Acid

Effect: Damage, Secondary Effect

Action: Standard (active)

Range: Touch

Duration: Instant (see description)

Saving Throw: Toughness

Cost: 3 points per rank

You can generate or exude acid from your hands, affecting anything you can touch. Your acid inflicts damage equal to your power rank on the round of the attack and the round following the attack. Your Acid damage does not “stack,” however, so the secondary damage only occurs on rounds when you do not make a successful Acid attack.

Example: The deadly Acid Hand strikes with her burning acid touch, inflicting damage to Inventor. She manages to hit again on the following round, and Inventor is again subject to her acid damage. He manages to swoop out of her reach, but the next round is subject to one more Toughness save against Acid Hand's’ acid as the secondary effect does its work. Then the acid effect stops.

ALTERNATE POWERS

Instead of the previously described effect, Acid may have one of the following effects, or it might have one or more of them as Alternate Powers in an Array.

• Corrosion: You can use the Corrosion power at your Acid power rank (see the Corrosion description for details).

• Drain Impervious: Your corrosive touch weakens a target’s Impervious Protection, temporarily removing the Impervious modifier from as many ranks as your Acid power (so Acid 8 would remove 8 ranks of Impervious).

POWER FEATS

• Incurable: Acid damage may reasonably be impossible for normal Healing or Regeneration to repair, qualifying it for this power feat.

• Mighty: The GM may choose to allow this power feat for Acid (letting it stack with Strength damage) but most acid-wielding characters tend to rely on their power’s damage rather than the addition of their own Strength, and the GM may disallow Mighty for Acid damage.

• Precise: With this power feat, you can control your acid to a very fine degree allowing you to (for example) etch fine lines into materials or burn solely through firing pin or small mechanism without affecting anything around it. The GM may require a skill check (Craft, Concentration, Sleight of Hand, or another suitable

skill) for some precise power uses.

• Reversible: You can repair and remove damage inflicted by your acid at will. Perhaps your “acid” is actually a kind of molecular nano-solvent, retaining a "memory” of objects it destroys and able to reconstruct them, for example.

• Split Attack: You can use this feat to reflect grabbing or attacking two targets at once with reduced damage rather than focusing and concentrating your acid damage on a single target. The secondary damage of your acid is likewise reduced, the same as the initial damage.

• Subtle: While this power feat isn’t as likely for Acid as for some damaging powers, it can still apply: normal Acid is visible and usually hissing, bubbling, smoking or all three. Subtle Acid is less noticeable until its searing touch is felt, while completely Subtle Acid gives no warning, useful for an Acid-wielder who

offers a hand in supposed friendship, for example.

EXTRAS

• Alternate Save: Acid applied to Fortitude may represent a kind of fast-acting contact poison with a similar secondary effect, faster than the normal Poison extra, but also somewhat easier to counteract, since the toxin can be wiped or washed off rather than treated solely with Medicine or Healing.

• Area: Your Acid spreads out from you to affect an area, such as a radius (Burst) or acid cloud (Cloud) around you. The Line or Cone areas can represent a stream or spray of acid, Explosion a splash or acidic gas that diminishes in strength the further away it gets. A Trail area can be something like acidic slime left in the wake of a slithering creature or a trail of acidic mist.

• Aura: You exude acid over your entire body, affecting anything you touch automatically. You can make acid attacks normally, but also inflict acid damage on anyone touching or attempting to grapple you (see the Aura extra for details).

• Autofire: Not the most suitable extra for Acid, Autofire can still represent the ability of a well-applied Acid attack to inflict additional damage (in other words, the better the attack roll, the better the damage bonus) without necessarily being able to overcome a certain level of Toughness.

• Contagious: This is a common extra for Acid. The default power assumes the acid isn’t harmful to anyone but the target for the secondary damage; this extra makes it so anyone touching the target is also affected.

• Penetrating: Another common extra for Acid, Penetrating represents its ability to “eat” through most defenses, rendering even Impervious Toughness vulnerable to its damage. It’s especially effective for low ranks of Acid, allowing it to potentially affect any target.

• Poison (+0): Applied to Acid, this extra can replace the Secondary Effect modifier, shifting the second save against the acid to a minute later rather than the following round. The GM may allow you to customize the time interval between the Acid’s initial and secondary effects anywhere between one round and one minute (or perhaps more).

FLAWS

• Limited Target (–1): Your Acid only affects a particular type of target, such as only living or non-living. The former might indicate a kind of “cellular disruption” or organic solvent while the latter may involve accelerated decay of non-living matter, for example. Particularly limited targets may qualify for a larger modifier.

DRAWBACKS

• Power Loss: This power drawbacks can indicate a specific material your Acid doesn’t affect, such as glass/ceramics, precious metals, plastics, and so forth. More common (and therefore frequent) materials garner more power points, while particularly common materials qualify for the Limited Target flaw.

ASSOCIATED EFFECTS

The following effects may be related to the Acid power, or even Alternate Powers of it in cases of suitable non-permanent effects.

• Acid Blood: Rather than being able to use your Acid at will, you automatically inflict an Acid “attack” on anyone who does an injury condition or worse lethal damage to you in melee combat. You use Acid as a reaction (to being injured) but you must be injured in order for the effect to occur; the power’s cost remains the same.

• Acid Form: A character able to exude acid might also be able to transform bodily into acid! (See Alternate Form for details.)

• Burrowing: Acid is a good descriptor for the ability to rapidly tunnel through even solid rock, suitable for a Burrowing character.

• Immunity: An acid-wielder might have Immunity to acid damage (2 ranks for the fairly narrow descriptor) or Immunity to all acid effects (5 ranks). Immunity to poisons, suffocation, and even life support are also common.