Concealment

CONCEALMENT

Type: Sensory Action: Free (active)

Range: Personal Duration: Sustained

Saving Throw: None Cost: 2 points per rank

Using this effect, you gain total concealment from a particular sense—usually sight or hearing—although you are still detectable to other senses (even other senses of the same sense type). Each additional rank gives you concealment from another sense; two ranks give you concealment for an entire sense type.

Concealment from visual senses costs double (2 ranks for one visual sense, 4 ranks for all visual senses). You cannot have concealment from

tactile senses, since that requires being incorporeal (see Insubstantial). So at rank 5, you can have total concealment from all visual senses (4 ranks) and normal hearing (1 rank), for example. At rank 10 Concealment you have total concealment from all sense types other than tactile.

While concealed, you can make surprise attacks against targets unaware of your presence (see Surprise Attacks, M&M, page 163). Attackers have a 50% miss chance against you (a roll of 11 or better on d20), assuming they know where to attack at all! Attackers able to perceive you with an accurate sense suffer no penalties, and combat is resolved normally. Someone can sense the presence of a concealed character

within three Notice range increments with an acute sense (see Super-Senses for details) and a DC 20 Notice check, such as using hearing to detect a character concealed from sight. The observer gains a hunch that “something’s there” but can’t accurately perceive it (suffering the normal miss chance, for example). A concealed character holding still is harder to notice (DC 30). A concealed inanimate object or completely

immobile creature is very hard to notice at close range (DC 40). It’s practically impossible (+20 DC) to accurately pinpoint a concealed character’s location using an acute sense.

POWER FEATS

• Close Range: The “close range” where someone can sense your presence with an acute sense is adjacent (5 feet) rather than three Notice range increments.Innate: This power feat is appropriate for subjects with innate or natural concealment qualities that cannot be nullified.

• Selective: You can vary your Concealment at will (a free action):going from total to partial to no concealment, concealing some parts of you and not others, or anywhere in-between. If your Concealment affects multiple senses, you can choose to affect some and not others with this feat as well. Concealment is normally all-or-nothing: either you are concealed or you’re not.

• Subtle: Concealment is Subtle by nature and does not require this power feat, since going unnoticed is part of its effect. It may also conceal the display of your personal range effects (see Noticing Power Effects, page 17).

EXTRAS

• Affects Others: The +1 level of this modifier allows others to benefit from your Concealment effect while you are touching them.

• Area: Concealment with Affects Others (previously) or Attack (immediately following) may have this extra, affecting all subjects in the area.

To conceal an entire area, see the Obscure effect.

• Attack: Use this extra for a Concealment effect you can impose on others (whether they want to be concealed or not). An invisibility ray, for example, is a Visual Concealment Attack. A Concealment Attack calls for a saving throw, usually Reflex or Will.

FLAWS

• Blending (–1): You “blend” into the background. Your Concealment only functions as long as you move no faster than your normal pace, since your blending can’t adapt faster than that.

• Limited: Your Concealment only works under certain conditions, such as in fog, shadows, or in urban locales.

• Limited to Machines (–1): Your Concealment is Limited only to senses with a technological descriptor. This includes ordinary things like

cameras and microphones as well as intelligent robots (if such things exist in the setting).

• Partial (–1): Your effect provides partial rather than total concealment (see Concealment, M&M, page 161).

• Passive (–1): Your Concealment only lasts until you make an attack—defined as any action requiring a saving throw—at which point it stops working until you reactivate it, which you may do on the round after you attack.

• Phantasm (–1): Your Concealment is Limited to creatures with Intelligence 1 or greater; unintelligent creatures and machines (cameras, microphones, etc.) perceive you as if you were not concealed at all. This usually indicates Concealment that is some sort of mental or hallucinatory effect. This flaw does not apply to Mental Concealment (which is already so limited by definition).

• Sense Dependent: Concealment is already sense-dependent and cannot have this flaw.

• Saving Throw (–1): Your Concealment offers a saving throw (Fortitude, Reflex, or Will, chosen when the flaw is applied) for anyone aware of your presence and actively looking for you. Targets get a new save for each interval on the Time Table that passes. This flaw is often combined with Phantasm (previously).

Concealment and Perception Range

Perception range effects must accurately perceive a target in order to affect it. This generally means you cannot target subjects with total concealment from all of your accurate senses with perception range effects. Thus, foes with Visual Concealment (the most common accurate sense) can be quite effective against characters relying on perception range attacks, unless the attacker has an unusual accurate sense to circumvent the Concealment. This is one reason Visual Concealment costs extra. At the Gamemaster’s discretion, a successful Notice check to accurately locate a target with an acute sense may allow you to use perception range effects on that target; however, the target still benefits from total concealment, giving the effect a 50% miss chance, even though perception range effects don’t normally require an attack roll and otherwise always “hit” their target.