We should preface this by stating we are focused on story telling and the system is more a guideline to the abilities and levels of the characters.
| Rating | Title | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Untrained | You have no training. |
| 1 | Novice | You are a casual hobbyist or beginning student. |
| 2 | Novice | You are a very interested hobbyist or a mid-level student. |
| 3 | Novice | You are a serious hobbyist or a senior student. |
| 4 | Proficient | You are a rookie - competent enough to be considered a professional, but lacking experience and finesse. |
| 5 | Proficient | You are no longer the 'rook' and have learned some of the tricks of the trade. |
| 6 | Proficient | You are a thoroughly competent professional with a several years of experience. |
| 7-9 | Veteran | You are a highly skilled, senior professional with many years of experience. The subtle differences in these levels speak breadth or depth of knowledge, and greater finesse or efficiency. |
| 10 | Master | You are elite – highly trained with lots of experience. |
| 11 | Master | You are a true master in your field. You probably have some degree of renown. |
| 12 | Master | You are one of the best in the world (alive today, not necessarily ‘best of all time’). |
Super Power
For each level of ability in a super ability in skills associated with supers, one can assume its moves exponentially at a step of 3. Level one is 3 times better than the prior step. The difference for this is for speedsters, they get an exponential increase at level 6, they take the increase from the prior step but change miles per hour to miles per second. This keeps them on scale to other things like healing and and super strength.
Examples:
| Ability | Base | Level 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| Speed | 30 mph | 90 mph | 270 mph | 810 mph | 2.5K mph | 7.3K mph | 21870 mps | 65K mps | 196K mps | 590K mps | 1.77m mps | 5.3m mps | 1.6b mps |
| Str. | 150 lbs | 450 lbs | 1350 lbs | 2 tons | 6 tons | 18 tons | 55 tons | 160 tons | 500 tons | 1500 tons | 4500 tons | 13.5k tons | 40k tons |
| Heal Bone | 8 Wks | 2 Wks 5 Days | 1 Week | 2 Days | 18 hours | 9 Hours | 3 Hours | 1 Hour | 45 Mins | 15 Mins | 5 Mins | 2 Sec | 1 Sec |
One ability that can be used in background skills is increasing affect of a power to include others. Here is a quick guide to help:
Level 1: Another individual
Level 2: Up to 3-4 Individuals
Level 3: 10 to a Dozen
Level 4: A couple dozen
Level 5: A 50-70
Level 6: Up to a hundred+
Level 7: A couple hundred
Level 8: Thousands limited to location (a building, a stadium, a city block)
Level 9: City-wide
Level 10: Statewide to Nation Wide
Level 11: Continent to Planet (s)
Level 12: Cosmic, lets not think about it.
At this rate, ~8-9 is top level comics, with room for growth. Level 8 is speed of light, but room to grow to Flash Speeds (multiples of speed of light), 8 is in the +100 tons congruent with newer comics and superman.
Mystic and Psychic
All combat comes down to actions skills. Determine how your magic or psychic ability works and how it would be represented in action skills. Direct mind attacks and emotions and influencing would be psychic, spells of charm or sleep or magic hex bolts and other magical things the can't be blocked by physical armor would be mystic (if you summon a sword that is more mystical than physical, mystic skill). This is more related to selecting BG skills for boosts and other abilities and spells outside of combat.
There are two options, and both are welcome to be utilized. They are the Bag of Tricks and the singular 'spell' or ability option.
Bag of Tricks Magic/Pyschic
By example, a mystic could take a magic, voodoo, spell casting, arcane knowledge and the like as a bag of tricks to represent training. A psychic could take sorcery, psychic power, mind bending, etc. Anything to indicate what sort of ability it is one is using, or a genre/them to it, potentially something to indicate the outcomes; psychic fabrication could make physical constructs, spirit control could get varying spirits to make or do the intended results, etc.
These do not relate to the above numbers of super powers and the scaling in FS3 we are trying to use. The 1-3 range is minor abilities and such, while 4-6 is in the realm of natural humans, 7-9 is in the range of lower level super abilities (range 1-3 in single slot abilities), and 10-12 is the realm of super amazing, mystical, miraculous stuff (depends on the context, could be up to 6 in a single ability or fantastic, like necromancer raising the dead).
Natural humans can do a lot. Such as pick up another human (levitate, or self levitate), move objects around, manipulate objects to do things, start fires, put out fires. Type on keyboards, break glass and wood, open and close things.
Single Slot Ability/Spell
If you want something specific like flight or teleport, the best bet is to take a specific effect and add it as a single slot spell or psychic ability. Much as any other super does. The energy manipulator may have energy construct wings or aura flight or gravity defiance. The mystic or psychic that wants to fly just the same can take a flight spell or gravity deflection sort of ability that does just the same. This is the only way to get magic or psychic abilities to be on par with regular super powers. Any bag of tricks will not be as effective.
Bag of Tricks General
Some other abilities can have a bag of tricks like effect, outside of utility psychic/magic. A rule of thumb for bag of trick super powers is a few abilities that add up to the number put into the bag of tricks if being specific, or a number of various effects at no more than 1/4 or 1/3 the point value put in. Like the Green Lantern, an energy or light construct ability cold fabricate objects. From bricks to steam locomotives. Similar to the magic bag of tricks, 1-3 is small effect, this would be minor human level ability (light strength, minor dexterity), and simple machines. 4-6 is more complex machines, moving parts, etc. 7-9 is complex machines (working guns, etc.) and 10-12 would be beyond this (full blown mecha suits, working complex computers, etc).