Super-Senses

Type: Sensory

Action: None (passive)

Range: Personal

Duration: Continuous

Saving Throw: None

Cost: 1 point per rank

One or more of your senses are enhanced, or you have additional sensory abilities beyond the normal five senses. Allocate ranks in Super-Senses to the Following effects. Some options require more than one rank, noted in their descriptions. Like all sensory effects, Super-Senses uses the sense types described on page 68 as descriptors.

ENHANCED SENSES

The following effects enhance or improve existing senses, whether one of the five normal senses or the additional senses listed in the following section.

• Accurate (2 or 4 ranks): An accurate sense can pinpoint something’s exact location. You can use an accurate sense to target something in combat. Visual and tactile senses are normally accurate for humans. Cost is 2 ranks for one sense, 4 for an entire sense type.

• Acute (1–2 ranks): You can sense fine details about anything you can detect with a particular sense, allowing you to distinguish betw een and identify different

subjects. Visual, auditory, and tactile senses are normally acute for humans. Cost is 1 rank for one sense, 2 for an entire sense type.

• Analytical (1–2 ranks): Beyond even acute, you can perceive specific details about anything you can detect with an analytical sense, such as chemical composition, exact dimensions or mass, frequency of sounds and energy wavelengths, and so forth. You can only apply this effect to an acute sense. Normal

senses are not analytical. Cost is 1 rank for one sense, 2 for an entire sense type.

• Counters Concealment (2 ranks): A sense type with this trait ignores the Concealment effect; you sense the subject of the effect normally, as if the Concealment wasn’t even there. So if you have vision that Counters Concealment, for example, then invisible beings are visible to you. Concealed subjects

seem slightly “off ” to you, enough to know they are concealed to others. This trait does not affect other sources of concealment, such as obstacles or other effects (like Obscure).

• Counters Illusion (2 ranks): A sense type with this trait ignores the Illusion effect; you automatically succeed on your saving throw against the illusion if it affects your sense type, realizing that it isn’t real.

• Counters Obscure (2 or 5 ranks): For 2 ranks, a sense type with this trait ignores the Obscure effect of a particular descriptor, such as darkness, fog/mist, or smoke, for visual Obscure. For 5 ranks, the sense type ignores all Obscure effects, regardless of descriptor.

• Extended (1 rank): You have a sense that operates at greater than normal range. Your range increment with the sense is increased by a factor of 10. Each additional time you apply this option, your range increment increases by an additional factor of 10, so one increase makes the range increment 100, two makes it 1,000, and so on.

• Penetrates Concealment (4 ranks): A sense with this trait is unaffected by concealment from obstacles (but not effects like Concealment, Illusion, or Obscure). So vision that Penetrates Concealment can see right through opaque objects, for example, and hearing that Penetrates Concealment is unaffected by sound-proofing or muffling materials, and so forth.

• Radius (1–2 ranks): You can make Notice checks with a sense against any point around you. Subjects behind you cannot use Stealth to hide from you without some other concealment. Auditory, olfactory, and tactile senses are normally radius for humans. Cost is 1 rank for use with one sense, 2 ranks for one sense type.

• Ranged (1 rank): You can use a sense that normally has no range (taste or touch in humans) to make Notice checks at a normal range increment (–1 per 10 feet). This can be enhanced with the Extended effect.

• Rapid (1 rank): You can read or take in information from a sense faster than normal: each rank increases your perception speed by a factor of 10 (x10, x100, etc.) with a single sense, double cost for an entire sense type. You can use rapid vision to speed-read, pick up on rapid flickering between frames of a film, watch video replays in fast-forward speeds, and such, rapid hearing to listen to time-compressed audio “blips,” and so forth. If your sense is rapid enough, the GM may allow you to take 20 with Notice checks using it as a full-action or even faster. See the Quickness effect for guidelines on this. (Rapid Sense is, in fact, essentially version of Quickness Limited to one or more of your senses.)

• Tracking (1 rank): You can follow trails and track using a particular sense. Basic DC to follow a trail is 10, modified by circumstances, as the GM sees fit. You only move at half normal speed while tracking. For 2 ranks, you can move at full normal speed while tracking, for 3 ranks you can move all-out while tracking.

ADDITIONAL SENSES

The effects here grant additional sensory capabilities or senses beyond the normal five senses.

• Communication Link (1 rank): You have a link with a particular individual chosen when you acquire this option, who must also have this ability. The two of you can communicate over any distance like a use of the Communication effect. Choose a sense type as a communication medium when you select this option; mental is common for psychic or empathic links. If you apply the Dimensional power feat to your Communication Link, it extends to other dimensions as well (see Dimensional under Super-Senses’ Power Feats for details).

• Danger Sense (1 rank): When you would normally be surprised in combat, make a Notice check (DC 15). Success means you are not surprised and may act during the surprise round (if any). Failure means you are surprised (although, if you have Uncanny Dodge, you retain your dodge bonus to Defense). The GM may raise the DC of the Danger Sense check in some circumstances. Choose a sense type for your Danger Sense. Sensory effects targeting that sense also affect your Danger Sense ability and may “blind” it.

• (Descriptor) Awareness (1 rank): You can sense the use of effects of a particular descriptor with a successful Notice check (DC 10, –1 per 10 feet range). Examples include Cosmic Awareness, Divine Awareness, Magical Awareness, Mental Awareness, and so forth. You can apply enhanced sense traits to your Awareness to modify it. Choose the sense type for your

Awareness; it is often a mental sense, but doesn’t have to be. Awareness counts as an “exotic sense” for noticing effects with the first rank of the Subtle power feat (see Subtle under SuperSenses’ Power Feats for details).

• Detect (1–2 ranks): You can sense a particular item or effect by touch with a Notice check. Detect has no range and only indicates the presence or absence of something (being neither acute nor accurate). Choose what sense type your Detect falls under (often mental). For 2 ranks you can detect things at a normal range increment (–1 per 10 feet).

• Direction Sense (1 rank): You always know what direction north lies in and can retrace your steps through any place you’ve been.

• Distance Sense (1 rank): You can accurately and automatically judge distances.

• (Effect) Awareness (1 rank): This works like Descriptor Awareness (previously) but applies only to one effect regardless of descriptor(s). Examples include Concealment Awareness, Mind Control Awareness, Teleport Awareness, and so forth.

• Infravision (1 rank): You can see in the infrared portion of the spectrum, allowing you to see heat patterns. Darkness does not provide concealment for objects differing in temperature from their surroundings. If you have the Track ability, you can track warm creatures by the faint heat trails they leave behind.

• Microscopic Vision (1–4 ranks): You can view extremely small things. You can make Search checks to see tiny things in your own area. Cost is 1 rank for dust-sized objects, 2 ranks for cellular-sized, 3 ranks for DNA and complex molecules, 4 ranks for atomicsized. The GM may require a Knowledge skill check, particularly Knowledge (physical sciences) to interpret what you see.

• Postcognition (4 ranks): Your senses extend into the past, allowing you to perceive events that took place previously. You can make Notice and Search checks to pick up on past information in an area or from a subject. The Gamemaster sets the DC for these checks based on how obscure and distant in the past the information is, from DC 15 (for a vague vision that may or may not be accurate) to DC 30 (for near complete knowledge of a particular past event as if you were actually present). Your normal (present-day) senses don’t work while you’re using Postcognition; your awareness is focused on the past. Your postcogntive visions last for as long as you concentrate. Postcognition does not apply to mental effects like Mind Reading or any other ability requiring interaction with the past. Postcognition may be Limited to past events connected to your own “past lives” or ancestors, reducing cost to 2 ranks.

Precognition (4 ranks): Your senses extend into the future, allowing you to perceive events that may happen. Your precognitive visions represent possible futures. If circumstances change, then the vision may not come to pass. When you use this ability, the Gamemaster chooses what information to impart.

Your visions may be obscure and cryptic, open to interpretation. The Gamemaster may require appropriate Notice skill checks for you to pick up on particularly

detailed information, with a DC ranging from 15 to 30 or more. The GM can also activate your Precognition to impart specific information to you as an adventure hook or plot device. Your normal (present day) senses don’t work while you’re using Precognition; your awareness is focused on the future. Your precognitive visions last as long as you concentrate. Precognition does not apply to mental effects like Mind Reading or any other ability requiring

interaction with the future.

• Radio (1 rank): You can “hear” radio frequencies including AM, FM, television, cellular, police bands, and so forth. This allows you to pick up on Radio Communication (see the Communication effect). This is the base sense of the radio sense type. It’s ranged, radius, and accurate by default.

• Time Sense (1 rank): You always know what time it is and can time events as if you had an accurate stopwatch.

• Ultra-Hearing (1 rank): You can hear very high and low frequency sounds, like dog whistles or ultrasonic signals.

• Ultravision (1 rank): You can see ultraviolet light, allowing you to see normally at night by the light of the stars or other UV light sources.

• Uncanny Dodge (1 rank): This feat may also be a feature of Super-Senses rather than training or talent (see Uncanny Dodge, M&M, page 65). Choose a sense type for your Uncanny Dodge; sensory effects of that type may overcome it.

SAMPLE SUPER-SENSES

Listed here are some examples of Super-Senses using the enhanced and additional senses listed previously. Players should feel free to take these pre-fabricated examples as abilities of Super-Senses and to use them as models for creating their own unique SuperSenses.

• Aura Reading (5 ranks): You can “read” the invisible psychic auras that surround all creatures, showing their mood, physical condition, and any outside psychic influences affecting them. Aura Reading is a mental sense, although the information (the auras) is perceived as visual. Detect Mood and Physical

Condition (both ranged), Psychic Awareness.

• Cosmic Awareness (2 ranks): You are innately “plugged in” to cosmic forces, able to sense them at work in the universe. You sense cosmic effects in your local area, plus you may pick up on universe-affecting forces at a much greater distance (at the GM’s discretion). Apply the Extended option to expand this

sense’s range. Additionally, you can spend a hero point to ask “the Universe” (the Gamemaster) a direct question and get an answer (essentially a specialized use of the inspiration aspect of spending hero points). Cosmic Awareness and Benefit (directed inspiration).• Darkvision (2 ranks): You can see normally in the dark, even darkness created by an Obscure effect (although other Obscure descriptors, such as fog or blinding light, affect you normally). Vision Counters Obscure (darkness).

• Detect Magic (2 ranks): You can make Notice checks to detect the presence of magical effects, creatures, and items, with a normal modifier of –1 per 10 feet distance. Mental Detect (magic), Ranged.

• Detect Weakness (4 ranks): You can pick up on any potential weaknesses a target may have. A successful Notice check (opposed by Bluff, Sense Motive, Stealth, or a trait of the GM’s choice) gives you insight into the subject’s drawbacks, flaws, and similar weaknesses. The Assessment feat may be added to Detect Weakness for an additional rank. Detect Weaknesses, Ranged, Acute, Analyze.

• Ladar (3 ranks): By emitting infrared lasers that bounce off solid surfaces, you can build an accurate picture of your surroundings, even when you cannot normally see them. Vision Counters Obscure (darkness), Radius.

• Low-Light Vision (1 rank): You can see twice as far in lowlight conditions as normal. Vision Counters Obscure (darkness), Limited.

• Radar (4 ranks): By sending out radiowave emissions that bounce off solid surfaces, you can build an accurate picture of your surroundings. Accurate, Radius, Ranged Radio Sense.

• Scent (1 rank): You can differentiate and identify individuals by scent alone, although you cannot determine things like exact location (since your sense of

smell is not necessarily accurate). Acute Scent.

• See Invisible (2 ranks): You can see anything hidden by a Concealment effect as it were not concealed. Vision Counters Concealment.

• Sonar (3 ranks): By sending out ultrasonic emissions that bounce off solid surfaces, you can build an accurate picture of your surroundings. Accurate Ultrasonic Hearing.

• Spatial Awareness (4 points): You are mentally aware of your surroundings, even when you cannot see them. Accurate, Radius, Ranged Mental Sense.

• Trace Teleport (1 rank): You can “track” another teleporter, provided your Teleport range is at least equal to theirs. Make a Notice check, DC 10, +1 per round

since the target teleported (+10 DC per minute) and –1 to your check result per 10 feet between you and the departure point (no modifier if you are on the same spot). If the check succeeds you teleport to the place where your target went (or the closest open space, if that point is occupied). If the check fails, you don’t go anywhere; you can’t get an accurate “lock.” You only get one attempt to track a particular teleport, and you can’t take 10 or 20 on the Notice check. Track Teleport.

• Tremorsense (3 ranks): You can accurately feel the location of moving objects in contact with the same surface as you (such as the ground). If used underwater, you can feel objects moving through the water all around you, like a normal radius sense. Accurate Ranged Touch.

• True Sight (10 ranks): You automatically see through any Concealment, Illusion, or Obscure effect, see the true form of any disguised creature (including traits that grant a Disguise bonus, like Morph and Shapeshift), and see any deliberately hidden or concealed item (secret door, hidden panel, etc .), although the GM may require a Notice check to detect the latter. Vision Counters Concealment, Counters Illusion, Counters Obscure (all), Detect Hidden.

• X-Ray Vision (4 ranks): You can see through solid objects as if they weren’t there (such objects provide no concealment to you). You have to define one reasonably common substance you can’t see through, such as lead, gold, iron, wood, or such. A subject with no concealment relative to you cannot use Stealth to hide from you without a feat like Hide in Plain Sight or an effect like Concealment. X-Ray Vision may be Limited to particular substances (natural earth, for example), reducing cost to 2 ranks. It is a commonly associated effect of the Permeate ability of Super-Movement, allowing you to see where you’re going as you pass through a solid object. Vision Penetrates Concealment.

POWER FEATS

• Alternate Power: At the Gamemaster’s discretion, a “sensory array” is an option if all the senses included are sustained or continuous in duration, allowing the character to switch between them as desired. Note that this may represent a cost savings for a wide range of Super-Senses, but those senses will not all be available at the same time, so the character may miss certain things or not have the right sense(s) active at the right time to avoid a particular hazard or pick up on an important piece of information.

• Dimensional: This power feat allows you to extend your senses into other dimensions. It’s assumed to apply to all your senses, allowing you to sense your proximate location in the other dimension(s). For a more extended range, use ESP with this feat.

• Extended Reach: This power feat does not apply to SuperSenses; they have their own options (notably the Extended feature) for enhancing their “reach.”

• Improved Range: Likewise, this power feat does not apply to Super-Senses; use options like Extended instead.

• Innate: The Super-Sense abilities of many creatures, particularly aliens or constructs like robots, may be Innate, although this does not prevent sensory effects like Dazzle or Obscure from disabling them (which is different from countering or nullifying them). See the Sensory Shield power for that effect.

• Subtle: As passive effects, Super-Senses are Subtle by default and do not require this power feat.

EXTRAS

Super-Senses often take advantage of the partial modifiers rule when applying extras and flaws so they affect only particular ranks (and therefore senses). See the information under SuperMovement on applying modifiers to individual ranks of the effect.

• Affects Others: With this extra, you can grant the benefits of one or more Super-Senses to another character. Apply Affects Others only to the ranks of the chosen sense(s).

• Attack: This extra does not apply to Super-Senses. For sense affecting attacks, use other sensory effects like Dazzle, Illusion, and Obscure.

• Area: The Area modifier only applies to Super-Senses which Affect Others, and only to extend their benefits to everyone in an area. Apply the Selective power feat for the ability to choose who in your area does and does not benefit from the Super-Senses. To affect the area of a sense, use the Extended and Radius traits of the Super-Senses effect.

• Range: Likewise, the Range extra only applies to Super-Senses that Affect Others, extending the range at which you can grant their benefits. To extend a sense’s range, use the Extended, Radius, and Ranged traits of the Super-Senses effect.

FLAWS

• Distracting: Using some Super-Senses may prove distracting compared to one’s normal senses, in which case this modifier applies. It is best reserved for Super-Senses intended to be used outside of combat, and shouldn’t apply to senses that help users avoid surprise or overcome concealment, since it takes away much of their utility (robbing the user of dodge bonus as surely as those conditions).

• Duration: The duration of Super-Senses cannot be changed, although the action required to use them may be, at the GM’s discretion (see the Action drawback in the following section for details).

• Limited: Some Super-Senses may be Limited to only sensing certain things or only under certain circumstances. As usual, the sense must lose about half its utility to qualify for this flaw, less than that is more likely a particular descriptor associated with the sense and may constitute a complication at the GM’s discretion when it comes up in play.

• Permanent: This flaw does not apply to Super-Senses; the inability to turn them on and off is generally a complication at best rather than an actual flaw in the effect.

• Sense-Dependent: Super-Senses are, naturally, already sense-dependent and so cannot have this flaw.

• Unreliable: Some Super-Senses may be unreliable; the GM makes checks for reliability when the sense is used. Two variations of this flaw may apply: in the first, the Super-Senses effect is unreliable, when it doesn’t work, the character perceives nothing with that sense. In the second, the character’s perceptions are

unreliable, the sense appears to work, but the character gets the wrong information. For this reason, the GM should make all reliability checks for Super-Senses in secret, just informing the player of what the character does (or does not) notice.

DRAWBACKS

• Action: Super-Senses normally don’t require an action apart from that of the normal Notice or Search check. However, this power drawback makes using Super-Senses more of an effort. The value of the drawback depends on the action required: 1 point for a move action, 2 points for a standard action, and

3 points for a full-round action. Further time requirements move one step up the Time Table per point, although the GM should decide of such constitutes a desirable drawback (Super-Senses taking a minute or more aren’t particularly useful in most settings). As with all drawbacks, this one must have a point value less than the total cost of the Super-Senses effect.

• Disability: Some comic book characters with Super-Senses also lack one of their normal senses, such as blind heroes with “radar sense” or deaf-mute characters with Mental Communication. Keep in mind that the value of the Disability drawback—like all other drawbacks—is situational and based on how much of a drawback it is for that particular character; A drawback that doesn’t inconvenience a character isn’t much of a drawback. Thus blindness is less of a drawback for a hero with another accurate sense (and a radius one, at that), worth only a point or two at most for the hindrance it imposes.

• Noticeable: Super-Senses with this drawback are particularly noticeable in some way: your eyes may glow, for example, or you may emit a noticeable sound, vibration, energy, or the like for use as a sensor.

• Vulnerable: Characters with Super-Senses may be vulnerable to certain sensory effects, making saves against things like Dazzle effects more difficult, for example. The default assumption is that Super-Senses carry no automatic vulnerability to such effects, but in realistic setting they make sense unless the character has some specific ability to “filter out” unwanted or dangerous sensory input.

• Weakness: Likewise, Super-Senses may imply a weakness caused by increased sensitivity. A character with darkvision might be dazzled or blinded by bright light, for example, while a hero with super-sensitive hearing could be deafened or stunned by the noise of a crowded city at rush-hour. This type of Weakness could be in conjunction with a Vulnerable to Dazzle effects drawback.

UNDER THE HOOD: NORMAL SENSES

Senses in Mutants & Masterminds are broken down into sense types, used as a descriptor for sensory effects. Here are the traits of normal human senses, for use when modifying them with enhanced sense traits from Super-Senses: • Visual: Normal vision is ranged (with a –1/10 feet range increment), acute (able to distinguish fine details) and accurate (able to pinpoint to locations of things). 5 points. • Auditory: Normal hearing is ranged (with a –1/10 feet range increment), acute (able to pick up details like differences in tone), and radius (able to pick up on sounds coming from any direction). Normal hearing is not accurate. 4 points. • Olfactory: Normal human olfactory senses, which lump together smell and taste for descriptor purposes, are fairly limited. Although “ranged” (at least for the sense of smell), ordinary human olfactory senses are neither acute nor accurate. The sense of smell is a radius sense, however, able to pick up on scents coming from any direction. 3 points. • Tactile: The normal sense of touch is, by definition, touch-ranged. It is acute, accurate (in that you know the location of anything you can touch) and radius (in that you can feel things from any surface of your body). 4 points. • Mental: In Mutants & Masterminds terms, the “sixth sense” or mental sense type is considered fairly crude in normal humans, limited essentially to interactions with the Sense Motive skill and awareness of mental effects used directly on you. Thus it is “touch” range and has none of the enhanced sense qualities. 1 point. Lacking one or more qualities of a normal sense can be considered a drawback (see Drawbacks, M&M, page 124). Normal sight, for example, is worth 5 points as a sense, so being completely blind is a 5-point drawback. Note that the value of any such drawback may be modified by whatever Super-Senses you have, however. For example, being blind is not nearly so serious a drawback when you have another ranged, accurate sense to compensate, such as natural “radar” or “sonar”. Likewise, if you only lack the sense part of the time (only during the day, for example), then the drawback may be common rather than very common (worth a point less). The GM ultimately sets the appropriate value of missing sensory traits in the game.

OPTION: PRECOGNITIVE DO OVERS

One option for handling Precognition is to give the player of a precognitive hero the meta-game ability to use that foresight. For example, with a successful use of Precognition, the player can spend a hero point to declare a “do-over” of a particular scene, “resetting” things to a point in the past, like the “save point” in a video game. The events that occurred in the game after that point were nothing more than a precognitive vision! So, for example, when the group falls into a trap, the precog player declares a use of Precognition and spends a hero point. Events “roll back” to just before the heroes set off the trap. The precog grabs the arm of his teammate, saying, “Wait, there’s a trap!” Note the hero still loses the hero point even though those events “never happened.” The GM can likewise use this as an “escape hatch” if things go awry in the adventure; declare the problematic events a precognitive warning and reset the adventure to a previous moment so the heroes can try again. Be careful not to let this ability become problematic in and of itself. If players feel they have an “escape clause” for every bad situation, they may adopt a videogame-like system of exploring every possible option, knowing they can return to their “save point” when things go badly. Available hero points should limit precognitive “do-overs,” but you should also feel free to use GM Fiat to limit them as needed.