the resulting rapidly changing electric & magnetic fields couple with electrical/electronic systems to produce damaging current and voltage surges. This will cause anything with an electronic circuit -- that is, most electronic devices, including cybernetics and power armor -- to short out and shut down.

• Treat as Nullifying Power, affecting an area of power rank size centered on the user, affecting only electronic devices.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Magnetic Control/Generation rank.

Gauss Blast: You use your control over magnetism to pick up small metal objects and "throw" them at a target at hypersonic velocities.
Since most Marvel Super Heroes games take place in urban environments, requiring metal objects of opportunity is rarely an issue.

• You can do power rank damage at power rank range, using Agility to hit. Damage can be treated as Shooting, Throwing Blunt, or Throwing Edged, depending on the shape and composition of the item used.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Magnetic Control/Generation rank.

Intense Magnetic Field: You create a field of intense magnetic energy that interferes with the use of radar, the transmission or reception of radio waves, and the functioning of other radio-based senses.

• You create an area of power rank size, up to power rank range away, in which no radio signals can enter, go out of, or pass through.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Magnetic Control/Generation rank.

Ionize: You can magnetically charge an opponent's body, making them easier to hit with electrical, magnetic, or metal-based attacks.

• Target must make an Endurance FEAT or else have their Fighting and Agility reduced, for the purposes of evading or dodging electrical, magnetic, and metallic attacks, by the user's power rank. This effect fades at the rate of one point per round.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Magnetic Control/Generation rank.

Magnetic Blast: You can project a bolt of pure, concentrated magnetic energy to damage your foes.

• You can do power rank Energy damage at power rank range, using Agility to hit.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Magnetic Control/Generation rank.

Magnetokinesis: The most basic of Magnetism powers, the one from which all others typically derive, is the ability to move and manipulate ferrous metal objects without touching them.

• This is the Telekinesis power, which can be used to move and Grapple metallic targets at power rank range with power rank Strength.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Magnetic Control/Generation rank.

Variant: Diamagnetokinesis: Your control over magnetic fields is so great you can affect the minute fields present in all matter.

• As Magnetokinesis, above, but not limited to metallic targets.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Magnetic Control/Generation rank.

Variant: Magnetic Attraction/Repulsion: You can attract all metal objects nearby towards you, or repel them away from you.

• As Magnetokinesis, above, but affecting all metallic objects/beings in an area, but only to move them towards or away from you.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Magnetic Control/Generation rank.

Metallic Disruption: Your powers allows you to disintegrate or rip apart objects made of (ferrous) metals. In the case of characters who have powers based on metals (such as metahumans or robots with metal bodies [Body Armor/Resistance], or characters with metal Claws ), you can 'turn them off' (by disrupting their physical manifestation).

• Treat as Nullifying Power, affecting an area of power rank size centered on the user, affecting only ferrous metal powers.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Magnetic Control/Generation rank.

Variant: Metallic Weakening: You disrupt a target's metal in a slightly different way; rather than an all-or-nothing effect, this is a weakening of their metal.

• As Metallic Disruption, above, but instead of the powers turning off when Nullified, they are instead reduced by an amount equal to this power's rank. Lost points return at the rate of one per round.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Magnetic Control/Generation rank.

Metallic Wrap-Up: If you have a sufficient supply of metals available -- a length of chain-link fence, girders from a construction site, railroad tracks, chains, scrap metal, car bodies, or the like -- you can wrap them around someone, preventing that person from moving or attacking. A particularly low rank in this power could represent how process of moving and bending the metals weakens them, making them more brittle and thus easier to break out of. A particularly high rank could represent magnetically strengthening and enhancing the metal used, making it even harder for the target to escape.

• This is the Ensnaring Missile power.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Magnetic Control/Generation rank.

Thrombosis: Your control of magnetic energy is so precise that you can disrupt the flow of blood within the human body, causing intense headaches and pain.

• You can do power rank Force damage to a target at power rank range. However, this attack ignores Body Armor and Force Fields, and possibly some forms of Body Resistance. True Invulnerability protects as normal.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank -2 CS.

Variant: Migraine: Your disruption is incredibly painful, but has little chance of doing any lasting harm.

• This is the Stunning Missile power, inflicting a Stunning attack.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Electromagnetic Control/Generation rank -2 CS.

DEFENSIVE EFFECT/POWERS

Atomic Discorporation, Defensive: By manipulating the attraction of the electron and neutrons of your own body, you can become incorporeal.

• This is the Phasing power. You are still affected by electrical and magnetic attacks/effects in this form.

Magnetic Shield: You can manipulate magnetic energy to create a protective field around yourself.

• This is the Force Field power.

MOVEMENT EFFECT/POWERS

Magnetic Bonding: You can cling to any metal object like a fly clings to a wall. You could, for example, walk right up the side of a steel-frame skyscraper (provided the steel "skeleton" were near the building's surface), or attach yourself to the hull of a steel-framed vehicle and ride along.

• This is the Wall-Crawling power.

Magnetic Force Riding: By manipulating the Earth's magnetic field, you can pick yourself up and fly through the air! At the Judge's option, a character using this power moves slightly faster (+1 CS) when flying north or south (parallel to the magnetic lines of the Earth), and slightly slower (-1 CS) when flying east or west (perpendicular to Earth's magnetic field).

• This is the Flight power, allowing you to move through the air at power rank air speeds.

SENSORY EFFECT/POWERS

Electromagnetic Radar: You emit pulses of electromagnetic energy, then "read" the pulses as they bounce off objects and return to you to perceive the world around you without having to use your eyes. The presence of large amounts of physical matter around you -- such as when you''re in a sandstorm, rainstorm, or blizzard -- may create "static" that hinders or blinds this radar. Also, it does not work in an intense magnetic field or other conditions which hinder radio senses.

• This is the Radarsense power (DT15 from UPB).

Magnetic Resonance Imaging: Using a powerful magnetic field to align the magnetization of the protons of the hydrogen atoms in the water molecules in a body, and then systematically alter the alignment of this magnetization, you can causes the nuclei to produce a rotating magnetic field detectable by you, which you can use to 'see' inside the scanned area of the body.

• This is the Penetration Vision power (DT12 from UPB, but it only works on targets that are 60% or more water (like human bodies).

Variant: Expanded MRI: You can affect the protons of any atoms, and thus 'see' inside anything.

• As MRI, above, but without the "only works on targets that are 60% or more water" lmitation.

Variant: Functional MRI: You can cause measures signal changes in the brain that are due to changing neural activity. This opens up a host of effects: reading emotions, reading surface thoughts, detecting the use of psionic powers, and so on.

• This is the Mental Probe (M20 from UPB) and/or Psionic Detection (DT14) powers

MISCELLANEOUS EFFECT/POWERS

Computer Manipulation: You control over magnetism allows him to work with magnetic and digital storage media without the need for a keyboard or monitor.

• This is the Communication with Cybernetics power (M4 from UPB).

SCIENCE!: Radiation Powers
Comics Examples: Blight, Captain Atom, Cyclotron, Fallout, Firestorm, Presence, Radioactive Man (both Marvel's and the one from The Simpsons), X-Ray. In addition, many characters -- Daredevil, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, and Spider-Man -- received their powers from exposure to radiation, and so may be susceptible to having their powers further altered by radiation.
Tropes: I Love Nuclear Power

Quote
Wikipedia says
Radiation is a process in which energy, in the form of waves or particles, travels through a medium or space. There are two distinct types of radiation: ionizing and non-ionizing. The word radiation is commonly used in reference to ionizing radiation only (i.e., having sufficient energy to ionize an atom), but it may also refer to non-ionizing radiation (e.g., radio waves or visible light). The energy radiates (i.e., travels outward in straight lines in all directions) from its source. This geometry naturally leads to a system of measurements and physical units that are equally applicable to all types of radiation. Both ionizing and non-ionizing radiation can be harmful to organisms and can result in changes to the natural environment.
Ionizing (or ionising) radiation consists of particles or electromagnetic waves that are energetic enough to detach electrons from atoms or molecules, therefore ionizing them. Direct ionization from the effects of single particles or single photons produces free radicals, which are atoms or molecules containing unpaired electrons, that tend to be especially chemically reactive due to their electronic structure. Examples of ionizing particles are alpha (α) particles, beta (β) particles, and neutrons (n⁰). The ability of an electromagnetic wave to ionize an atom or molecule depends on its frequency, which determines the energy of its associated particle, the photon. Radiation on the short-wavelength end of the electromagnetic spectrum -- high-frequency ultraviolet, X-rays, and gamma (γ) rays -- is ionizing, due to its composition of high-energy photons.

Lower-energy radiation -- such as visible light, infrared, microwaves, and radio waves -- are not ionizing. While these types of low-energy non-ionizing radiation can damage molecules, the effect is generally indistinguishable from the effects of simple heating. But I've already covered that.

Ionizing Radiation is what most people are thinking of when they hear "look out, radiation!" Ionizing radiation comes in three main forms, produced by a variety of processes, including radioactive decay, nuclear fission and nuclear fusion, and by particle accelerators and naturally occurring cosmic rays.

• Alpha Particles (α or He²⁺) consist of two protons and two neutrons bound together into a particle identical to a helium nucleus. They have low penetration depth, able to be stopped by a few centimeters of air, or by the skin. Because of the short range of absorption, alphas are not, in general, dangerous to life, unless the source is ingested or inhaled, in which case they become extremely dangerous. Because of this high mass and strong absorption, if alpha-emitting radionuclides do enter the body (upon being inhaled, ingested, or injected), alpha radiation is the most destructive form of ionizing radiation. It is the most strongly ionizing, and with large enough doses can cause any or all of the symptoms of radiation poisoning. It is estimated that chromosome damage from alpha particles is anywhere from 10 to 1,000 times greater than that caused by an equivalent amount of gamma or beta radiation.
• Beta Particles (β⁻ and β⁺) are high-energy, high-speed electrons or positrons emitted by certain types of radioactive nuclei. Of the three common types of radiation given off by radioactive materials, beta has the medium penetrating power and the medium ionizing power. Although the beta particles given off by different radioactive materials vary in energy, most beta particles can be stopped by a few millimeters of aluminum. Being composed of charged particles, beta radiation is more strongly ionizing than gamma radiation. When passing through matter, a beta particle is decelerated by electromagnetic interactions and may give off bremsstrahlung x-rays.
• Neutrons (n⁰) are subatomic particle with no net electrical charge, so do not interact electromagnetically with electrons, and so cannot directly cause ionization. However, fast neutrons will interact with the protons in hydrogen (in the manner of a billiard ball hitting another, head on, sending it away with all of the first ball's energy of motion), and this mechanism produces charged protons that interact with matter.

Cosmic rays are a mix of protons (~89%), alpha particles (~10%) and beta particles (~1%).

The units used to measure ionizing radiation are rather complex. The ionizing effects of radiation are measured by units of exposure, coulomb per kilogram (C/kg), and measures the amount of radiation required to create 1 coulomb of charge in 1 kilogram of matter. However, the amount of damage done to matter (especially living tissue) by ionizing radiation is more closely related to the amount of energy deposited rather than the charge. This is called the absorbed dose. The gray (Gy), with units J/kg, is the SI unit of absorbed dose, which represents the amount of radiation required to deposit 1 joule of energy in 1 kilogram of any kind of matter. (The rad [radioactivity absorbed dose] is the corresponding traditional unit, which is 0.01 J deposited per kg; 100 rad = 1 Gy.) However, equal doses of different types or energies of radiation cause different amounts of damage to living tissue -- for example, 1 Gy of alpha radiation causes about 20 times as much damage as 1 Gy of X-rays. Therefore the equivalent dose was defined to give an approximate measure of the biological effect of radiation, calculated by multiplying the absorbed dose by a weighting factor (WR) which is different for each type of radiation. The sievert (Sv) is the SI unit of equivalent dose. Although it has the same units as the gray, J/kg, it measures something different: it is the dose of a given type of radiation in Gy that has the same biological effect on a human as 1 Gy of x-rays or gamma radiation. (The rem [Roentgen equivalent man] is the traditional unit of equivalent dose; 1 sievert = 100 rem. Because the rem is a relatively large unit, typical equivalent dose is measured in millirem [mrem], 10^-3 rem, or in microsievert [μSv], 10^-6 Sv; 1 mrem = 10 μSv.)

The average 'background' dose of natural radiation received by a person is around 2.4 mSv (240 mrem) per year, 3.6 mSv (360 mrem) per year in the USA. A standard medical x-ray's strength is about 0.02 mSv (2 mrem) but can be over ten times that, depending on the equipment used; a dental x-ray optimally has a dose as low as 0.0033 mSv, but poor machines and technique can give doses as high as 0.11 mSv. The lethal full-body dose of radiation for a human is around 4-5 Sv (4,000-5,000 mSv, or 400-500 rem/400,000-500,000 mrem).

Ionizing radiation has many uses, including killing cancerous cells and power generation. Of course, too much of anything can be hazardous to human health. For example, at one time, assistants in shoe shops used X-rays to check a child's shoe size, and radium was used in glow-in-the-dark paints for watches, but this practice was halted when it was discovered that ionizing radiation was dangerous.

How are these particles formed/released? Nuclear reactions, primarily radioactive decay. Normal (nonradioactive) matter is made of stable atoms, which have an equal number of negatively charged electrons, in orbit, and positively charged protons, in the nucleus. (Neutrons, which have no charge, help keep the protons together in the nucleus; without them -- and the strong nuclear force that binds them together -- the like-charged protons would repel each other.) Isotopes are atoms with a different number of neutrons; these are labeled as [element]-[mass number] (ex.: uranium-235) or ^{mass number}Element (ex.: ²³⁵U). Some isotopes are stable (and will remain as they are forever), while others are unstable (and will decay/transmute into other atoms as time passes, realizing ionizing particles along the way). These unstable isotopes, which are radioactive, are also called radionuclides. There are three ways unstable isotopes decay:

• Alpha Decay is a process in which an atomic nucleus emits an alpha particle, and thereby transforms (or 'decays') into an atom with a mass number 4 less and atomic number 2 less. Ex.: uranium-238 (²³⁸U) decays to thorium-234 (²³⁴Th) and 1 alpha particle (He²⁺).
• Beta decay is a process in which a beta particle (an electron or a positron) is emitted. In β− decay, a neutron is converted into a proton and in the process releases an electron; in β+ decay, a proton is converted to a neutron and in the process releases a positron. Since the number of protons & neutrons remains the same, the atomic mass remains constant, but since the number of protons changes, the atomic number changes. Ex.: cesium-137 (137Cs) undergoes β− decay and changes to barium-137 (¹³⁷Ba), emitting 1 electron; sodium-22 (²²Na) undergoes β+ decay and changes to Neon-22 (²²Ne), emitting 1 positron.
• Spontaneous fission, like induced nuclear fission (see below), is a process in which a heavy isotope (atomic mass 100+, usually 230+) decays into two or more smaller atoms, releasing neutrons (and sometimes other particles) along the way . Ex.: an atom of fermium-256 (²⁵⁶Fm) will decay into one atom of xenon-140 (¹⁴⁰Xe), one atom of palladium-112 (¹¹²Pd), and four neutrons (140+112+4 = 256).

Tied to radioactive decay is half-life, the period of time it takes for a substance undergoing decay to decrease by half. It is defined in terms of probability: it is the time when the expected value of the number of entities that have decayed is equal to half the original number. Start with a single radioactive atom, wait its half-life, and measure whether or not it decays in that period of time. Maybe it has decayed, maybe it has not, but if this experiment is repeated again and again, it will be seen that -- on average -- it decays within the half life 50% of the time. Half-lives can range anywhere from microseconds (polonium-214 decays, through alpha-emission, with a half-life of 160 microseconds, to lead-210) to billions of years (uranium-238 decays, through alpha-emission, with a half-life of 4.5 billion years, to thorium-234).

Nuclear power uses another nuclear reaction -- nuclear fission -- to generate energy. Nuclear power plants actually aren't that different from coal-burning plants: both use something giving off heat to turn water to steam which powers turbine-driven electrical generators. When a relatively large fissile ("able to undergo fission") atomic nucleus -- usually uranium-235 or plutonium-239 -- absorbs a neutron, the atom splits into two or more smaller nuclei and also releases gamma radiation and free neutrons. A portion of these neutrons may later be absorbed by other fissile atoms and create more fissions, which release more neutrons, and so on; such self-perpetuating/sustaining processes are called chain reactions. This can be controlled by using neutron absorbers (which absorb neutrons) and neutron moderators (which reduce the speed of neutrons) to change the portion of neutrons that will go on to cause more fissions; control rods are neutron absorbers, and the water in the cooling system acts as a neutron moderator.
Enriched uranium is what goes in to a nuclear reactor. Most of the uranium mined on Earth is 99.2% uranium-238 (which is not fissile) and 0.8% uranium-235 (which is fissile). Through assorted enrichment methods, this can be changed to low-enriched (reactor-grade) uranium (3-4% uranium-235); further enriching can turn it into highly-enriched (weapons-grade) uranium (90% uranium-235). The uranium-238 remaining after enrichment is depleted uranium, a very dense material (68% denser than lead) used in radiation shielding and armor-piercing bullets.
Eventually the nuclear fuel decays to the point where there is not enough to sustain a reaction. Nuclear reprocessing can recover some of the usable material, but the rest is not potent enough to be used for fissions reactions. These spent fuels and other radioactive wastes (byproduct of other applications of nuclear fission or nuclear technology such as research and medicine) must be disposed of safely, away from organisms and the environment so they can continue to decay to stable, non-radioactive elements.
Surprisingly, nuclear reactors are theorized to have formed naturally a few times in Earth's past.
Nuclear fusion is the reverse of nuclear fission, in which two or more atomic nuclei join (or fuse) together to form a single heavier nucleus. The fusion of two nuclei with lower masses than iron generally releases energy, while the fusion of nuclei heavier than iron absorbs energy, so fusion typically occurs only in lighter elements (since matter, being lazy, prefers to give up energy rather than take it in). The best-known fusion reactor we know of is the Sun, which fuses hydrogen into helium.
[The Sun actually uses fusion and fission: it fuses four atoms of hydrogen (H) into 2 deuterium (²H) atoms (and releases two positrons in doing so), then fuses two atoms of hydrogen (H) and two of deuterium (²H) into two helium-3 (³He) atoms (and releases two gamma ray photons in doing so), then splits the two helium-3 (³He) atoms into one helium-4 (⁴He) atom and two atoms of hydrogen (H).]
For fusion to happen, you must get past the energy barrier of electrostatic forces that repeal the positively charged protons from each other. Once you get the nuclei close enough, though, the strong nuclear force will keep them together. In stars, gravity does this: a gravitational instability causes a cloud of interstellar medium to become attracted to one point, growing as the mass of collected material begins exerting its own gravitational pull on its surroundings. The cloud collapses in on itself, density continues to increase, pressure and heat build, and a self-sustaining fusion reaction ignites.

Nuclear fission and nuclear fusion are also seen in nuclear weapons. Only two nuclear weapons have been used in the course of warfare; both were fission type bombs, also called atomic or A-bombs. Little Boy was a "gun-triggered" fission bomb, which propelled a slug of uranium-235 of sub-critical mass down a barrel to collide with another sub-critical slug of ²³⁵U at the other end of the tube. When they collided, they exceeded critical mass (the amount of fissile material needed to start an exponentially growing nuclear chain reaction), or became supercritical; its explosive force was roughly equal to 15,000 tons of TNT. Fat Man was an implosion-triggered fission bomb, using conventional explosives to generate shock waves that compressed a 6kg sphere of plutonium-239 into a supercritical mass; its explosive force was roughly equal to 21,000 tons of TNT.
[[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon]Fusion bombs[/url] (aka thermonuclear, hydrogen, or H-bombs) use a fission reaction as a trigger. In it, the heat from the X-rays generated by the fission bomb and the pressure of the shock wave generated by the fission bomb are both focused onto a mass of fuel, lithium-6 deuteride, which initiates a fusion reaction.]
Both weapons had many of the same effects: a massive fireball, ionizing radiation, a blinding thermal flash, thermal blast, electromagnetic pulse, a blast wave (tornado-force winds), and raging fires and lingering radiation from the material that fell to Earth. This scattered radioactive material is known as fallout. (Generating fallout is the primary primary purpose of a "dirty bomb," which uses conventional explosives to disperse radioactive material across an area.)

So just what are the (Real World) effects on living organisms being exposed to ionizing radiation? Unfortunately, there are many, all grouped under radiation sickness (or acute radiation syndrome, ARS), which has both acute (rapid onset, short duration) and chronic (long, often lifelong, duration). The best-known long-term effect is cancer: particles of ionizing radiation can damage chromosomes and even knock out portions of your DNA sequence, leading to all sorts of errors in how your cells replicate and function. Other chronic symptoms can include anemia (low red blood cell count, possibly due to damage to the red blood cell-producing mechanisms in the body), susceptibility to infections (due to decreased white blood cell count), and assorted neurological problems (due to damage to nerve cells that do not self-repair properly). Acute symptoms vary according to exposure:

• A Mild exposure, 1-2 Sv (1,000-2,000 mSv), shows no immediate effects. About a month after exposure, you may experience some nausea and vomiting for about a day, a minor headache and fever, and general fatigue and weakness (partly due to decreased white blood cell count). Chance of death is very low (0-5%), and usually only occurs if there are already some severe medical problems in place.
• A Low exposure, 2-6 Sv (2,000-6,000 mSv) also shows no immediate effects. 1-3 weeks after exposure, you may experience nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headache, slight fever, and some minor cognitive impairment, along with purpura (red-purple blotches on the skin), hemorrhaging (due to low platelet count), susceptibility to infections (due to lowered white blood cell count), and epilation (permanent hair loss).
• A Moderate exposure of 6-8 Sv (6,000-8,000 mSv) has symptoms that show within 1 week: nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, moderate headache, high fever, moderate cognitive impairment, dizziness and disorientation, hypotension (abnormally low blood pressure), and electrolyte disturbance. Without medical treatment, you will die in 2-4 weeks; with (conventional) medical treatment, you have a 50/50 chance.
• A High exposure of 8-30 Sv (8,000-30,000 mSv) causes immediate nausea, vomiting, severe diarrhea, severe headache, severe fever, incapacitation, electrolyte disturbance, and shock (inadequate blood flow to body's tissues, due to internal bleeding). Death comes in 2-14 days, even with (conventional) medical treatment.
• A Severe exposure, 30+ Sv (30,000+ mSv), has much the same effect as a high level of exposure, but death comes in 1-2 days.

Treatment methods includes the use of antibiotics, blood products, colony stimulating factors (glycoproteins which bind to receptor proteins on the surfaces of hemopoietic stem cells and thereby activate intracellular signaling pathways which can cause the cells to proliferate and differentiate into a specific kind of blood cell), and stem cell transplant.

So what does all this mean for an Marvel Super Heroes game? The penetrating power of radiation may allow your blasts to penetrate armor and other barrier, though you'll still need some way to accurately sense the target on the other side of the barrier! Radiation is also difficult to treat, so Health points lost from radiation attacks may take longer to restore. Real World Radiation is invisible, but Comic Book Radiation tends to have a sickly green glow, though it is worth noting that underwater nuclear reactors glow blue (due to Chernokov radiation)!

Related Abilities

• Electrical Control: β− decay reactions generate electrons, and electrons = electricity.
• Electromagnetic Control: Other types of radioactive decay give of gamma rays, which are high energy photons. Being able to alter the frequency & wavelength of gamma rays and x-rays would allow you to generate other forms of electromagnetic energy.

Radiation and Other Descriptors
Radiation has no special interaction with other descriptors.

---

OFFENSIVE/ATTACK EFFECT/POWERS

Deadly Radiation: You can project a blast of radiation that's so intense it can kill living beings instantly through cellular disruption and decay. It has no effect on non-living material.

• You can do power rank Energy damage to a target at power rank range, though only to living beings. However, this attack ignores Body Armor and Force Fields, and possibly some forms of Body Resistance. True Invulnerability protects as normal.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Radiation Control/Generation rank -2 CS.

Variant: Sickening Deadly Radiation: Your attack also causes the target to become sick and weak.

• As Deadly Radiaton, above, plus targets hit must make an Endurance FEAT or lost one rank of Endurance.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Radiation Control/Generation rank -6 CS.

Electromagnetic Pulse: By initiating a β− decay reaction, you generate a burst or stream of electrons that wreck havoc with electronics.

• Treat as Nullifying Power, affecting an area of power rank size centered on the user, affecting only electronic devices.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Radiation Control/Generation rank.

Gamma Blast: You can project a powerful blast of deadly gamma rays.

• Treat as the Disintegration power (MCo3 from UPB).
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Radiation Control/Generation rank -6 CS.

Radiation Accident: You can project a blast of radiation that can mutate a target, changing their mutation-derived powers. You have no control over what their powers will change to, and their body's self-repair mechanisms will eventually reverse the change, but it can be a great too for sowing chaos and confusion!
Targets must make an Endurance FEAT or have their powers changed, determined by the Judge. The user of this ability can control activation of power, but has no control over the result.
Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Radiation Control/Generation rank -4 CS.[/list]

Radiation Blast: You can fire a bolt of radiation so intense that it can inflict serious physical injury, and even propel a target backwards.

• You can do power rank Energy damage to a target at power rank range.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Radiation Control/Generation rank.

Radiation Field: An area of intense radiation surrounds your body. Anyone who comes close to you or touches you, or whom you grapple, suffers radiation burns and the like.

• When this power is active, you do power rank Energy damage to anyone you touch, and to anyone who touches you, whether you are aware of them or not. However, this power automatically shuts off if you are unconscious.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Radiation Control/Generation rank -4 CS.

Radiation Sickness: You can project a blast of withering radiation that makes living beings sicken.

• Targets hit by this attack must make an Endurance FEAT or lose a rank of Edurance. This lost rank returns 24 hours later.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Radiation Control/Generation rank.

Variant: Prolonged Radiation Sickness: It can take a long time for a target to shake off the effects of your radiation.

• As Radiation Sickness, above, but 24 hours later the target must make another Endurance FEAT (using their reduced Endurance, if still affected) or lose another rank, and again 24 hours after that, and again 24 hours after that, and so on, until they either make the FEAT check or reach Sh0 Endurance and die.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Radiation Control/Generation rank -4 CS.

Variant: Sickness Field: You can create a field of sickening radiation.

• As Radiation Sickness, above, but affecting all targets in the area.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Radiation Control/Generation rank -2 CS.

DEFENSIVE EFFECT/POWERS

Radiation Feeding: Radiation alone sustains your body, removing the need for food.

• You are immune to starvation and thirst.

Radiation Resistance: Your powers make him naturally immune to the effects of ordinary radiation.

• This is the Resistance to Radiation power.

Variant: Radiation Bastion: You can absorb the harmful effects of radiation into yourself, shielding your allies.

• You can expand you Resistance to Radiation so that covers an area equal to the "tens" place of the rank number. For example, a character with a rank of Amazing/50 may cover five areas. For every area covered beyond the first, the strength of the resistance is reduced by one rank, so that a force field encompassing five areas would reduce the effects by -4CS (in this example, offering Gd/10 resistance to all in those areas).

Radiation Shield: You can create a screen of protective radiation around yourself.

• This is the Force Field power.

Radiation Sponge: You can absorb radiation, using it to increase your own power and resilience. Typically you absorb the power from other metahumans' radiation attacks, but you can also absorb from things like radioactive materials (but not simple background radiation) if necessary.

• You can absorb ionizing radiation, up to power rank, and convert it to Health. This is an unconscious reaction, so it is effective against any form of ionizing radiation that contacts your body, be it lump of cesium that you hold tight in your fist, or a fallout cloud that passes by you while you're asleep.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Radiation Control rank -6 CS.

MOVEMENT EFFECT/POWERS

Electromagnetic Flight: By either transforming your body into radiation, or sheathing it in a field of radiation that heats the air to provide lift and propulsion, you can soar through the air!

• This is the Flight power, allowing you to move through the air at power rank air speeds.

Lightspeed Travel: You transform our body into cosmic rays, and can move at the speed of light! But only when in the vacuum of space, not in a planetary atmosphere.

• You can travel at near light speed. Effectively this means travel within a solar system in minutes. Travel to other stars will take years (or centuries!).

Quantum Tunneling: You transform you body to pure radiation, nigh-instantaneously travel to any location and through any barrier, and then rematerialize.

• You move instantaneously from point to point without physically crossing the distance between, as per the Teleportation power.

SENSORY EFFECT/POWERS

Human Geiger Counter: You can perceive and analyze radiation (not all types of energy, or even all types of electromagnetic radiation, but the sort of hard radiation that geiger counters detect).

• You can sense radiation at power rank range with power rank ability.

MISCELLANEOUS EFFECT/POWERS

Nuclear Transmutation: Though manipulation of ionizing radiation, you can convert one chemical element or isotope into another.

• This is the Molecular Conversion power (MCo6 from UPB).
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Radiation Control rank -6 CS.

Side note: the city of heroes had a radiation buff/debuff set for defenders and controllers that included a healing radiation. I wonder the science of how that would work.

By instilling a healthy glow.

8^D

SCIENCE!: Sonic Powers
Comics Examples: Accomplished Perfect Physician, Angar the Screamer/Scream, Banshee, Black Bolt, Black Canary, The Doctor (Sonic Screwdriver), Doctor Bong, Fiddler, Klaw, (Pied) Piper, Screaming Mimi/Songbird, Shriek, Siryn, Sonar, Tyroc, Virtuoso
Tropes: Make Me Wanna Shout

Quote
Wikipedia says
Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.

Captain Jack Harkness: Okay, this can function as a sonic blaster, a sonic cannon, and a triple and full sonic disruptor. Doc, what you got?
The (9th) Doctor: I've got a sonic... errr, never mind.
Captain Jack Harkness: What?
The Doctor: It's sonic, okay, let's leave it at that.
Captain Jack Harkness: Disruptor? Cannon? What?
The Doctor: It's sonic, totally sonic, I am soniced up!
Captain Jack Harkness: A sonic what?
The Doctor: Screwdriver!
Captain Jack Harkness: Who has a sonic screwdriver?
The Doctor: I do!
Captain Jack Harkness: Who looks at a screwdriver and thinks "Oooh, this could be a little more sonic"?
The Doctor: What? You never been bored? Never had a long night? Never had a lot of cabinets to put up?
from Doctor Who series 01:ep.10, "The Doctor Dances"

Generally speaking, sound falls into three categories: sound that's audible to the human ear; ultrasound (frequencies too high for the human ear to hear unaided); and infrasound (frequencies too low for the human ear to hear unaided). The upper limit of the human ear is about 20,000 Hertz (20 kiloHertz); the lower limit about 20 Hertz. These limits exist because the middle ear serves as a filter; if sound contacts the skull bone and cochlea without having to pass through the middle ear, a human can hear frequencies up to about 50 kHz. Younger people can often hear sounds of higher frequency than older people, since the ability to hear deteriorates with age; some businesses have reportedly used ultrasonic devices to discourage teenagers from lingering in the area, since they can hear -- and be discomforted by -- the ultrasonic sound but older customers cannot. Many animals (such as dogs, bats, dolphins, various rodents, and some insects) can hear higher frequencies than humans.

Loudness (Volume)
Sound is rated in deciBels ( dB ). (Technically, deciBels are used to measure the effective sound pressure, the local pressure deviation from the ambient average atmospheric pressure caused by a sound wave.) It becomes painful to humans in the 120-130 dB range, and sustained exposure to sound as low as 90-95 deciBels can cause hearing loss. The deciBel scale is logarithmic: for every 10 dB, the energy involved goes up by a factor of 10. This sounds simple, but increases exponentially fast: a sound of 140dB is ten times as powerful as a sound of 130db, but a hundred times more powerful than a sound of 120dB, 100,000 times more powerful than a sound of 90dB, and 1,000,000,000 times more powerful than a sound of 50dB.

The accompanying Decibel Table has a list of some common sources of noise rated in their average deciBels, for purposes of comparison.

0 dB
Faintest possible perceptible sound

10 dB
Quiet recording studio

20-30 dB
Quiet living room or office

40 dB
Quiet conversation

50 dB
Average living room or office

60 dB
Average conversational speech

70 dB
Normal piano music, a small orchestra

80 dB
Typical home stereo listening level; a busy street; telephone dial tone

90 dB
Heavy truck traffic; train whistle 500 feet away.
Prolonged exposure can cause hearing loss

100 dB
A subway; most musical instruments are in the 85-115 dB range

110 dB
Typical power tools; lawnmower

120 dB
Amplifier at full volume; planes on an airport runway; a cymbal crash; a jackhammer.
At this level, sound becomes physically painful.

130 dB
Threshold of pain for humans; pneumatic riveter

140 dB
Loud rock concert.
Short term exposure can cause hearing loss due to eardrum rupture.

150 dB
Drums or trumpets played at full volume 5-6 inches away

160 dB
A jet engine (close up)

165 dB
Air begins to heat up due to compression

180 dB
Hearing tissue is killed

194 dB
Loudest non-distorted sound possible; above this, sound waves act like shock waves

200 dB
Epicenter of a 1.0 earthquake.
This level of sound can kill a human.

212 dB
Sonic boom from jet

220 dB
Saturn V Rocket launch

230 dB
Epicenter of a 4.0 earthquake

240 dB
F5 tornado

250 dB
Thunderclap

257 dB
A 1 megaton nuclear bomb

286 dB
Mount St. Helens 1980 explosion

302 dB
Tunguska event (estimated)

Ultrasound
Ultrasound (or ultrasonics; sound that is higher in frequency than 20 kHz) is used for a wide variety of applications. Ultrasound sensors can reveal a wide range of medical problems without the need for invasive surgery, and can help track the progress of pregnancies. Sonar uses some ultrasound, which allows for very precise close-up measurements of range but doesn't work as well as audible sound over long distances. Ultrasonics can clean jewelry, lenses, and the like, be used to find flaws in industrial materials, help to speed up or initiate certain chemical processes, humidify the air and administer inhaled medications (via nebulization), and can disintegrate cells and bacteria (for example, ultrasound is sometimes used to sterilize sewage). Though standard humans can't hear it, ultrasound can still affect the mind: the "hypersonic effect".

Infrasound
Infrasound (or infrasonics; sound that is lower in frequency than 20 Hz) also has many uses. Seismometers/seismographs use this range of sound to detect earthquakes. (Infrasound can also result naturally from volcanoes, meteors, tornadoes, waves, and avalanches.) Because nuclear and chemical explosions can generate infrasound, agencies who monitor for such things use infrasonic detection devices.
Many animals have the ability to perceive infrasound on some level. Because they can sense the advancing infrasonic wave from an impending disaster (like an earthquake or tidal wave), they know to flee the area long before humans are aware of any problem. Some animals (including whales, giraffes, elephants, rhinoceri, alligators, and hippopotami) use infrasound to communicate -- infrasound can cover long distances and travel around obstacles with relatively little dissipation.
Experiments have shown that exposure to infrasound can induce feeling of anxiety, uneasiness, extreme sorrow, nervous feelings of revulsion or fear, as well as chills down the spine and feelings of pressure on the chest. (Some older reports go so far as to claim infrasound can induce nausea and vomiting -- the "Brown Note" -- though modern experts question this, primarily because air is a poor conductor of low-frequency sound.) Some scientists suggest that ambient infrasound may explain some hauntings or similar "supernatural" phenomena -- in addition to the feelings mention previously, infrasonic sounds at the proper frequency (around 18-19 Hz) can cause the human eyeball to resonate, generating visual distortions (such as seeing indistinct blobs out of the corner of one's eye).

Sonic Weapons
Researchers have experimented with the use of sound as a weapon. The most blatant and crude sonic weapons simply use intensely loud audible sound to rupture victims' eardrums, cause pain, or possibly induce vertigo, but many more sophisticated or less obvious uses might be possible:

• infrasonic shock waves can knock people over and injure them
• infrasonic sound can cause feelings of mild nervousness and discomfort (and possibly nausea) in groups, making it easy to disperse crowds nonviolently
• high-decibel ultrasound can cause headaches, feelings of nausea, confusion, vertigo, and similar symptoms with no visible cause
• infrasound in sufficient volume can shake buildings and, in some cases, rupture internal organs
• infrasound can vibrate the eyeballs, causing distortion of vision

Some sonic weapons are designed for direct, offensive use, while others are more passive/defensive. For example, a "sonic barrier" might keep people out of secured areas by making them feel sick and dizzy when they try to cross it. Some sonic weapons can even penetrate buildings to affect the occupants.

Sound requires a medium to propagate through -- typically air or water, but it could be a solid substance, an acid, or the like. Thus, in the vacuum of space, Sonic powers generally don't work. This could be represented with the Power Limitation "Does Not Work In A Vacuum" (which is really a shorthand way of saying "doesn't work in any situation where there's no medium for sound waves to propagate through"). However, since most Marvel Super Heroes adventures are on Earth, in urban areas, characters are rarely exposed to vacuum or similar situations, so whether that's actually an effective Limitation is up to the Judge.

The speed of sound depends on the medium the waves pass through, and is a fundamental property of the material. In general, the speed of sound is proportional to the square root of the ratio of the stiffness of the medium to its density. Those physical properties and the speed of sound change with ambient conditions. For example, the speed of sound in gases depends on temperature. In 20 ^oC (68 ^oF) air at the sea level, the speed of sound is approximately 343 m/s (1,230 km/h, or 767 mph). In fresh water, also at 20 ^oC, the speed of sound is approximately 1,482 m/s (5,335 km/h, or 3,315 mph). In steel, the speed of sound is about 5,960 m/s (21,460 km/h, or 13,330 mph).
Related to this is Mach number, the speed of an object moving through air (or any other fluid substance) divided by the speed of sound as it is in that substance for its particular physical conditions (including those of temperature and pressure). Subsonic speeds are anything below Mach 1.0, Mach 1 is sonic, and Mach 0.8-1.2 is called transonic. Mach 1.2-5 is supersonic, and Mach 5-10 is hypersonic; anything above Mach 10 is high-hypersonic. Most modern fighter aircraft are supersonic, but there have been supersonic passenger aircraft; most modern firearm bullets are supersonic, with rifle projectiles often travelling at speeds approaching and in some cases largely exceeding Mach 3.

A sonic boom is the sound associated with the shock waves created by the supersonic flight of an aircraft. Sonic booms generate enormous amounts of sound energy, sounding much like an explosion. (The crack of a bullet passing overhead at supersonic speeds is an example of a sonic boom in miniature, as is the crack of a bullwhip.) When an object passes through the air, it creates a series of pressure waves in front of it and behind it, similar to the bow and stern waves created by a boat in water. These waves travel at the speed of sound, and as the speed of the object increases, the waves are forced together/compressed, eventually merging into a single shock wave at the speed of sound. In smooth flight, the shock wave starts at the nose of the aircraft and ends at the tail; because directions around the aircraft's direction of travel are equivalent, the shock forms a Mach cone behind the craft, with the aircraft at its tip. There is a rise in pressure at the nose, decreasing steadily to a negative pressure at the tail, followed by a sudden return to normal pressure after the object passes; this "overpressure profile" is known as an N-wave because of its shape. The "boom" is experienced when there is a sudden change in pressure, so the N-wave causes two booms, one when the initial pressure rise from the nose hits, and another when the tail passes and the pressure suddenly returns to normal, leading to a distinctive "double boom" from supersonic aircraft. An observer hears the boom when the shock wave, on the edges of the cone, crosses their location. Since the boom is being generated continually as long as the aircraft is supersonic, it fills out a narrow path on the ground following the aircraft's flight path, like an unrolling red carpet, and hence known as the "boom carpet."

An acoustic shadow is an area through which sound waves fail to propagate, due to topographical obstructions absorbing the sound or disruption or refraction of the waves via warm or rapidly moving layers/pockets of air; it is to sound what a mirage is to light. For example, at the Battle of Iuka, a northerly wind prevented General Ulysses S. Grant from hearing the sounds of battle (a mere six miles away) and so he kept his two divisions of Union soldiers out of the battle. Many other instances of acoustic shadowing were prevalent during the American Civil War, including the Battles of Seven Pines, Gaines' Mill, Perryville and Five Forks; persons nearby would see the smoke and flashes of light but not the corresponding roar of battle, while those in more distant locations would hear the sounds distinctly yet see nothing.

Related Abilities

• Electromagnetic/Light: Sonoluminescence is the emission of short bursts of light from imploding bubbles in a liquid when excited by sound; the mechanism of this phenomenon is not entirely understood. And photoacoustics is a process whereby absorbs light or other electromagnetic radiation and generates sound; in a world of Comic Book Super-Science, the reverse may be possible. In the proper environment, a Sonic Generator could generate light.
• Thermal: Thermoacoustics, a relatively new field of science and engineering, is about the interaction between thermodynamic and acoustic phenomena. (Per the Ideal Gas Law, a change in pressure or volume will cause a change in the temperature of a gas, and vice versa.) Thermoacoustic engines (sometimes called "TA engines") are thermoacoustic devices which use high-amplitude sound waves to pump heat from one place to another, or conversely use a heat difference to induce high-amplitude sound waves; a certain ice cream manufacturer has invested heavily into thermoacoustic coolers as they have fewer moving parts and do not use toxic refrigerant chemicals.
• Vibration: Since sonics involve vibrations, it's possible that a Sonic attack could be particularly "harmonious" (or disharmonious) with a Vibration defense, making it more (or less) effective; the same could apply in reverse.

Sonic and Other Descriptors

• Chemical: Sonocatalysis is the process of using sound waves to speed up or initiate certain chemical processes, so Sonic Control/Generation could be able to counter some Chemical powers.
• Silence: Normal silence is the condition of a very small amount or even an absence of audible sound; deafness is the condition of having little to no ability to perceive audible sounds. However, that doesn't mean deafness stops all powers with a Sonic descriptor; just because a person cannot perceive standard sounds doesn't make them immune to all Sonic-based powers. Similarly, just putting something sound-muffling -- headphones, earmuffs, plugging ears with wax or cotton, or so on -- does not automatically stop a Sonic power. If a Sonic attack has physical effects and can cause actual injury, it's not going to be stopped just because ordinary sound can't pass through some obstacle; damaging Sound is a far cry from normal sound. On the other hand, just because a defense is transparent to sound doesn't mean it offers no protection against Sonic attacks. Most Force Fields are not sound-muffling, but they still stop Sonic Damage attacks.
• Water: Sonic powers are particularly effective underwater; water conducts sound well (in fact, sound travels about 4.5 times faster in water than in air), so Sonic powers become more effective beneath the waves.

---

OFFENSIVE/ATTACK EFFECT/POWERS

Feedback: You can generate feedback, distortion, and opposing harmonics that distort, cancel out, and ruin other sounds. The effect is often temporary -- especially if whoever or whatever generated the opposing effect can easily create another sound -- but you can use this ability defensively to block (i.e., counter) incoming attacks if you time it right.

• Treat as Nullifying Power, affecting only sonic powers.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Sonic Control/Generation rank.

Infrasonic Dread/Psychoacoustics: You can generate infrasonic waves that can cause intense feelings of fear, anxiety, dread, unease, revulsion, sorrow, and nervousness.

• This is the Emotion Control power.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Sonic Control/Generation rank.

Paralyzing Roar: You can mimic the infrasonic roar of a tiger to paralyze your foes.

• Targets in your area must make an Endurance FEAT via this power's rank of be completely paralyzed for 1d10 rounds.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Sonic Control/Generation rank -2 CS.

Quiet Zone: Your control of sound allows you to cancel out all sound within a certain radius. In that area, no one can speak, play music, or otherwise generate sound, nor can they hear sounds created outside the area.

• You can create an area, of power rank size, at power rank range, that is completely silent to normal sounds; characters can't hear into, out of, or through it. You can hear sounds from within or without the zone, and with a power FEAT check, you can share the 'immunity' with others. This does not block Sonic attacks, though it will block echolocation and sonar.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Sonic Control/Generation rank.

Shriek: You can project a beam of sound so loud that it temporarily deafens whomever it hits.

• The target struck by this effect must make an Endurance FEAT or be deafened. They may make an additional Endurance FEAT each round thereafter, with a cumulative +1 CS bonus, to shake off the effect.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Sonic Control/Generation rank.

Variant: Deafening the Crowd: Your shriek can deafen multiple people.

• You can expand your Shriek so that covers an area equal to the "tens" place of the rank number. For example, a character with a rank of Amazing/50 may cover five areas. For every area covered beyond the first, the strength of the Shriek is reduced by one rank, so that a Shriek encompassing five areas would reduce the effects by -4CS (in this example, acting as a Gd/10 deafening attack). These areas must either be in a circle around you, or a cone in front of you.

Siren Song: You can create sounds so haunting, they are hypnotic. You deliver your orders to the victim by words in the sounds, i.e., by singing.

• This is the Mind Control power, targeting one person at a time, who must be able to hear your voice.

Variant: The Music Meister: Anyone in earshot can be swayed by your words.

• As Siren Song, above, but able to affect multiple targets in an area, though at -2 CS.

Solid Sound: You have the ability to create constructs out of soundwaves so densely packed that they're effectively solid. If you create chains or a wall of sound, it can stop people from moving; if you creates a sound-tiger, it can hurt people with its sound-claws. The only restriction on the power is that you cannot create sound-constructs in areas where sound cannot propagate (such as vacuums), or have them move through such areas.

• You can create immobile objects of with an effective material strength equal to this power's rank; the objects are affected by gravity but otherwise can only be moved is someone picks it up or shoves it. You can trap a target inside a large enough hollow object (a cage or bubble, for example); the target gets an Agility FEAT to avoid being trapped, and a trapped character can break out of the construct normally. You can drop a hard light construct on a target -- or several in an area, if you can make one large enough! The construct inflicts damage equal to its rank, and targets get an Agility FEAT to evade the falling object; success results in no damage. If a construct needs to support weight -- created as a bridge or support a weakened structure, for example -- treat the object’s effective Strength as being equal to its power rank.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Sonic Control/Generation rank.
• Alternately, you can create mobile objects of with an effective material strength equal to this power's rank, which you can move and manipulate as if you had telekinesis, and/or creatures with Fighting and Agility scores equal to your own and Strength and Endurance scores equal to this power's rank.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Sonic Control/Generation rank -2 CS.

Sonic Blast: You can project a beam of focused sound capable of inflicting serious damage.

• You can do power rank Force damage at power rank range.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Sonic Control/Generation rank.

Variant: Deafening Blast: You blast not only inflicts damage, it temporarily deafens the target.

• As Sonic Blast, above, plus the deafening Shriek attack.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Sonic Control/Generation rank -2 CS.

Variant: Shattering Blast: Your power works especially well against rigid, nonliving matter, such as glass, walls, and metal armor (as worn by people or as makes up the skin of robots).

• Treat as the Disintegration power (MCo3 from UPB), but only against rigid objects and robots.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Sonic Control/Generation rank -4 CS.

Variant: Sonic Bomb/Cone: Your Sonic Blast affects multiple people, either in a spherical area around you, or a cone-shaped area immediately in front of you.

• You can expand your Sonic Blast so that covers an area equal to the "tens" place of the rank number. For example, a character with a rank of Amazing/50 may cover five areas. For every area covered beyond the first, the strength of the Sonic Blast is reduced by one rank, so that a Sonic Blast encompassing five areas would reduce the effects by -4CS (in this example, acting as a Gd/10 Force attack). These areas must either be in a circle around you, or a cone in front of you.

Variant: Vertigo Blast: You blast not only inflicts damage, it temporarily dizzies the target.

• As Sonic Blast, above, plus the nauseating Sonic Discomfiture attack, below.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Sonic Control/Generation rank -6 CS.

Sonic Discomfiture: You emit a combination of sound that induces feelings of nausea and sickness. After sufficient exposure, targets may vomit, lose control of their bowels, or suffer similarly unpleasant physical effects.

• Targets struck by this effect must make an Endurance FEAT vs. this power's intensity. If they fail the Endurance FEAT by one color (needed red but got yellow, needed yellow but got green), they are sickened, at -2 CS on all FEATS; they may make an additional Endurance FEAT every 1d10 rounds thereafter, with a cumulative +1 CS bonus, to shake off the effect. If they failed the Endurance FEAT by two colors (needed red but got green, needed yellow but got white), they are nauseated, unable to do anything except move; they may make an additional Endurance FEAT every 1d10 rounds thereafter, with a cumulative +1 CS bonus, to shake off this condition, at which point they are sickened, and then further such checks to shake that off. If they failed the Endurance FEAT by three colors (needed red but got white), they are helpless, unable to take any actions and at -6 CS Fighting to avoid melee attacks and -4 CS Agility to avoid ranged attacks; they may make an additional Endurance FEAT every 1d10 rounds thereafter, with a cumulative +1 CS bonus, to shake off this condition, at which point they are nauseated, and then further such checks to shake that off to become sickened, then further such checks to shake that off.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Sonic Control/Generation rank -2 CS.

Sound Manipulation: You can create fictitious sounds -- a conversation taking place where there's no one, footfalls approaching from behind, or whatever else you want. Since this power has range, it allows you to become a superb "ventriloquist" -- you can generate any kind of sound you want at a distance without moving your lips at all.

• You can generate power rank intensity sounds (power rank number = maximum deciBels you can create) at up to power rank range away.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Sonic Control/Generation rank.

Stunning Sound: You can project a beam of focused sound that does not damage, but rather causes dizziness, disorientation, and even unconsciousness.

• This is the Stunning attack version of the Stunning Missile power.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Sonic Control/Generation rank -2 CS.

DEFENSIVE EFFECT/POWERS

Body of Sound: You can convert your body to pure sound so that you can pass through any physical object that's not soundproof.

• This is the Phasing power. You are still affected by sonic & vibratory attacks/effects in this form.

Silent Self: You use you control over sound to make you movements absolutely silent. However, you can only negate sounds in the normal auditory range -- infrasonic and ultrasonic sensors can still detect you.

• This power is to audible sound what the Invisibility power is to visible light.

Variant: Silent Self, Improved: You can cancel out those pesky infrasonic and ultrasonic sounds, too.

• With this power stunt, you are concealed to all auditory frequencies.

Sonic Resistance: Thanks to your control over sound, you reflexively negates most of the effect from any sonic attack made against you.

• This is the Resistance to Sonics power.

Sonic Screen: You can create a screen or shield of intensely-focused sound waves to protect your body. The compact sound waves disrupt energy attacks, and either disintegrate or deflect physical attacks.

• This is the Force Field power.

MOVEMENT EFFECT/POWERS

Riding the Soundwaves: You can use focused sound waves to propel yourself through the air, either by generating 'sonic construct' wings or a platforms, or by simple sonic levitation.

• This is the Flight power, allowing you to move through the air at power rank air speeds.

Soundwave Travel: You can transform yourself into pure sound and travel near-instantaneously to a location. You cannot travel to or through areas where soundwaves cannot propagate, such as vacuums.

• You move instantaneously from point to point without physically crossing the distance between, as per the Teleportation power, with the limitation mentioned above.

SENSORY EFFECT/POWERS

Augmented Hearing: Your control over sound allows you to enhance his ability to hear. You may have one, some, or all of the abilities listed below.

• Combat Hearing: Enhanced Senses (Take no combat penalties for being blind, can use hearing to accurately target foes as well as vision)
• Parabolic Hearing: Enhanced Senses (Telescopic Hearing; reduce penalties to hearing-based checks due to distance by half)
• Ultrasonic Hearing You can hear ultrasonic frequencies.

Diagnostic Sonography: Like a medical ultrasound, you can see inside people by generating an ultrasonic tone, and interpreting the echoes as visual images. There are limits -- you have difficulty seeing through bones, pockets of gas (as in the lungs or intestines), and large amounts of fatty tissue, and you must be touching the patient because air between you & them can disrupt the scan -- but the technique is far safer than that freak with the x-ray-emitting, cancer-causing eyes!

• This is the Penetration Vision power (DT12 from UPB), limited as described above.

Echolocation: Like bats, dolphins, whales, and certain shrews and cave-dwelling birds, you can send an ultrasonic call out to the environment and listen to the echoes of those calls that return from various objects in the environment, which you can use to locate, range, and identify the objects.

• This is a combination of the Combat Hearing and Ultrasonic Hearing powers, listed above. The Combat Hearing aspect relies on ultrasonics, not audible sounds, so effects which silence ultrasonics but not audible sonics will negate this.

Far Hearing: You can "bend" sound waves, causing sounds too distant for you to hear to reach your ears.

• This is the Clairaudience power (M1 from UPB).

Secret Speech: You can broadcast messages in infrasonic or ultrasonic tones (choose one when you take the power), inaudible to humans but detectable by certain animals, sensors, and enhanced senses.

• You can communicate with others at range using infrasonic or ultrasonic beams.

MISCELLANEOUS EFFECT/POWERS

Sonic Fire Extinguisher: The good people at DARPA have figured out a way to extinguish fires with sound waves -- using an acoustic field to shake the fuel, thus disrupting its surface, and using sound waves to increase the speed of the air in the area, thus thinning it out and disrupting combustion -- and so can you!

• This is the Nullifier Missile power, affecting fire powers and effects.
  Power rank for this stunt is generally equivalent to that of your Sonic Control/Generation rank.

SCIENCE!: Time Powers
Comics Examples: The Doctor (and other Time Lords), Epoch the Lord of Time, Hiro Nakamura, Immortus, Hourman (Android), Kang the Conqueror, Tempo, Waverider, Zoom
Tropes: Time Travel and Time Travel Tropes

Quote
Wikipedia says
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects. The temporal position of events with respect to the transitory present is continually changing; future events become present, then pass further and further into the past. Time has been a major subject of religion, philosophy, and science, but defining it in a non-controversial manner applicable to all fields of study has consistently eluded the greatest scholars. A simple definition states that "time is what clocks measure".
Time is one of the seven fundamental physical quantities in the International System of Units. Time is used to define other quantities -- such as velocity -- so defining time in terms of such quantities would result in circularity of definition. An operational definition of time, wherein one says that observing a certain number of repetitions of one or another standard cyclical event (such as the passage of a free-swinging pendulum) constitutes one standard unit (such as the second), is highly useful in the conduct of both advanced experiments and everyday affairs of life. The operational definition leaves aside the question whether there is something called time (apart from the counting activity just mentioned) that flows and that can be measured. Investigations of a single continuum called spacetime bring questions about space into questions about time, questions that have their roots in the works of early students of natural philosophy.
The international unit of time, the second, was defined as 1/86,400th of a day (one solar day divided into 24 hours, each divided into 60 minutes, each divided into 60 seconds; 1 / [24x60x60]). Since 1967, it has been defined as "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 (¹³³Cs) atom at rest at a temperature of 0 K."
Temporal measurement has occupied scientists and technologists, and was a prime motivation in navigation and astronomy. Periodic events and periodic motion have long served as standards for units of time; examples include the apparent motion of the sun across the sky, the phases of the moon, the swing of a pendulum, and the beat of a heart. Time is also of significant social importance, having economic value ("time is money") as well as personal value (due to an awareness of the limited time in each day and in human life spans).

"Time... is what keeps everything from happening at once."
- Ray Cummings, later repeated by C. J. Overbeck and John Archibald Wheeler.

"Time is the fire in which we burn."
-Tolian Soran (quoting Delmore Schwartz), in Star Trek: Generations

"Time begins and then Time ends
and then Time begins once again.
It is happening now,
it has happened before,
it will surely happen again."
- Time Prophet, from LEXX s.02:ep.18, "Brigadoom"

Einstein: Time.
[Crichton looks confused]
Einstein: Time.
John Crichton: 's up.
Einstein: Time.
Crichton: Flies.
[Einstein begins walking towards Crichton]
Einstein: Time.
Crichton: Bandits.
Einstein: Time.
Crichton: Wounds all heals.
Einstein: Time.
Crichton: [sings] Rosemary and...
Einstein: Time.
Crichton: Stop!
[Crichton shoots Einstein with his pulse pistol, but the energy bolt stops in midair.]
Einstein: Time.
[Einstein turns, walks away]
Crichton: You either stop pointing guns at people are get a bigger gun.
Einstein: Time is.
Crichton: Infinite... Relative.
[Einstein turns back to Crichton]
Einstein: You are quite a simple organism to possess the knowledge you do.
Crichton: You only say that because you don't know me.
Einstein: Time is meaningless and yet it is all that exists.
-from Farscape s.04:ep.11, "Unrealized Reality"

"People don't understand time. It's not what you think it is. People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect... but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly... timey-wimey... stuff."
- The (Tenth) Doctor, Doctor Who, series.03:ep.10, "Blink"

"All this has happened before, and it will happen again... again... again... again... again... again... again... again... again..."
-The first Hybrid, Battlestar Galactica (2003) episode/movie "Razor"

Virtual Six: All of this has happened before.
Virtual Baltar: But the question remains, does all of this have to happen again?
Virtual Six: This time I bet no.
Virtual Baltar: [stops] You know, I've never known you to play the optimist. Why the change of heart?
Virtual Six: Mathematics. Law of averages. Let a complex system repeat itself long enough and eventually something surprising might occur.
- From Battlestar Galactica (2003) s.04:ep.22, "Daybreak, Part 2"

As with gravity, modeling Time in game terms can prove tricky due to the fundamental and absolute nature of time as a force. If they affect a character, they do so to an extreme degree -- either normal time applies to him, or it doesn't.

Two contrasting viewpoints on time divide many prominent philosophers. One view is that time is part of the fundamental structure of the universe, a dimension in which events occur in sequence. Sir Isaac Newton subscribed to this realist view, and hence it is sometimes referred to as Newtonian time. Time travel, in this view, becomes a possibility as other "times" persist like frames of a film strip, spread out across the time line advancing from the past to the future.
The opposing view is that time does not refer to any kind of "container" that events and objects "move through", nor to any entity that "flows", but that it is instead part of a fundamental intellectual structure (together with "space" and "number") within which humans sequence and compare events. This second view, in the tradition of Gottfried Leibniz and Immanuel Kant, holds that time is neither an event nor a thing, and thus is not itself measurable nor can it be traveled.
But where's the fun in that?

Time Travel

"I warned you that time travel is for immortals and fools. I'm the only immortal hereabouts. You do the math."
- Professor Paradox to Gwen Tennyson, after she tried (and botched) an attempt to go to the past to set right what once went wrong, in Ben 10: Alien Force s.03:ep.15, "Time Heals"

The theories behind time travel vary on the flexibility of the past. There are three major theories, two of which stress the immutability of the timestream.

• The first theory -- Predestination Paradox or Causality Loop -- states that all events are fixed; if you travel into the past, you are destined to perform those actions or some unknown force either prevents or negates your actions. For example, Doktor Archeville creates a time machine and goes back in time, winding up in the distant past, and saves a village from being overrun by Deep Ones. He sees one injured man and tries to save him, infusing him with Deep One biological material. This man is his ancestor, and the infusion infused of pseudonatural traits is leads to his descendant -- Viktor -- being inhumanly smart enough to invent a time travel machine. (See also the Futurama episode "Roswell That Ends Well," or any episode of Quantum Leap.)
• The second theory -- Many Worlds Interpretation -- states that the traveler actually travels to an alternate timeline that closely resembles the desired segment of the past. By changing this timeline, the hero cuts himself loose from his original timeline and creates a new one. For example, a hero from one of the Earths where the Nazis won WW II (like Earth-597) goes back in time in an attempt to stop them, and does so with the aid of many costumed heroes from that era. But when he returns to his present, he finds nothing has changed. He realizes he did not travel to his world's past, he had traveled to the past of another Earth (such as Earth-616), but takes some comfort knowing he saved one world from Nazi domination.
• The third theory -- 'Flexible Time' -- states that there is only one timestream, but it can be completely changed at any point when a traveler from the future alters a part of the past. Villains and well-meaning but misguided types tend to believe the third theory, though most multiverses (generally) follow the first and second theories.

Judges are fully entitled to mangle the plans of any characters who intend to alter the timestream. After all, the players are going to create a lot of paperwork for the Judges if they succeed!

Related Abilities

• Cold/Ice Powers: Slowing down molecular and atomic motion can allow chronomanipulator to mimic the effects of various cold/ice powers. Similarly...
• Fire/Heat Powers: ... speeding up molecular and atomic motion can be used to mimic some fire/heat powers.
• Precognitive Powers: Various precogntive abilities can be done with Time Control.
• Speedster Powers: As Hunter "Zoom" Zolomon has shown, many of the abilities of a classic Speedster can be done with Time Control.

Time and Other Descriptors

• Chaos/Entropy: It's said that in the long term, Chaos/Entropy wins out over everything and devours all; all things decay and dissolve. But Time defenses tend to involve very long periods of time, or manipulation of time in ways that thwart Chaos. Chaos/Entropy attacks may be less effective against Time defenses; indeed, Time defenses may be the only defense against certain Chaos/Entropy attacks.
• Gravity: Since Gravity can distort spacetime, the intense gravitic fluctuations caused by Gravity powers may weaken Time attacks and defenses.

---

OFFENSIVE/ATTACK EFFECT/POWERS

Age Manipulation: You can advance a person backward or forward through time, making them into a younger or older version of themselves. This may cause related changes as well; for example, a Mutant whose powers manifested during puberty loses those powers if they're regressed to childhood, and a person aged to the point of senility probably loses most (if not all) of their abilities.

• Target must make an Endurance FEAT vs. this power's intensity or become younger or older. Maximum span of manipulation is a number of years equal to this power's rank.

Decrepitude: With a touch, you can rapidly accelerate a target's age -- possibly aging them to death! -- though their personal timeline slowly reasserts itself and they return to their original age (assuming they do not die from the initial attack).

• Against inanimate objects, this functions as the Disruption power (MC5 from UPB), with the temporary option. Against living targets, the target must make an Endurance FEAT vs. the intensity of this power or lose a number of points from all their FASERIP ability scores equal to 1/7th this power's rank, rounded to the nearest whole number. (So Ty//6 would drain 1 point from each FASERIP, Rm/30 would drain 4, and Mn/75 would drain 8 from each.) Lost points return at the rate of one per minute.

No Sleep 'Till Brooklyn: You rapidly accelerate the target through time for a day or more, until the target is too sleepy to stay awake.

• This is the Stunning Missile power, stunning attack form, though it is ineffective against beings who do not require sleep.

Slow Time Bubble: You can put another person in a bubble of slow time, thus making the subject look and act as if they are moving in "slow motion" while the rest of the world moves at normal speed.

• Targets hit by the effect must made an Endurance FEAT or be slowed, moving at half speed and taking a -2 CS penalty to all actions. They may make an additional Endurance FEAT each round thereafter, with a cumulative +1 CS bonus, to shake off the effect.

Variant: Stop Time Bubble: You don't just slow targets down, you stop them completely!

• Targets hit by the effect must made an Endurance FEAT or be trapped in frozen time, helpless and unable to move, not even aware of the passage of time, since it has effectively stopped, so far as the target is concerned. They may make an additional Endurance FEAT each round thereafter, with a cumulative +1 CS bonus, to shake off the effect. Anything frozen in time is completely unaffected by outside events or forces: subjects in the area cannot be damaged, affected by other powers, and so forth, though it is possible to set up extremely dangerous events that are set in motion once the Time Stop ends.

Stand There While I Hit You: You speed up time around yourself so you can punch a target dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of times in a split-second. From your perspective, it's as if the target has stopped moving and can't do anything but stand there and take it.

• This is the Extra Attacks power.

Temporal Acceleration: You accelerate a person through time so rapidly the victim ages, withers, and eventually dies/collapses.

• You do power rank Energy damage at power rank range, using Agility to hit. Once you've hit, you can maintain the effect on the target, continuing to do damage to theme very round without requiring additional Agility rolls, though anything that breaks your concentration on the effect ends it. It is ineffective against targets who are immortal or who themselves have dimensional or temporal manipulation powers.

Temporal Ambush: You stop time throughout reality, put a big physical object (like a rock) over your target's head, slightly redirect an attack or moving object, or otherwise puts your target in harm's way. Then you return to where you were standing and start time again. The rock falls (or the like), hurting the target. To the target and everyone else, it's as if the rock appeared out of nowhere to fall on them!

• You do power rank damage at power rank range, using Agility to hit. This can be Energy, Force, or Shooting, based on what is readily available, and can originate from any direction (behind, above, below, etc.).

Temporal Disharmony: You "jerk" the target backward and forward through time, stressing their systems.

• You do power rank Energy damage at power rank range, using Agility to hit.

DEFENSIVE EFFECT/POWERS

Dorian Gray'd: You've used your time manipulation powers to take a 'snapshot' of yourself at some physical prime. Whenever something happens to you to change you from this 'saved image,' your temporal powers work to rewind the events and restore you to your uninjured state.

• This is the Regeneration power.

Forewarned is Foredefended: You glance forward in time a second or two to see what's going to happen. This gives you a good chance of avoiding any attacks made against you.

• You can use the rank of this power instead of your Intuition when determining initiative.

Gone Out For Food: You stop time throughout reality, walks to whatever restaurant you feel like eating at, start time in that one area so you can get something to eat, then reverses time and walks back to where you were.

• You are effectively immune to starvation & thirst.

Variant: Food For All: You can bring food back to your friends, keeping it in a stop time bubble so it remains fresh. ("Hey, great burgers, where'd you get 'em?" "California, 1967. These are some of the first Big Macs.")

• You can share your effective immunity with others.

Outside of Time: Your chronal powers essentially place you "outside" the time-stream, making you ageless.

• You do not age.

Temporally Anchored: You are a fixed point in the space-time continuum, making you immune to changes in history. You recall the "true" version of historical events, even if no one else does.

• Your "temporal inertia" allows you to resist unwilling time travel and memory "retcons" with power rank ability.

Time Shift Field: You surround yourself with a time manipulation field and advance time within the field by a microsecond. The temporal barrier thus created provides protection against attacks. Only strong attacks can overwhelm the time differential horizon and injure you.
An alternate description is that you intercept incoming physical missiles and instantly age them until they disintegrate; energy blasts are 'aged' so they disperse harmlessly.

• This is the Force Field power.

MOVEMENT EFFECT/POWERS

Rapid Transit: You stop time throughout reality, walk a few dozen or hundred from where you started, and then start time again. (Although you do have to cross the intervening space, this is not taken as a Limitation because you have all the time you need to avoid any obstacles.) To others, you seem to have vanished from your starting point and reappeared instantly at your destination.

• You move instantaneously from point to point without physically crossing the distance between, as per the Teleportation power.

Variant: Walkin' To Jerusalem: You stop time throughout reality, walks across Earth to get to wherever you want to go, and then re-start time. If you want to cross the ocean, you selectively reverse time around Earth until you reach the point where the continents are joined together, walk to where you want to be, and then fast-forwards time back to the present day.

• A longer-range/higher-raked version of the above.

Time Travel: You can travel through time, instantly reaching any date you desire. This power can cause significant problems in the game, and requires a lot of reasonable interpretation by the Judge.

• This is the Time Travel power (T19 from UPB), allowing you to move to any date in the history or the future

Variant: Timegate: You can open up a portal through the time-stream that anyone can move through. People can travel either way through the portal, or fire attacks through it.

• As above, but you can create a portal one or more areas wide. It can cover a number of areas equal to the "tens" place of the rank number. For example, a character with a rank of Amazing/50 may cover five areas. For every area covered beyond the first, the strength of the power is reduced by one rank, so that a timegate encompassing five areas would reduce the effects by -4CS (in this example, offering Gd/10 ability to time travel).

Zoom: By altering time relative to yourself, you manipulate the speed at which time flows around you, allowing you to move faster in relative time to everyone around you, making it appear that you are moving at superhuman speeds.

• This is the Lightning Speed power.

SENSORY EFFECT/POWERS

Foresight: By maintaining a partial glimpse into the future of the immediate vicinity, you can perceive (and hopefully avoid) dangers before they occur.

• This is the Combat Sense power.

Look Around: You stop time around yourself just long enough to look around in all directions and see what's going on.

• This is the Circular Vision power (DT2 from UPB).

Omnichronometer: Not only can you tell what time it is right now, you can tell what point in time you're at in the entire timestream, can keep track of the time between or until multiple events, and so on.

• You can detect time with power rank ability.

Quick Study: You put yourself in a bubble of accelerated time, allowing you to read and research much faster.

• This could be a representation of the Ultimate Skill power, for knowledge-based talents.

Timeview: Your ability to manipulate time allows you to "fast forward" or "replay" events in your mind's eye, thus giving you a crystal-clear view of the future and the past.

• This is the Postcognition and Precognition powers.

MISCELLANEOUS EFFECT/POWERS

All The Time In The World: You slow down the passage of time around yourself so that you can focus on the task at hand, performing it flawlessly even though, to the rest of the world, it looks like you did several minutes' worth of work in the blink of an eye.

• This could be another representation of the Ultimate Skill power, for talents/tasks which require time.

Best Possible Future: With this power you can, whenever you choose, stop time for half a second, scan forward into the timestream to evaluate the possible futures branching out from your current point in time, and choose the best one for yourself -- thus making it more likely you'll succeed at tasks and actions you undertake.

• This is the Probability Manipulation power.

Future Self: You can summon one of your future selves to assist yourself in the present day. When you no longer need help, you return your future self to its normal time-frame. You cannot control exactly when your future self comes from, though it's far enough in the future that you will never be in a situation in which you reach the future self's normal timeframe in your own timeframe.
Although highly useful, this power has two significant drawbacks. First, from the point in time at which you begin to use the power, you are subject to suddenly vanishing without warning and re-appearing in your past to help your "past self." This could cause major problems if you vanish in the middle of a crisis, while driving, or during a date! Second, if one of your future selves is killed, you have just prematurely ended your own life. You yourself go on living, but you know that one day you will "vanish" and never re-appear, because you were killed in the past.

• The duplicates have identical stats and abilities to the character that summoned them, despite the chance for advancement.

Rapid Healing: You place an injury in a bubble of "fast time" so that it heals in seconds.

• This is the Healing power, though it cannot be used to regrow limbs or organs.

Variant: Refresh: You place an injury in a bubble of reversed time, negating the damage so that it never happened.

• This is the Healing power, and it can be used to 'regrow' limbs and organs.

BLOBBY McGEE

STATISTICS
Fighting: Excellent/20
Agility: Good/10
Strength: Excellent/20 [Remarkable/30]
Endurance: Remarkable/30
Reason: Good/10
Intuition: Good/10
Psyche: Good/10
[20+10+20+30+10+10+10 = 110 CPs on Primary Abilities]

Health: 80
Karma: 30
Resources: Typical/06
Popularity: TBD
[6*2 = 12 CPs on Resources]

KNOWN POWERS

Body Resistance: Even when not actively using metamorphic powers to develop bony armor or a boneless jelly-form or the like, the nature of Blobby’s body grants Good/10 protection vs. physical attacks. [10+10=20 CPs]

Metamorphic Body: can manipulate own form with Excellent/20 ability. Blobby has four “forms” to assume, one at a time:

• Hardbody Form: grants Gd/10 Body Resistance (raising total Body Resistance to Ex/20 vs. physical, Gd/10 vs. Energy) and Gd/10 Hyper-Strength (raising Strength to Rm/30, though with no increase in Health points). In this form, Blobby can choose to do Edged damage with their attacks.
• Reverse Assimilation: Ex/20 Healing of others by touch, but deals a like amount of damage to Blobby.
• Shapechanger: Imitation at Ex/20 rank.
• Softbody Form: grants Ty/6 Elongation (18 yards), Gd/10 Plasticity (raising effective Body Resistance to Ex/20 vs. physical, Gd/10 vs. Energy), and Pr/4 Wall-Crawling. In this form, Blobby can choose to do Edged damage with their attacks.

[{(10+10) +(10+10)} +(10+20) +(10+20) +{(10+6) +(10+10) +(10+4)} = 40+30+30+50 = 150]
or [{(10+10) +(10+10)}/10 +(10+20)/10 +(10+20)/10 +{(10+6) +(10+10) +(10+4)} = 4+3+3+50 = 60]

Regeneration: Good/10, allowing Blobby to heal 10x faster, or regain a number of Health points every 60 rounds equal to their Endurance rank (30), or one Health point every other round. [10+10=20 CPs]

Sense-Shifting: can alter their eyes in a variety of way, granting one or more of the following at any given time:
Circular Vision: can grow additional eyes to see in 360 degrees
Infravision: Ty/6
Microscopic Vision: Fb/2 (microfilm)
Telescopic Vision: Fb/2 (two miles)
Ultravision: Ty/6
[10+? +10+6 +10+2 +10+2 +10+6 = 66 CPs]

[20+150+20+66 = 256 CPs on Powers]
or [20+60+20+66 = 166 CPs on Powers]

Talents: Martial Arts C, plus one more from Weapon, Fighting, or Mystical & Mental ~or~ two more from Professional, Scientific, and Other.
Contacts: None
[20 CPs on Talents & Contacts]

[110+12+256+20 = 398/300 CPs]
or [110+12+166+20 = 308/300 CPs]

Second CP totals are based on my “With Great (Multi)Power” House Rule, seen here.

---

This is a char I played in the first Mutants & Masterminds game I was in (looong before joining Freedom City Play-by-Post), and fits my love of shapeshifters (which is second only to my love of gadgeteers and other tech-heads) and of Body Horror. He was basically a Clayface/Morph expy (I <3 Exiles). Yes, the name's a Janis Joplin reference (another favorite; I know she didn't write the song, but she is the one that made it popular).

This fellow gained his powers from an experimental stem cell treatment for his aggressive leukemia. What the doctors did not realize was that some of the stem cells had been taken from what would have been a Mutant with fantastic regenerative powers. Some years after the treatment, when he hit puberty, the stem cells Mutant nature asserted itself, but not quite as they should. His body became a mass of undifferentiated cells, yet his consciousness remained; with practice he could control them and force them into certain states. At first he could just assume humanoid forms, but in time he learned more exotic forms, such as thick bone armor, boneless jelly-man forms, and even to alter the structure and components of his eyes (as well as his number of eyes!). Perhaps his most disturbing power, though, is to heal the injuries of others, by touching a wound, having some of his own protoplasmic flesh flow over and into it, and replacing any damaged organs and tissues with perfect matches of the target's own tissues! (It could also let him stunt assorted effects against the people he'd healed, like Emotion and Mind Control....) This hurts him as much as it does them, though his own regenerative abilities make the damage less of a bother than it would be for the person he'd healed.

Would this character work as a PC in a Marvel Super Heroes game? ... maybe. The two big issues are the Body Horror thing (the acceptance of which varies from Judge to Judge and player to player), and the Healing power (which can be problematic in that it can quickly remove the sense of threat from an encounter; heroes should be able to fight on despite their wounds, not rely on another to quickly patch them up as soon as they're scratched.) The Empathic limit on the Healing does help mitigate this latter issue, but it may be better (as in "easier to get approved by a Judge") is you drop the Healing and change the descriptors and background around. That way you'd have a perfectly serviceable shapeshifter; depending on which Talents you add you could have an ex-con, an actor, or a snarky computer genius, or even a weird Mutant Skrull. If you need more points, a Vulnerability may be fitting -- the Clayfaces & Plastic Man have been shown to have varying levels of vulnerability to cold, acid & fire are good against many things that regenerate, and axiomatic/law magic would be a good vulnerability if the character gained their powers from an infusion of anarchic/chaos magic.

COPPERTOP

STATISTICS
Fighting: Excellent/20
Agility: Good/10
Strength: Good/10 [Remarkable/30] [Amazing/50]
Endurance: Excellent/20 [Incredible/40]
Reason: Typical/6
Intuition: Excellent/20
Psyche: Remarkable/30
[20+10+10+10+6+20+30 = 106 CPs on Primary Abilities]

Health: 100 (60 if powers negated)
Karma: 56
Resources: Typical/06
Popularity: Typical/06
[6*2 = 12 CPs on Resources]

KNOWN POWERS

Bio-Electrical Control: Coppertop’s hyperconductive alloy form allows him to manipulate and control electricity. So far he’s mastered two abilities, though only one can be used per round:

• Amp’d Up: Channel absorbed electricity to strengthen himself physically, raising Strength by another 20 points (to Amazing/50, though no change in Health) and Body Resistance by 20 points (to Incredible/40 vs. physical, Remarkable/30 vs. energy)
• Lightning Generation: Absorb and release stored static electricity as a lightning bolt, doing Incredible/40 Energy damage at Incredible/40 range.

[{(10+20) +(10+20)} +(10+40)] = 60+50 = 110 CPs]
or [{(10+20) +(10+20)}/10 + (10+40)] = 6+50 = 56 CPs]

Hyperconductive Alloy Form: Coppertop’s body has been permanently transformed into a “living metal” form of an experimental hyperconductive alloy (Ex/20 material strength), granting the following abilities:

• Body Resistance: Excellent/20 protection from physical attacks Good/10 protection from Energy attacks.
• Hyper-Strength: Excellent/20, increasing his Strength from Gd/10 to Rm/30.
• Increased Mass: Coppertop’s dense alloy body weighs approximately 800 pounds. His leaping distance is not affected by the strength boost he gets from this form, since his increased weight offsets it (i.e., he leaps as if he has Gd/10 Strength, or Rm/30 if Amp’d Up).

[(10+20) +(10+20) = 60 CPs]

Hyper-Endurance: Another effect of the transformation was an increase to his overall health and fortitude. Excellent/20 while transformed, increasing his Endurance from Ex/20 to In/40.
[10+20 = 30 CPs]

[110+60+30 = 200 CPs on Powers]
or [56+60+30 = 146 CPs on Powers]

Talents: Martial Arts B, Law Enforcement.
Contacts: None
[15 CPs on Talents & Contacts]

[106+12+200+15 = 333/300 CPs]
or [106+12+146+15 = 278/300 CPs]

Second CP totals are based on my “With Great (Multi)Power” House Rule, seen here.

[/hr]

Another char I made some years back, Coppertop. He was a security guard at a super-science lab who was caught in a supervillain-caused explosion and showered in the molten form of an experimental hyperconductive metal. He survived, to find he'd been changed into a living battery! I'd planned for him to work on a way to regain his human form (not permanently, mind you -- having powers is awesome!), but he never saw much play so I never got to do much with him. He was also a departure from my penchant for playing genius bruisers, though in time I'm sure I would've had him pick up the Electronics or Physics Talents and learn all sorts of tricks he could do with his bioelectrical powers. As he is now, he's a fairly straightforward Blaster/Powerhouse mashup.

I also had ideas for some minor shapeshifting powers -- Elongation, Claws as he changes his hands into blades or spiky bits on his knees & shoulders, morphing his fingers into lockpicks & using his bioelectricity to futz with security systems, etc. -- as well as some Psi-Shield (as his bioelectricity provides interference that's hard for mind-meddlers to break through, though this is already partially reflected in his high Psyche) and Enhanced Senses (electroreception). You could rearrange things and get some of those now, or wait to do so with earned points. You could give him some Limitations to free up a few points; Vulnerability (Magnetic effects) would fit, though as he is now (without that Vulnerability) I'd said he's using his own bioelectricity to mitigate any extra effects from Magnetic assaults.

Without his powers, he's still roughly equal to a SWAT Officer, which works out pretty well.

Okay those are easily the most detailed write-ups on various aspects of physics I've ever seen, textbook-level.

Great stuff, right?

Thanks!

SERPENT PERSON RING BEARER

"In foulest day, in sweetest night,
beware the serpents coiled so tight.
Let every mammal kneel in fright,
Or burn under the Great Set's might!"

STATISTICS
Fighting: Good/10
Agility: Typical/6
Strength: Excellent/20
Endurance: Remarkable/30
Reason: Typical/6 [Good/10]
Intuition: Excellent/20
Psyche: Remarkable/30
Health: 66
Karma: 60
Resources: Typical/06
Popularity: ???

KNOWN POWERS

Black Ring: A conduit for Set’s power. It grants a number of abilities to the wearer:

• Body Resistance: A mystical toughening of the body, resulting in Excellent/20 protection from physical attacks and Good/10 from energy. [10+20 = 30 CPs]
• Flight: Typical/6 speeds, via what appears to be a wyvern-drawn chariot. [10+6 = 16 CPs]
• Hyper-Reason: Poor/4, raising this one’s Reason from Ty/6 to Gd/10. [10+4 = 14 CPs]
• Magic Detection: Good/10 ability and range [10+10 = 20 CPs]
• Setite Sorcery: An array of magical effects, though only one at a time may be used.
• ---Mystic Blast: Incredible/40 Energy, usually as lightning
• ---Mystic Energy Constructs: can create objects with an effective material strength of Incredible/40.
• ---Summoned Creatures: No ability higher than Remarkable/30.
• ---Telekinesis: Incredible/40 strength and range
• ---Venom Enhancement: Increases potency of Maddening Venom (see below) to Good/10, increases range from touch/bite to Good/10 range (four areas), and once cured lost ranks return at the rate of one per minute/10 rounds. [10+30? = 40?]
  
  Show spoiler

  
  

  Hide spoiler

Imitation: Good/10 ability to imitate other humanoids. However, upon hearing the mystical phrase "ka nama kaa lajerama," they automatically revert to their true forms.
Infravision: Excellent/20 ability to see in the dark via heat detection.
Maddening Venom: Typical/6 rank. Those bit by a Serpent-Person must make an Endurance FEAT against that venom’s rank. Failure indicates immediate loss of a rank of either Intuition or Psyche (Serpent Person’s choice). At the end of 1-10 turns, the hero makes a second Endurance FEAT, with the effects halting if the hero makes the FEAT, and continuing to lose Intuition or Psyche if the hero fails. If the hero's Intuition or Psyche reaches Shift 0 as a result of the maddening venom, the character falls into a nightmare-filled coma, and will die if they do not receive medical attention. Once the venom is stopped (either by making the Endurance FEAT or through outside assistance), lost ranks return at the rate of one per round.
Resistance to Heat: Good/10
Talents: Occult Lore, Martial Arts E, Weapons Specialist (Black Ring).
Contacts: None

Second CP totals are based on my “With Great (Multi)Power” House Rule, seen here.

---

So at the time I first wrote this up, The Hub had been airing Conan: the Adventurer, one of the many 80s/90s cartoons with which I grew up. As an adaptation of the Conan mythos, it's pretty (ironically) fangless -- Conan & his evil wizard foe both had talking animal sidekicks (a phoenix and naga, respectively), and rather than bloodily beheading/disemboweling his foes, the touch Conan's starmetal sword banishes the Serpent-Men to the Abyss (it is a kid's cartoon!) -- but for what it was, the writing was fairly solid, as was the voice acting (a top-tier VA cast of Kathleen Barr, Arthur Burghardt, Jim Byrnes, Gary Chalk, Michael Donovan, Janyse Jaud, Scott McNeil, and Doug Parker), and the numerous references it made to the Conan mythos lead some curious viewers (like myself) to seek out Howard's works (and from him to Lovecraft...). The fellow shown above is Wrath-Amon, the evil sorcerer who turned Conan's parents to stone after stealing his village's starmetal, which he'd used to forge seven discs for seven pyramids in order to summon the demon-god Set to Earth. (His former master/creator, Ram-Amon, was more a direct Thoth-Amon expy.) Even when not actively using his Ring, he was still a bruiser and able to take on Conan in melee combat. With it, he can blast meddlesome barbarians, summon all manner of creatures and demons, commune with his demon-god master, concentrate & project his own maddening venom, and see mystical energies before him. The Hyper-Reason in the Ring gives a Fridge Brilliance reason why he was so eager to get it back when it was taken (aside from the obvious loss of power) -- without it, he's just a bit more beastly (though still cunning), which he haaatesss.

What does any of this have to do with the Marvel Universe? Well, the Hyborian Era was part of the distant past of the Marvel Universe, and so, like Kulan Gath (another Thoth-Amon expy), this Serpent-Man could find himself in the modern age (though perhaps with a power boost), intent on remaking the modern world into the pinnacle of Serpent Person csssivilisssation it once was. Or maybe he’s one of the Serpent People of Starkesboro, Maine, the modern descendants of the Hyborian Serpent-People (and also a reference to Lovecraft’s Deep Ones and The Shadow over Innsmouth), who found the ring in a long-forgotten temple.

But could this build be used for a hero? Certainly, though it would need some changes to the background and descriptors. Perhaps this Serpent Man turned on his fellows (say, due to falling in love with a human he'd been sent to spy on), and found a way to cleanse the eviler aspects of the Ring so he could use it against his ophidian brethren. Or perhaps the ring is some alien artifact (part of a larger device's power core?), and its onboard computer showed him a better way, a way where reptiles and mammals and all other sapient beings could co-exist peacefully. Or maybe he was a human who was gifted the ring by Space Cops, who happened to be Serpent-People-esque, and prolonged exposure to the ring has mutated him into a Serpent-Person.

I quite like that oath, it's quite clever and entertaining although if this is meant to be a write-up for the Conan character he should be in the section for that.

Thanks!

It wasn't meant to be a direct conversion; while many of the characters I post here will be inspired by existing ones from various sources, they're not meant to be direct conversions. My goal here is to present characters that could be used as PCs in a Marvel Super Heroes game; you can see at the end of my entry I even put in some suggestion on how the sheet could be tweaked to make a heroic character.

Benandanti Battle by Emryswolf (Jaime Sidor)

"I kick arse for the Lord!"

BENANDANTE

STATISTICS
Fighting: Good/10 [Remarkable/30]
Agility: Typical/6 [Excellent/20]
Strength: Typical/6 [Remarkable/30]
Endurance: Good/10 [Incredible/40]
Reason: Good/10
Intuition: Good/10 [Incredible/40]
Psyche: Good/10 [Remarkable/30]
[10+6+6+10+10+10+6 = 58 CPs on Primary Abilities]

Health: 32, 120 in hybrid form
Karma: 22
Resources: Typical/06
Popularity: ???
[6*2 = 12 CPs on Resources]

KNOWN POWERS

Alternate Form: Werewolf: A Benandante can assume the form of a powerful human-wolf hybrid, with the following abilities:

• Body Resistance: Excellent/20 protection from physical attacks, Good/10 from energy.
• Hyper-Agility: Gd/14
• Hyper-Endurance: Rm/30
• Hyper-Fighting: Ex/20
• Hyper-Intuition: Rm/30
• Hyper-Psyche: Ex/20
• Hyper-Strength: Ex/24, and in this form can do Edged damage with their claws & fangs.

[(10+20) +(10+14) +(10+30) +(10+20) +(10+30) +(10+20) +(10+24) = 228 CPs]

Magic Awareness: In either form, a Benandante can sense magic about them with Good/10 ability. [10+10 = 20 CPs]

EQUIPMENT

Iron Whip: Good/10 material, able to make Grabbing and Grappling attacks from a distance. [10+10? = 20 CPs]

[228+20+20 = 258 CPs on Powers]

Talents: First Aid, Martial Arts A, Occult Lore.
Contacts: None
[25 CPs on Talents & Contacts]

[58+12+258+25 = 353/300 CPs]

---

Think werewolves can't be heroes? Think again! (Also, history'd!)

The Benandanti (singular Benandante) are men and women from the lands around the Baltic and Mediterranean seas, marked at birth by a caul (a fetal membrane enclosing the head) who were believed to be blessed with the ability to take on a monstrous man-wolf form to protect their countrymen from the predations of strige (witches), stregoni (warlocks), undead, and demons of all kinds. They would gather three or four times a year, called by the sounding of a war-drum, to march upon the very gates of Hell itself to beat back the dark forces. Details on how vary: some traditions changed (and warred) physically (with or without weapons, such as the iron whips used by the Friuli tradition), others astrally projected a wolf-form, to scout & fight incorporeal evils. Though many such groups existed, they are all known as "benandanti" after the tradition of Friuli, a northeastern province of Italy, who were the best known of these bands. Being known as forces for good, their membership was something of an open secret, and they enjoyed the gratitude and respect of the people they protected, such as the farmers (whose crops & livestock would otherwise be destroyed or stolen by the forces of Hell), midwives (who helped identify the next generation of Benandanti), and local clergy (who were at worst merely tolerant of what they saw as a harmless peasant tradition, a holdover from earlier fertility-cults, or actively -- albeit secretly -- supported them in their battles). Inevitably, the Inquisition came down, concerned about such enthusiastic deviation from medieval Catholic dogma, but the self-proclaimed werewolves proved a match for the Inquisition, remaining firm in their conviction that they fought witches and worked for God (and that Hell was "at the end of the sea," rather than underground).

In a superhero setting where supernatural elements exist -- like the Marvel Universe -- such a tradition could be quite real, and continuing. In many ways, they're already stereotypical superheroes: highly ethical men and women, gifted with powers, devoted to the community in which they live and to protecting humanity. Though they traditionally came from eastern and southeastern European ethnic groups, the massive immigrations of Baltic people to other lands means a Benandante could appear anywhere; a person might not know they were one until they were attacked by supernatural evil and erupted into the beastly form! In modern times, they'd be attracted towards professions in which they protect and serve others: police, military, medical (especially paramedics and other emergency personnel), even security guards and private investigators.

No vulnerability to (or Body Resistance limited to not work against) silver, as their primary foes mainly used black magic and hideous claws & fangs (plus, silver traditionally works against lycanthropes and other evils because it is a 'pure' [i.e., good] metal and/or due to its Lunar connection, but Benandanti are already pure-hearted hounds of God and aren't tied to the Moon!). Benandanti typically changed whenever needed, though hearing the seasonal call to arms (via war-drum) would cause an automatic shift; being forced into werewolf form when hearing war drums -- or any extended drumming! -- would make a fitting Complication. Their assertion that Hell lies "at the end of the sea" could mean they fight Lemurians and other sea-devils as well as more traditional devils.

When in human form, this fellow is about equal to an average police officer, enough to fend off harassment from most run-of-the-mill muggers. My bare-bones background for this one is that he is a paramedic (perhaps a curmudgeonly one), and was raised in a "Little Italy" section of the campaign’s city, fully aware of his heritage (hence the Martial Arts Talent and decent Fighting even in human form).

For the astrally projecting 'spirit wolf' version, you could drop the Alternate Form ability and take Astral Projection, and assorted precognitive powers, such as Combat Sense, Hyper-Agility and Hyper-Fighting (knowing where your foe will be, and where their blows will land), Hyper-Intuition (increased awareness of environment), and, of course, Precognition.

(Variant cover to Invincible Iron Man vol.01:no.31 (Dec 2010), by Salvador Larroca.)

VAMPIRE IN POWER ARMOR

STATISTICS
Fighting: Typical/6 [Excellent/20]
Agility: Typical/6 [Excellent/20]
Strength: Good/10 [Incredible/40]
Endurance: Good/10 [Incredible/40]
Reason: Remarkable/30
Intuition: Typical/6
Psyche: Good/10
[6+6+10+10+30+6+10 = 78 CPs on Primary Abilities]

Health: 32, 120 in Armor
Karma: 46
Resources: Good/10
Popularity: ???
[10*2 = 20 CPs on Resources]

KNOWN POWERS

Power Armor: Granting the following abilities

• Body Armor: Remarkable/30 vs. physical, Excellent/20 vs. energy
• Energy Systems: Usable one at a time
• -- Hyper-Strength: Remarkable/30
• -- Laser: Remarkable/30 Energy damage
• Feature: Suit can be made airtight (to block sense of smell) and light tight (to shield from sunlight).
• Flight: Typical/6 air speeds.
• Hyper-Agility: Good/14
• Hyper-Endurance: Remarkable/30
• Hyper-Fighting: Good/14

[(10+30) +(10+30) +(10+30) +(10+6) +(10+14) +(10+30) +(10+14) = 224 CPs ]
or [(10+30) +(10+30) +{(10+30)}/10 +(10+6) +(10+14) +(10+30) +(10+14) = 188 CPs ]

Vampire Powers: Several abilities granted by his unholy nature:

• Ability Enhancement: +1 CS tro Fighting, Agility, Strength, Endurance, and Psyche (already figured in)
• Bio-Vampirism: Poor/4
• Hyper-Speed: Typical/6
• Infravision: Excellent/20
• Regeneration: Poor/4
• Tracking-Scent: Good/10
• Wall-Crawling: Poor/4

[(10+4) +(10+6) +(10+20) +(10+4) +(10+10) +(10+4) =108 CPs ]

[224+108 = 332 CPs total on Powers]
or [188+108 = 296 CPs total on Powers]

LIMITATIONS

Sunlight: Exposure inflicts Poor/4 damage per round, though the suit can block sunlight.


Talents: Electronics, Engineering, Martial Arts E.
Contacts: None
[20 CPs on Talents & Contacts]

[78+20+332+20 = 450/300 CPs]
or [78+20+296+20 = 414/300 CPs]

Second CP totals are based on my “With Great (Multi)Power” House Rule, seen here.

---

So a young engineering genius got the idea to make himself a suit of powered armor, with which to fight the forces of crime and villainy which plague his fair city. It's got protective plating, strength augmentation, an advanced combat computer, assorted sensory enhancements, and flight via boot-jets. It wouldn't make him a top-tier hero, but definitely up to the task of protecting his corner of [Campaign City] against "routine" supervillainy.

Then a vampire attacked him, drained him of his blood, and replaced it with some of its own unholy ichor.

Three nights later the young inventor clawed his way from his grave, now an unholy monster cursed to feed on the blood of the living and to never know the purifying rays of the Sun again! But his horrific transformation did not completely snuff his heroic soul; fighting against his terrible hungers, he altered the suit (a task made slightly easier due to no longer needing sleep and his inhuman celerity) so he could still use it to fight crime in public, cannibalizing the suit's life support systems (which he now no longer needed) to provide a completely air- and light-tight environment (to shield himself from both sunlight and the scent of blood).

Vampires have been seen in both superheroic comics (DC's Andrew Bennett, Astro City's Confessor, Marvel's Morbius the Living Vampire) and as heroic figures in television (in Angel and Forever Knight). The "struggling with inner demons" and "atoning for one's past sins" thing is often seen in heroes, which may be one reason why vampire heroes are so enduring.

As befits both the image above and another famed alcoholic man of metal, a lack of blood impairs him, making him uncoordinated, slow to react... kinda like being drunk! I was surprised how many CPs this came out to be, especially since I made him quite basic in terms of both his armor and his vampiric abilities.

(image is of Kurt "Airtight" Schnurr from G.I. Joe Renegades)

"You might not see them, but they're there."

QUARANTINE

STATISTICS
Fighting: Typical/6
Agility: Typical/6
Strength: Typical/6
Endurance: Remarkable/30
Reason: Good/10
Intuition: Excellent/20
Psyche: Good/10
[6+6+6+30+10+20+10 = 88 CPs on Primary Abilities]

Health: 48
Karma: 40
Resources: Typical/6
Popularity: ???
[6*2 = 12 CPs on Resources]

KNOWN POWERS

Disease Control: ability to control bacteria and viruses, with the following effects (all are ranged, requiring Agility to hit), each only usable one at a time:

• Acute Disease: Targets struck by this effect must make an Endurance FEAT vs. Incredible/40 intensity. If they fail the Endurance FEAT, they lose up to 6 points each from one or more FASERIP ability scores of the user’s choice. The next round, the target must attempt another Endurance FEAT vs. In/40 intensity or suffer another loss of up to 6 points each from the user’s choice of one or more FASERIP ability scores. After this second Endurance FEAT, the disease has run its course, and lost FASERIP points being to return at the rate of one per 5 hours. Examples: Anthrax would drain Strength both times, Hantavirus would drain Strength the first round and Strength & Endurance the second, Necrotizing fasciitis would drain Endurance both times, Pneumonia would drain Strength the first round and Strength & Endurance the second, Salmonellosis would drain Fighting, Agility, and Strength both rounds, Smallpox would drain Strength & Endurance both rounds, and West Nile Virus would drain Fighting, Agility, and Endurance both rounds.
• Acute Illness: Targets struck by this effect must make an Endurance FEAT vs. Incredible/40 intensity. If they fail the Endurance FEAT by one color (needed red but got yellow, needed yellow but got green), they are sickened, at -2 CS on all FEATS; they may make an additional Endurance FEAT every 1d10 rounds thereafter, with a cumulative +1 CS bonus, to shake off the effect. If they failed the Endurance FEAT by two colors (needed red but got green, needed yellow but got white), they are nauseated, unable to do anything except move; they may make an additional Endurance FEAT every 1d10 rounds thereafter, with a cumulative +1 CS bonus, to shake off this condition, at which point they are sickened, and then further such checks to shake that off. If they failed the Endurance FEAT by three colors (needed red but got white), they are helpless, unable to take any actions and at -6 CS Fighting to avoid melee attacks and -4 CS Agility to avoid ranged attacks; they may make an additional Endurance FEAT every 1d10 rounds thereafter, with a cumulative +1 CS bonus, to shake off this condition, at which point they are nauseated, and then further such checks to shake that off to become sickened, then further such checks to shake that off. This only affects living organic beings.
• Chronic Disease: Targets struck by this effect must make an Endurance FEAT vs. Excellent/20 intensity. If they fail the Endurance FEAT, they lose up to 3 points each from one or more FASERIP ability scores of user’s choice. The next day, and every day thereafter, the target must attempt another Endurance FEAT vs. Ex/20 intensity or suffer another loss of up to 3 points each from the user’s choice of one or more FASERIP ability scores. These points return at the rate of one per 5 hours, but do not begin to return until after the target makes a successful Endurance FEAT. Examples: see Acute Disease, above.
• Disease Absorption & Rebalancing: acts as Healing at Incredible/40 rank, and able to restore not just Health points and Endurance ranks/points but also ranks/points from any FASERIP score affected by a disease.
• Immediate Disease: this acts as a Corrosive Missile of Incredible/40 rank, doing In/40 damage the first round, Ex/20 the second, and Ty/6 the third, but only against living organic beings. Force Fields, Resistance to Disease, and True Invulnerability protect against this, but non-sealed Body Armor and Body Resistance do not.

[(10+40) +(10+40) +(10+20) +(10+40) +(10+40) = 50+50+30+50+50 = 230 CPs]
or [(10+40) +(10+40)/10 +(10+20)/10 +(10+40)/10 +(10+40)/10 = 50+5+3+5+5 = 68 CPs]

Invulnerability to Diseases & Poisons: Totally unaffected by diseases and poisons.
[(20+?) +(20+?) = 40? CPs]

[230+40 = 270 CPs total on Powers]
or [68+40 = 108 CPs total on Powers]

EQUIPMENT

Armored Hazmat Suit: Made from kevlar backed with Beta cloth. Provides

• Body Armor: Typical/6 protection from physical attacks
• Internal Air Supply: good for 20 minutes of strenuous work (like combat)
• Resistance to Fire/Heat: Excellent/20
• Resistance to Radiation: Excellent/20

[(10+6) +(10+20) +(10+20) = 76 CPs]

Pick-Up Truck with paramedic kit and radio.


Talents: First Aid.
Contacts: None
[5 CPs on Talents & Contacts]

[88+12+270+76+5 = 451+/300 CPs]
or [88+12+108+76+5 = 289/300 CPs]

Second CP totals are based on my “With Great (Multi)Power” House Rule, seen here.

---

Control over disease-causing microbes, from viruses to bacteria and parasitic fungi, is a powerset that seems to lend itself more to villainy than heroism, but if it allows you to cure diseases, it can easily be quite heroic. And if you can cause symptoms to rapidly manifest in a target, in a controlled -- and reversible -- manner, is it that much worse than someone lobbing around fireballs or lightning bolts?

Lots of potential origins for this guy. A paramedic who ran into a contaminated area to save others, and found his latent mutant powers activated to absorb the diseases and save everyone? A member of an alien race that evolved directly from amoeba, and can exert a weird influence over its Earthly brethren? Someone kidnapped off the streets by some mad scientist for use as a guinea pig for some biological warfare experiments (maybe a scientist hired by Red Skull to develop a 'race plague,' similar to what happened in the MAX imprint series U.S. War Machine), left for dead in a sewer, who rose up with strange new powers? A well-meaning mutant whose powers caused his father's medical experiments to exceed all expectations, only to have the discovery of your involvement bring disgrace and shame to his work? Someone who made a pact with the Horseman of Pestilence?

The build above represents someone with some emergency services experience, who probably plays up the "I'm rife with disease!" and "let me tell you exactly how this lil' microbe and his friends are going to make you wish you were dead" scares (but only against villains, of course!). The Healing power is for both removing diseases & their effects and general injury-tending (upping the good bacteria, getting them to knit wounds together, and so on); something similar going on in his own body is responsible for his peak human Endurance and Immunities. Lots of choices for stunts: microbial corrosion is a thing (and it gets weirder), so Corrosion and Disintegrate effects not limited to living organic beings -- like robots and undead! -- are certainly possible, or things like a “blinding sickness,” contagious emotion control effects (like a “hate plague,” though heroes probably shouldn’t do that!), and even more exotic things. Earned Karma could be spent on tricking out his armored HazMat suit with jets (and Communication and Immunities and Super-Senses and...); his trusty pickup truck is his only Movement power!

V-MAN / VIBRO-MAN

"I have got to get a better name..."

STATISTICS
Fighting: Typical/6 [Good/10]
Agility: Typical/6 [Good/10]
Strength: Typical/6
Endurance: Typical/6 [Good/10]
Reason: Excellent/20 [Remarkable/30]
Intuition: Typical/6
Psyche: Typical/6
[6+6+6+6+20+6+6 = 56 CPs on Primary Abilities]

Health: 24, 36 in Armor
Karma: 42
Resources: Good/10
Popularity: ???
[10*2 = 20 CPs on Resources]

KNOWN POWERS

Hyper-Intelligence: Good/10, via cybernetic brain implant.

Vibranium Power Armor: Granting the following abilities

• Body Armor: Incredible/40 vs. physical, Remarkable/30 vs. energy
• Vibrational Attacks: Useable one at a time
• -- Force (Vibratory) Blast: Remarkable/30 Force damage.
• -- Mini-Quake: acts as a Remarkable/30 intensity Blunt Slugfest attack against all in the same area.
• -- Shatter Bolts: a Remarkable/30 intensity Disruption attack, only effective against nonliving objects.
• -- Vertigo Blast: targets struck must make an Endurance FEAT vs. this Rm/30 intensity power or lose up to 15 points each from their Fighting and Agility; lost points return at the rate of one per round.
• Hyper-Agility: Poor/4
• Hyper-Endurance: Poor/4
• Hyper-Fighting: Poor/4
• Vibro-Gliding: can vibrate boots as he runs to “skate” along surfaces at Typical/6 land speeds (45 mph).

[(10+40) +{(10+30) +(10+30) +(10+30) +(10+30)} +(10+4) +(10+4) +(10+4) +(10+6) = 268 CPs]
or [(10+40) +{(10+30) +(10+30)/10 +(10+30)/10 +(10+30)/10} +(10+4) +(10+4) +(10+4) +(10+6) = 160 CPs]

[20+268 = 288 CPs total on Powers]
or [20+160 = 180 CPs total on Powers]


Talents: Electronics, Engineering.
Contacts: None
[10 CPs on Talents & Contacts]

[56+20+268+10 = 354/300 CPs]
or [56+20+160+10 = 246/300 CPs]

Second CP totals are based on my “With Great (Multi)Power” House Rule, seen here.

---

Here we have 300(ish) CP build for the very first character I played in a superhero RPG -- Marvel Super Heroes, of course -- back in the early 1990s. Vergil Blackwell was smart and African-American, two things that made growing up in the South difficult. His hard work paid off in the form of scholarships and grants that allowed him to pursue a college education; he graduated with honors with degrees in electrical engineering and materials science. This combination opened the doors to Stark Enterprises, exactly as he wanted: Iron Man had long been one of his favorite heroes, and he'd hoped to work at SE one day for both the chance to work on the armor worn by Tony Stark's bodyguard, and to make more affordable versions available for other sectors (such as construction or search & rescue). SE kept him quite busy on other projects, though -- military ones -- but his slight distaste for the projects was more than made up by the promise of all the things he could do. He couldn't complain about the money, either: within a year he'd made enough to get his family out of their run-down home and into a far nicer place up in New York. Eventually, Stark approached him: he was impressed with Vergil's work (both assigned and the special projects he'd been working on), and he wanted Vergil to accompany Iron Man & him to Wakanda for some Avenger's business. Vergil naturally jumped at the chance. King T'Challa was impressed by the young man's intellect, which allowed the proposal for exchange of Vibranium for Starktech to go through. (A fact Stark was all too cognizant of...) Vergil headed the Vibranium research laboratories, funneling just enough resources to allow him to cobble together his own suit of Vibranium-based armor.
He worked as an armored vigilante in some of the neighboring East African countries (Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda...), which put quite a strain on him. Some pointers from Iron Man himself helped him better juggle things, but his hero work combined with growing responsibilities at the SE facility lead him to take radical measures. Pilfering designs for an experimental cybernetic implant that cold increase cognitive ability, he had it built and installed by an underworld doctor... but he has no idea who, as the doctor wiped his memories after the procedure. The implant worked better than hoped, he could multitask as never before and had near-perfect recall; the occasional migraine wasn't so bad a tradeoff. Then the blackouts started, as did reports of a mysterious figure in powerful armor brutally attacking diamond and ivory shipments...
(Eventual plan was to reveal the doctor he'd gone to worked for Doctor Doom, and the blackouts were when Doom was taking control of Blackwell's body; Doom planned to use him to rob both Iron Man & Black Panther, and leave the young hero to face all charges.)

With his suit, Vergil can absorb, project, and re-direct vibrational energies (including kinetic and sonic). The suit is extremely resistant to concussive force attacks (sonics, shock waves, force beams, and bludgeoning physical damage), and provides decent protection against other physical (piercing & slashing) and energy attacks; he eventually figured out how to redirect some projected force attacks back at the user. It can project standard force blasts, pulses that disrupt gyroscopes and the inner ear, localized mini-quakes, or blasts that set up destructive vibrations throughout a target's molecular structure, causing it to shake to pieces; the suit can also set up counter-vibrations to negate all noise in an area. Unlike most armored supers, he could not fly, but could set up vibrations beneath him to 'skate' along the ground at fantastic speeds, as well as use vibrations to burrow through the earth (noiselesly, if desired). Sensory systems were also atypical: enhanced hearing and sonar. (Many of these abilities I had to cut for this version.)

The character is inspired, obviously, by Iron Man, but also by Ivory, one of four S.H.I.E.L.D. Super-Agents... who were all fairly quickly killed when it turned out fellow agents Knockabout, Psi-Borg, and Violence were all HYDRA moles. (All four were written up in the MARVEL-phile in Dragon #188/vol.17:no.7, Dec 1992.) I was rather tickled to learn, some years later, that around the time I was playing my Vergil, another young black superhero named Vergil (well, Virgil) was debuting in the comics. This was also some years before Reginald Hudlin or Christopher Priest had their [in]famous runs on Black Panther, another reason the BP/IM exchange happened. The pic above is of Force, an Iron Man villain; V's armor was darker -- like IM's Stealth Suits -- but I couldn't find any decent pics of that (most all are of it flying), and Force's color scheme is somewhat similar to that of Vibraxas, an African kid with Vibranium-derived vibrational powers, so there is some similarity.

(Grond by Storn A Cook, from Conquerors, Killers, and Crooks for Champions 5th Ed.)

"I'm gonna wreck you like the walls of Minas Tirith!"

FOUR-ARMED BRUISER

STATISTICS
Fighting: Excellent/20
Agility: Typical/6
Strength: Amazing/50
Endurance: Amazing/50
Reason: Typical/6
Intuition: Typical/6
Psyche: Typical/6
[20+6+50+50+6+6+6 = 144 CPs on Primary Abilities]

Health: 126
Karma: 18
Resources: Typical/6
Popularity: ???
[6*2 = 12 CPs on Resources]

KNOWN POWERS

Body Resistance: Amazing/50 protection from physical attacks, Incredible/40 vs. energy.

Extra Body Parts-Arms: Two additional arms (four total), granting Remarkable/30 Extra Attacks.

Growth: Grond is permanently 12 feet tall, or Typical/6 Growth, and weighs approximately 2,200 pounds. [Brought as Poor/4 Growth b/c of always-on limit]

[10+50 + 10+30 +10+4 = 114 CPs total on Powers]

Talents: Civil Engineering, Fantasy Literature, Martial Arts B, Martial Arts E.
Contacts: None
[30 CPs on Talents & Contacts]

[144+12+114+30 = 300/300 CPs]

---

This is a 300 CP (exactly!) version of Grond (well, sorta; see below), one of my favorite villains from the Champions RPG due largely to the sheer lunacy of his origin story:

Quote

Three-time loser Sidney Potter figured he'd finally caught a break. The warden had asked for volunteers for some special medical experiments; anyone who participated would earn substantial "good conduct" reductions in his sentence. Sidney was more than willing to let a few eggheads poke him with needles if it meant he could get out of prison early.
Things didn't quite work out. When he heard the medical technician say "Oops," he began to panic. When he learned the tech had injected him with the wrong serum — some sort of reptile-derived immune factor booster instead of the experimental cold remedy — he became agitated and started to leave. The tech tried to stop him, and a struggle ensued. Sidney was thrown into a shelf-full of medicines and chemicals; dozens of sera and formulae entered his body through the cuts the glass bottles made. But he escaped, fighting his way past the guards with manic strength. Screaming with terror, he ran outside, right into the middle of a thunderstorm. With the guards in hot pursuit, he dove right into a heavily polluted river... just as lightning struck!
No one ever saw Sidney Potter again. The prison officials assumed he'd drowned and his body had been washed downstream. They were unpleasantly surprised when, a few days later, a huge, green-skinned, four-armed monster calling himself "Grond" went on a rampage downtown. It took three teams of superheroes to stop him, and tests soon confirmed that this man-monster was once Sidney Potter. But no one could find a way to transform him back; the doctors didn't even understand how he'd been turned into Grond in the first place!

You don't often see near-mindless man-monsters who name themselves after devices from Tolkien's works! (And, yes, Word of God is that Sidney Potter, like Dr. Karl Lykos, was a Tolkien fan.)

Of course, a character with the mindset of an enraged four-year-old really doesn't really make for a good superheroic PC, so the Four-Armed Bruiser has a bit more going on upstairs than his inspiration; in this regard, he's a bit more like Marvel's Forearm, or Ben 10's Four Arms. Well, better than them -- the mindset of a mutant terrorist or a bratty ten year old's not much better! So this version has decent Mental Ability scores and some non-combat Talents; say he was a construction worker hired to do some work on a super-science facility who got doused in chemical wastes (or hit by an errant Gamma beam or what have you) and was mutated into a six-limbed one-man wrecking crew... and he's okay with that!

(A direct conversion of Grond from the Champions tabletop game would have something like Strength of ShZ/500, Endurance of ShX/150, Reason of Fb/2, and Psyche of Pr/4. He’d also take +2 CS damage from mental bolts and fire effects; I would've included a version of that here but I wasn't sure how to figure that point cost of that.)

POWERHOUSE WITH A POWER RING

"In greenest day, in greyest night,
No one can beat me in a fight
Let those who come within my sight,
Beware my Gamma-powered might!"

STATISTICS
Fighting: Typical/6 [Good/12]
Agility: Typical/6
Strength: Typical/6 [Excellent/16] [Remarkable/26] [Incredible/36]
Endurance: Typical/6 [Incredible/36]
Reason: Excellent/20 [Typical/6]
Intuition: Typical/6
Psyche: Excellent/20
[6+6+6+6+20+6+20 = 70 CPs on Primary Abilities]

Health: 24 when human, 40 when human with TK Exoskeleton, 74 when Bulked Out, 90 when Bulked Out w/ TK Exoskeleton
Karma: 46
Resources: Typical/06
Popularity: ???
[6*2 = 12 CPs on Resources]

KNOWN POWERS

Alternate Form: This Powerhouse isn’t always superpowered, but gets that way by undergoing a startling metamorphosis. When “bulked out,” he has the following:

• Body Resistance: Remarkable/30 vs. Physical, Excellent/20 vs. Energy.
• Hyper-Endurance: Remarkable/30, from Ty/6 to In/36
• Hyper-Strength: Excellent/20, from Ty/6 to Rm/26
• Limitation - Reduced Mind: Reason drops Gd/14 points (from Ex/20 to Typical/6), and loses access to Physics and Radiation Talents. [-29 CPs?]

[(10+30) +(10+30) +(10+20) +(-29) = 81 CPs]

Power Ring: Able to turn thoughts into electromagnetic reality. Grants a number of abilities to the wearer:

• Body Resistance: A skin-tight force field, resulting in Typical/6 protection from physical attacks. [10+6 = 16 CPs]
• Feature: Offsets Reduced Mind Limitation when Bulked Out. [29 CPs?]
• Flight: Good/10 air speed. [10+10 = 20 CPs]
• Hard Light Constructs: An array of effects, though only one at a time may be used.
• --- Energy Blast: Remarkable/30 Energy
• --- Energy Constructs: can create objects with an effective material strength of Remarkable/30
• --- Telekinesis: Remarkable/30 strength and range
• --- Telekinetic Exoskeleton: raises Body Resistance by Good/8 (to Gd/14 vs. physical, Pr/4 vs. Energy), Fighting by Typical/6 (to Good/12), and Strength by Good/10 (to Ex/16 when human, In/36 when bulked out)

[(10+30) +(10+30) +(10+30) +(10+24) = 154 CPs]
or [(10+30) +(10+30)/10 +(10+30)/10 +(10+24)/10 = 51 CPs]

[16+29+20+154 = 219 CPs] for Ring
or [16+29+20+51 = 116 CPs] for Ring

Summary

• Human, No Ring: Fighting Ty/6, Strength Ty/6, Endurance Ty/6, Reason Ex/20; Health 24, Karma 46; Body Resistance None.
• Human, w/ Ring: Fighting Ty/6, Strength Ty/6, Endurance Ty/6, Reason Ex/20; Health 24, Karma 46; Body Resistance Ty/6.
• Human, w/ Ring’s TK Exoskeleton: Fighting Gd/12, Strength Ex/16, Endurance Ty/6, Reason Ex/20; Health 40, Karma 46; Body Resistance Gd/14 (Gd/12 vs. physical, Pr/4 vs. energy).
• Bulked Out, No Ring: Fighting Ty/6, Strength Rm/26, Endurance In/36, Reason Ty/6; Health 74, Karma 32; Body Resistance Rm/30 (Rm/30 vs. physical, Ex/20 vs. energy)
• Bulked Out, w/ Ring: Fighting Ty/6, Strength Rm/26, Endurance In/36, Reason Ex/20; Health 74, Karma 46; Body Resistance In/36 (In/36 vs. physical, Rm/26 vs. energy)
• Bulked Out, w/ Ring’s TK Exoskeleton: Fighting Gd/12, Strength In/36, Endurance In/36, Reason Ex/20; Health 90, Karma 46; Body Resistance In/44 (In/44 vs. physical, Rm/34 vs. energy)

[81+219 = 300 CPs on Powers]
or [81+116 = 197 CPs on Powers]

Talents: Weapons Specialist (Power Ring; applies to Fighting when using TK Exoskeleton and Agility when using Blast, Create Object, and Telekinesis). When not Bulked Out (or when wearing the Ring while Bulked Out), also has Physics and Radiation.
Contacts: None
[20 CPs on Talents & Contacts]

[70+12+300+20 = 402/300 CPs]
or [70+12+197+20 = 299/300 CPs]

Second CP totals are based on my “With Great (Multi)Power” House Rule, seen here.

---

What if... Bruce Banner found a Green Lantern Ring? Punching... inn... SPAAACE!

Bare-bones origin: scientist working on radiation -- perhaps on trying to find a way to depower (or at least stabilize) one of the many Gamma-powered menaces in the MU -- is exposed to a massive burst of mutational energy. He turns into a monochrome-skinned powerhouse, goes on some (controlled) rampages, eventually comes across a wrecked spacecraft where a dying alien, sensing the troubled and noble soul within, gives him its ring. The ring acts as a calmative on the goliath (much like a Mother Box does for Orion's rages), allowing him to keep both his mind and his muscle. Alternatively, the ring was something he had on when the energy exposure happened (something he'd either picked up at a little store that wasn't there yesterday, or a family heirloom) and the ring turned out to be an alien supercomputer, damaged/drained but now reinvigorated by the massive influx of energy. Even without the ring calming him, he's still cogent enough to not mindlessly smash through everything (though he may still be ill-tempered!).

In his bulked-out Alternate Form, he's got superhuman toughness and stamina and just barely superhuman strength; with the Ring's "hard light exoskeleton," his strength is solidly superhuman, a few points shy of Spider-Man’s. Even when not "bulked out," his effective Agility of Ex/20 with his Ring (due to Weapons Specialist talent) and the Ring’s Rm/30 Blast, Create Objects, and Telekinesis means he’s no slouch in a fight. (The Ring should have some sort of life support and space flight effect, but those were cut for points.)

More importantly, the Ring restores his mind: when 'bulked out,' he's not dumb per se, but he is dumber than usual. With the Ring, he's got his mind back, and becomes a far more canny and dangerous opponent.

Lots of options for growth here, as you continue to mutate, and the Ring slowly repairs itself, or is repaired by lil' blue gnomes who come in the night and surely have only the best of intentions...

The Hulk expy looks VERY confusing with all those different stat blocks.

Oh, certainly, it's a tricky build. It was partly an exercise to see if the concept could be built. I do have a few more similarly complex builds, but most are much more straightforward.

VAMPIRE WITH A POWER (SHADOW) RING

Carpe diem delendo solis.
(Seize the day by blotting out the sun.)

STATISTICS
Fighting: Typical/6
Agility: Typical/6
Strength: Excellent/20
Endurance: Excellent/20
Reason: Good/10
Intuition: Good/10
Psyche: Excellent/20
[6+6+20+20+10+10+20 = 92 CPs on Primary Abilities]

Health: 52
Karma: 40
Resources: Typical/06
Popularity: ???
[6*2 = 12 CPs on Resources]

KNOWN POWERS

Shadow Ring: Grants a number of abilities to the wearer:

• Body Resistance: mystical toughening of the body with dark magic, providing Excellent/20 protection from physical & energy attacks, but ineffective against blessed/holy, fire, or magic. [bought as Good/10 due to limit; 10+10 = 20 CPs]
• Darkforce Manipulation: An array of effects, though only one at a time may be used.
• --- Create Darkness: Remarkable/30 intensity over up to three areas.
• --- Darkforce Blast: Remarkable/30 Energy
• --- Darkforce Constructs/Shadow Armory: can create objects with an effective material strength of Remarkable/30. Often uses this to create weapons of up to Rm/30 material strength.
• --- Enhanced Teleport: raises Teleport by Remarkable/30, to Incredible/36, but still requires shadows to move in/out of.
• --- Tenebrous Form: as Phasing of Remarkable/30 rank (does not disrupt electrical systems, and still vulnerable to harm by blessed/holy, fire, and magic); bought at -1 CS cost due to Limit
• --- Telekinesis: shadowy hands & tenebrous tentacles moving things with Remarkable/30 strength and range
  [(10+30) +(10+30) +(10+30) +(10+30) +(10+20) +(10+30) = 230 CPs]
  or [(10+30) +(10+30)/10 +(10+30)/10 +(10+30)/10 +(10+20)/10 +(10+30)/10 = 59 CPs]
• Feature: Ring protects wearer from harmful effects of sunlight. [???]
• Flight: Feeble/2 speeds, allowing (among other things) for wearer to ‘crawl’ along walls and ceilings while in tenebrous form. [10+2 = 12 CPs]
• Teleport: Typical/6 rank, self + worn/carried things, but only into and out of areas of shadow big enough to contain his whole body. [no cost break for Limit b/c ring can generate own darkness; 10+6 = 16 CPs]

[20+230+?+12+12 = 274 CPs]
or [20+59+?+12+12 = 103 CPs]

Vampire Powers: Several abilities granted by his unholy nature:

• Ability Enhancement: +2 CS to Strength and Endurance (already figured in)
• Bio-Vampirism: Poor/4
• Body Resistance: Good/10 rank vs. physical & energy attacks, but ineffective against blessed/holy, fire, or magic. [bought as Ty/6 due to limit]
• Hypnotic Control: Excellent/20
• Immortal: unless killed by blessed/holy, fire, magic, or sunlight
• Regeneration: Poor/4

[(10+4) +(10+6) +(10+20) +(20+?) +(10+4) = 94 CPs ]

Total Body Resistance with Ring: Remarkable/30 vs. physical & energy, Sh0 vs. blessed/holy, fire, or magic.

[274+94 = 368 CPs on Powers]
or [103+94 = 197 CPs on Powers]

LIMITATIONS

Sunlight: Exposure inflicts Poor/4 damage per round. [???]

Talents: Linguistics (English, Italian; Spanish is native), Occult Lore, Weapons Specialist (Shadow Ring; applies to Fighting when using Shadow Armory and Agility when using Darkforce Blast, Darkforce Constructs, and Telekinesis).
Contacts: None
[30 CPs on Talents & Contacts]

[92+12+368+30 = 502/300 CPs]
or [92+12+197+30 = 331/300 CPs]

Second CP totals are based on my “With Great (Multi)Power” House Rule, seen here.

---

X with a Power Ring? Vampire with an X? An attempt at making a Lasombra? Yes!

Spanish Catholic priest (priest-in-training?) gets attacked one night several hundred years ago and turned into a vampire, a type known for its great physical strength and domineering ways and less for physical speed or turning into mist (like those other types of vampires. You know the ones.) Why him? Perhaps random chance, perhaps the vam-pater enjoyed the cruelty of turning a man of God into a creature that could not bear the sight of His symbols, perhaps it was yet one step in a fiendishly complex plan. Whatever the reason, this holy man now found himself in quite the situation, desiring to continue his earthly works while being something wholly unearthly. He tried, for a time, to be a good man, to ignore his terrible hungers, but his resolve was only human, and slowly, inch by inch, his humanity was consumed by the beast within. He became a corrupt force within the church, even going so far as to consort with dark magicians who crafted for him an onyx ring of great and terrible power. With it he could summon forth shadows from la Sombramundo, the Shadow-World (aka the Darkforce Dimension), to fly, to teleport anywhere in the Mediterranean... and withstand the burning rays of the sun, the Judgmental Eye of God.
But a curious thing happened. As he spent more and more time out in the day, making appearances and pretending to be a fine and upstanding priest, a change came over him -- he began to feel for the people, truly feel for them, their troubles and worries and fears. He saw them less as a means to fill his coffers (and belly), and more as actual people. He retired from his high Church position, donated all his ill-gotten gains, and set off to find how best he could serve both humanity and his deity. Seeing the first costumed heroes appear inspired him more, and soon he resolved to show the world -- and himself -- that dark is not (necessarily) evil.

You may notice the lack of infravision or any other ability to see in the dark (aside from a high Intuition). That’s intentional, a reference to how default White Wolf vampires -- including the shadow-manipulating Lasombra -- can’t see in the dark, unless they’re extremely skilled in Obtenebration (6+ dots) or they take a dot in Protean, the signature discipline of the Gangrel (but for these White Wolf-inspired builds I’m trying to keep the vamps sticking to just their clan’s disciplines).

Dr Archeville Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Oh, certainly, it's a tricky build. It was partly
> an exercise to see if the concept could be
> built. I do have a few more similarly complex
> builds, but most are much more straightforward.

Don't really see why you keep using that homebrewed CP system for making the characters either really.

Partly because I'm hoping continued reference to it will get some more comments on that system (aside from Thrudjelmer, the only one who's commented so far). Also, because I think the system -- or something like it -- makes sense.