Effect: Array
Action: Free (active)
Range: Personal
Duration: Sustained
Saving Throw: None
Cost: 2 points per rank
You have a “reserve” of power points you can assign to improve your various powers, re-allocating them from round to round, if you wish. This can represent allocating extra energy from a battery or generator, parceling up available mystic power, or any similar effect. Points from your Power Reserve cannot improve any of your traits beyond the campaign’s power level, except with Gamemaster permission. Even if it is allowed, the GM may require extra effort, hero point expenditure, or both to exceed the limits.
Your Power Reserve has twice its rank in available power points. When you acquire it, choose two powers it can improve. Each additional power you can Augment with your Power Reserve is a separate power feat (and, as such, you can temporarily add an option as extra effort, redirecting your Power Reserve in an unusual way with the GM’s permission). You can divide your Power Reserve points among the powers it can improve as you see fit. Power Reserve points, once allocated, remain so until you choose to change them as a free action. You can re-allocate Power Reserve points once per round. If you are unable to maintain your Power Reserve for any reason, its benefits cease. The same is true if it is nullified or otherwise unable to function.
POWER FEATS
• Additional Power: Your Power Reserve can apply to an additional power beyond the first two you chose when you acquired it.
• Innate: A Power Reserve generally cannot have this power feat, since the enhanced traits it provides are by definition not your “default” traits, but enhancements.
• Subtle: Power Reserve is a subtle power by nature; the allocation of your Power Reserve points is not noticeable (although the enhanced effects of your powers may well be).
EXTRAS
• Affects Others: Your Power Reserve can augment another character’s traits. This is a +0 modifier if the Power Reserve only affects others, a +1 modifier if it can augment you or another character. In either case, you must touch the subject to grant them the benefit of your Power Reserve and you are still limited to enhancing the traits chosen with your power plus any others acquired with Additional Power feats (previously).
• Duration: A Continuous Power Reserve provides its benefits with no maintenance until it is nullified in some way or you choose to change the allocation of its power points.
• Range: Power Reserve that Affects Others may have this extra, allowing you to grant its benefits at normal range. For a +2 modifier, you can use your Power Reserve to augment a subject at perception range.
FLAWS
• Action: If re-allocating the points of your Power Reserve takes longer than a free action, this is a power drawback rather than a flaw (see Drawbacks, following).
DRAWBACKS
• Action: Taking longer to re-allocate your Power Reserve points is an action drawback. A move action is a 1-point drawback, 2 points for a standard action, 3 points for a full round action, and an additional point for each step up the Time Table thereafter (but with a maximum of 1 point less than the total cost of the Power Reserve).
• Full Power: You cannot split your Power Reserve points between two or more traits, you must apply them all to a single trait at a time.
• Noticeable: There is some noticeable effect when you allocate Power Reserve points: you glow visibly, your eyes brighten, your muscles grow, and so forth.
UNDER THE HOOD: POWER RESERVE
Power Reserve is based on the Array structure (see the description in the previous chapter), with a few modifications to suit the way the power works. In particular, Power Reserve has its own sustained duration, where Array normally does not, since most Arrays have no effect other than providing other effects. Power Reserve, on the other hand, does provide an effect, that of enhancing other powers, so making its duration sustained allows it to better interact with the rules for maintaining effects, nullifying, and so forth. Likewise, Power Reserve is the equivalent of a Dynamic Array, since its power points can be allocated to multiple effects (enhancements) at once, but Power Reserve doesn’t pay for the Dynamic power feat on the base effect or its Additional Powers, since it is also slightly limited by only enhancing pre-existing powers rather than having discrete effects of its own. This is the same reason why it doesn’t pay for having an “extra” Alternate Power (being able to apply to two powers as a default). These minor changes are essentially +0 modifiers that make Power Reserve work as intended and provide an example of the kind of minor tweaks Gamemasters can make or allow for certain power effects to better fit a particular conception, so long as the various benefits and drawbacks seem to balance out.