Shrinking

Type: Alteration

Action: Free (active)

Range: Personal

Duration: Sustained

Saving Throw: None

Cost: 1 point per rank

You can reduce your size. Every rank of Shrinking reduces your Strength by 1 (to a minimum of Str 1). Additionally, every four ranks reduce your size category and Toughness by one. So a medium sized creature is small and –1 Toughness at rank 4, tiny and –2 Toughness at rank 8, diminutive and –3 Toughness at rank 12, fine and –4 Toughness at rank 16, and miniscule and –5 Toughness at rank 20.

You gain all the benefits and drawbacks of your new size. For the effects of reduced size refer to the Reduced Size table and the Size section of Mutants & Masterminds (see M&M, page 34). Multiply your movement rates by the carrying capacity multiplier shown on the Reduced Size table.

REDUCED SIZE TABLE

POWER FEATS

• Alternate Power: If you have Shrinking, you can acquire Growth as an Alternate Power feat.

• Atomic Size: If you have Shrinking 20, you can shrink down past miniscule size to the atomic scale, allowing you to pass through solid objects by slipping between their atoms. You’re effectively immune to attacks at a higher scale, although the GM decides the effect of any given attack or hazard while you are at atomic size.

• Growth Strike: You can add the momentum of increasing size to your melee attacks, literally enlarging under an opponent’s jaw, for example. This gives you a +1 damage bonus per size category you enlarge until you reach your opponent’s size and only works on opponents larger than you are. So growing from miniscule to medium size as part of an attack does +5 damage.

• Innate: This power feat suits creatures and characters that are naturally smaller than medium-sized when applied to permanent Shrinking of the appropriate

rank.

• Microverse: If you have Shrinking 20, you can shrink down past miniscule size, to the point where you cross a dimensional barrier and enter a “microverse” which may or may not really exist at the subatomic level). Entering or leaving a microverse is a move action. In the microverse, you lose your Shrinking, but gain Growth equal to your Shrinking rank (and when you grow larger than awesome size, you leave the microverse and return to the normal universe where your powers return to normal). This feat is only available if the GM determines a microverse exists in the setting.

EXTRAS

• Compression (+3): You must have the Normal Strength and Normal Toughness extras (see both, following) to apply this extra. You shrink by compressing your mass into a smaller form, causing you to become stronger and tougher rather than more delicate. You have Density as a Linked effect of your Shrinking:

each rank of Shrinking also applies a rank of Density to your traits: your weight and carrying capacity modifier remain the

same regardless of size, but you gain Strength and Constitution from your increased density.

• Normal Abilities (+3): You retain your normal Strength and Toughness scores and your normal movement speed when you shrink, regardless of your size category. This extra includes all three of the following modifiers, which can also be applied individually.

• Normal Movement (+1): You retain your normal movement speed when you shrink.

• Normal Strength (+1): You suffer no reduction in Strength or carrying capacity when you shrink.

• Normal Toughness (+1): You suffer no reduction in Toughness when you shrink.

FLAWS

• Permanent: Your Shrinking effect cannot be turned off and you are permanently “stuck” at your smallest size (for your Shrinking rank), so Permanent Shrinking 12 means you’re permanently diminutive (between six inches and a foot tall). You can have any power feats or modifiers associated with

Shrinking, so long as they don’t depend on the ability to change your size (such as Growth Strike).

DRAWBACKS

• Full Power: You can only shrink down to minimum size for your rank and return to normal size, unable to assume any of the size categories in between. This drawback does not apply to characters with 4 or fewer ranks of shrinking, as there is no significant disadvantage associated with it.

ASSOCIATED EFFECTS

The following effects may be associated with Shrinking:

• Gliding: Given their reduced weight at smaller sizes, shrinking characters may be able to glide along wind currents, acquiring ranks in Flight with the Gliding modifier (see the Flight effect description for more information).

• Internal Attack: A shrinking character with the Atomic Size power feat can potentially pass into another character, then enlarge, causing a damaging molecular disruption while ejecting from the target’s body. This is a touch range Penetrating Damage effect (since it bypasses Impervious Toughness) and usually requires a move action to reach your target, unless you start out in close contact when you make the attack.

• Leaping: Smaller characters with the Normal Strength extra (see this power’s Extras) may not only be able to leap their normal distance, but even greater distances, propelling their reduced weight with their proportionately greater strength, acquiring ranks in Leaping Linked to Shrinking.

• Transmit: A particular trick of shrinking characters with the Atomic Size power feat is to “ride” telephone transmissions through wires to their destination. This is a Teleport effect with the Medium (telephone wires) flaw. Although it technically requires the ability to shrink at the same time, the GM may allow it as an Alternate Power feat of Shrinking so long as the character starts and ends the trip at normal size, the “shrinking” in between being nothing more than a descriptor of the Teleport effect. If the character wants to enter or emerge from a transmission at less than full size, however, the Transmit power should be Acquired separately.

OPTION: SHRINKING AND DAMAGE

Just as reduced size lowers effective Strength, so might it also reduce a character’s Damage effects, and perhaps even other effects involving saving throws. This option applies the Strength reduction of Shrinking (–1 point per active rank) to all of the character’s effects requiring saving throws, making them less effective, –1 power point per Shrinking rank. So a character using Shrinking 12 subtracts 12 power points from the effectiveness of any powers allowing saving throws (reducing a Blast power by 6 ranks, for example). Characters with the Normal Strength extra don’t suffer this reduction. This option can be combined with the Shrinking and Range option, previously, in which case the Normal Strength extra negates them both.