Mutation

Effect: Transform

Action: Standard (active)

Range: Touch

Duration: Sustained (lasting)

Saving Throw: Fortitude

Cost: 4 points per rank

You can mutate living beings by touch, changing around their physical traits and appearance. The target of your Mutation power makes a Fortitude saving throw (DC 10 + Mutation rank) to avoid being transformed. A successful save means no effect and you must use extra effort to attempt to affect the target again in that same scene.

A failed save allows you to change the subject’s appearance and physical traits at will, including shifting power points from one trait to another. The subject’s character point total does not change, and any transformations must be within the power level limits of the campaign (or have the Gamemaster’s express permission), but otherwise you can mutate the subject as you wish. You cannot remove the subject’s Constitution score (since the subject is then by definition

no longer a living being), but everything else is fair game. The transformation lasts until the subject succeeds on a Fortitude save to overcome the effect or when you choose to reverse it.

POWER FEATS

• Incurable: The effects of your Mutation power cannot be countered, except by Persistent effects or your own power.

EXTRAS

• Contagious: The mutation you cause is contagious, infecting anyone coming into contact with a mutated subject and transforming them as well.

• Disease: Rather than transforming the target immediately, your Mutation power works like a disease, infecting the target and then transforming them when the target fails a Fortitude save against the disease.

• Duration: Continuous Mutation lasts until it is countered or you choose to reverse it (or it is reversed by another use of this power by someone else).

• Range: One application of this extra allows Mutation to work at normal range, while two allows it to work at perception range (still granting its normal saving throw).

FLAWS

• Fades: Mutation with this modifier fades over time. After a number of rounds equal to the number of power points you have re-allocated among the target’s traits, the target returns to normal. At the GM’s option, this may occur gradually, with power points shifting back to normal at a rate of one per round.

• Permanent: Mutation cannot have this flaw; its duration cannot be longer than continuous.

• Uncontrolled: You cannot choose what mutations you cause to a target, they occur randomly and at the Gamemaster’s whim.

ASSOCIATED EFFECTS

• Empowerment: If you can add power points to a subject in addition to shifting around existing points, then acquire Empowerment Linked to Mutation (see Empowerment in this chapter).