Skills - Augmented

Thanks to augmentation technologies, rigid disciplines of mind and body have spread to those once barred from the experience. Feelings are mixed in almost every community on this purist versus augmentation mentality. "Are not the best things in life worked for through struggle", the argument of the purists stands opposed to the augmentation theory that, "All people should be free to explore the possibilities of life as every other person despite physiological or mental differences."

Augmentation Skills

Speed Reader

Exactly what it sounds like, you read fast. This has myriad applications, even if most are not worth much. Normal average reading speed is one hundred and fifty words a minute. A practiced speed reader can read over a thousand words/minute, far faster than information can be conveyed audibly.

Abnormal Energy Sense

You can feel when people are using energy-related mystical and augmented skills, as well as powerful practitioners of same. Advanced users may be able to detect electromagnetic fluxes given off by high-energy devices at short ranges.

Analytical Mind

A well structured and ordered mind, you can process large amounts of data quickly and more importantly correctly, allowing you to perform well in the role of Devil's Advocate. The higher your skill is, the more likely you are to be able to see the big picture and have a plan ready for even the most inopportune occurrences.

Clinical Outlook

Able to look on even the most grotesque, horrifying scenes with a calm expression and think things through rationally and clearly, when a less rational mind might break under the strain.

Eidetic Memory

You have a very good memory, developing as your experience in this skill increases. At the heights of this skill, it's extraordinarily rare for the user to forget anything they have seen or heard once they've reached that point.

Grispike

Ability to raise internal temperature to high levels, also offers a degree of resistance vs temperature extremes. At high skill levels, the user can appear to ignite their hands or feet, but that's an illusion - The temperatures their hands reach is enough to ignite gases with low ignition points, though that is typically done very cautiously - while they are resistant to heat, fires still hurt.

Rage

You're angry, so very angry, and your rage gives you strength, though it fogs your mind. The angrier you get, the more powerful you grow. Be warned, however, the crash is a bitch, as you won't even notice the wounds you take in your unreasoning rage, and will definitely be extremely hungry and weakened afterward.

• Rage Skills

Tentacle of Hair

Your hair is very tough - tough enough to wear scissors out after two or three cuts, and cheap electric trimmers give up the ghost after one - and mobile, typically worn down to the waist. This skill allows you to use your hair much like a monkey's prehensile tail. It takes all of your hair working together to move in ways other than billowing in a non-existent breeze, and many people have developed the skill for that purpose alone.

Unnatural Perception

Subconscious recognition of trivial details, enhanced perception, and an experienced subconscious creates an effect similar to a psychic's sixth sense, but not as powerful.

Ken Modality

As you increase this skill's level, it grows more powerful, granting more effects. At first, it only enhances your vision, allowing you to pick out consciously small details, but your range of vision grows over time, dipping first into one of Ultra-violet, Infra-red, or thermographic vision, and as you progress in ability, the others will come. (10, 20, 30)

Echolocation

After a long period of time, you've come to the point where you are able to listen to sounds and 'see' an accurate representation of your surroundings. This sight can be facilitated through the use of self-made clicks and taps, or through use of outside sound sources.

Enhanced Musculature

You're strong for your size, and as your ability grows, so does your strength, eventually reaching twice what a normal person of your stature could reach. This skill is an extrapolation of the genetic modifications made to the Arix and the Desh. Risks include the possibility of muscle separation and breaking your own bones with the strength of your muscles, risks which increase as your experience in this skill rises.

Equilibrium

Much like the Caspiez inherent ability, this allows you to shrug off the shifting magnetic fields, gravity fluxes, and solar anomalies common in space. Training in this skill is mandated in many space forces.

Hibernation

Biological and genetic manipulation has grafted the ability to hibernate to your system. Not as efficient or as effective as the Caspiez ability, this still allows you to hibernate quite effectively.

Unbreakable Bones

Okay, your bones aren't actually unbreakable, but they can take a hell of a lot of abuse - more, possibly far more in some cases - than any others. Some advanced users of this skill work as stuntmen, relying on their enhanced bones to give them the edge over their brethren, and others perform for crowds, breaking concrete blocks with their heads and ramming through cinder block walls.

Amrita

This is an accelerated healing ability, passive in nature. At low levels, cuts just close a little faster than normal, and doctors start mumbling about anti-coagulation drugs. At high levels, fresh, small cuts heal within a minute, and even the most grievous wounds probably won't keep you down for longer than a week or so with medical care. In addition, you're astonishingly hard to actually -kill.- While this skill doesn't really provide true regeneration, at high enough levels limbs can be stapled back on and be functional, if awkwardly and painfully, in an hour or two. Even direct head or heart shots may not be enough to stop a truly experienced user, though the subsequent brain damage may cause extensive memory or personality loss.

Heightened Reflexes

You can react like a cat or snake. Increasing skill decreases your reaction time, increases nerve structures related to motor control, and increases efficiency of your motive structures. However, your reflexes quickly outpace your thought processes, and your body tends to react via muscle memory long before you realize what's going on.

Posion Touch

As you start on this skill, you gradually ramp up the amount of poisons you consume during the day, slowly building your tolerance levels up. Eventually, you become effectively immune to many poisons, and your body is so impregnated with poisons that even your sweat is potentially lethal, to say nothing of your blood or tears. This is highly illegal. Be wary.

Soothing Touch

Many poisons have therapeutic qualities in the correct amounts. After a long period of training and experimentation, you've developed the ability to limit your poisonous secretions and instead use your abilities to make soporifics, sedatives, and analgesics, among others. It does require a fair amount of concentration to perform, and failure typically means that you secreted a potentially lethal fluid.

Sleepless

Standing long watches and emergency calls have taught the need to be able to function on minimal amounts of sleep. Advanced users will be completely refreshed by as little as three or four hours of sleep a night.

Tough Skin

Your skin is tough, thick and callused. While it's not exactly smooth and pleasant to the touch, it does provide protection against most common environmental hazards, like acid rain, or brief spurts of steam. This ability is very similar to the Vesuvian ability.

Energy Resistance

This ability alters your skin, offering increased energy resistance. While it won't replace real armor, it reduces the damage you take from common fires, and offers a modicum of protection from energy based weapons.

Impact Resistance

This ability alters your skin, increasing its resistance to impact damage and physical abuse. It won't replace true armor anytime soon, but it does offer a significant degree of resistance in hand-to-hand combat.

Voltaic

Similar in some respects to the psionic skill of Electrokinesis, this skill allows you to manipulate and generate electricity. In addition, a powerful Voltaic will almost never be harmed by an attack of electrical nature that they are aware of, or that occurs while they are actively using the skill.

Energy Drain

This skill allows you to actively drain electrical energy from systems near you, assuming said systems are not hardened against electromagnetic pulse. In this day and age, many things, including Powered Armor and most energy weapons, have far more power available to them than a Voltaic can safely drain in anything approaching a timely manner.

Winged

This is one of those that's just out there - some planets have sufficiently low gravity and thick enough atmosphere that someone could strap wings to their arms and go flying. You've taken this one step further, and had wings grafted to your back...after extensive modification of your pectoral muscles and bone structure, you can now experience flight without messy mechanical contrivances or the unpleasant 'splat' so common before.

Iron Willpower

Your force of will is indomitable. You can resist drugs, any form of mind control and most manipulation attempts, and remain steadfastly conscious despite that nasty knock to the head. Heck, you can even operate while gravely wounded! Okay, not that well, but you're still moving around when anybody else would be bleeding out on the street...For a while, anyways.

Tock

Users of this skill are said to be 'riding the tick,' as in Tick-tock. While it doesn't allow you to actually move any faster than normal, your personal sense of time is greatly expanded, leaving you with apparent time between the ticks to think about what you're doing. Use carefully, though...this skill burns calories like mad, and overuse results in extreme hunger, nausea, and in extreme cases, comatose states.

Grav Tolerance

Increased ability to handle high-G loads, this skill is popular among the pirates, navy, and the police that chase the pirates. ((Needs Expansion))

Conduit

A passive ability, this skill allows you absorb and convert ambient energy into metabolic energy. Depending on environmental conditions, users can go for a week or longer without eating, though protracted privation will result in biological failure, as while Conduit provides for your energy needs, it does not provide the nutrients and biomass needed for proper functioning and repairs. In addition, there is an uncertain but very firm limit on the maximum amount of energy you can absorb in a certain time frame. Going over this limit will cause serious health problems.

Sense

This skill allows the user to sense the levels of ambient energy around them, and pinpoint high-energy sources in a limited range, growing as their skill does.

Discharge

As users of Conduit advance, in many situations they find themselves absorbing energy faster than they can make use of it. This skill allows the user to discharge accumulated energy in the form of (Insert Energy Here). Typically users gradually release energy through Discharge to avoid burn-out dangers. However it is possible to discharge this energy in a burst, which can be effective offensively at a very short range of about two to five meters.

Absorption

A major advance in your abilities, Absorption allows you to absorb directed energy of a single type(Thermal, Kinetic, Photonic, EM 30THz And up, EM 30PHz and lower). As you increase in skill(every 10), you can either increase your ability to absorb one type of energy, or absorb more types of energy. While you have increased your maximum energy capacity, most forms of directed energy are very...energetic, and your maximum capacity will be reached very quickly.

Redirect

Not so much an advance in your skill to absorb energy, but more of a parallel development, this skill allows you to redirect the forms of directed energy that you can absorb. In effect, this skill allows you to 'bounce' energy around. Warning: Most energy weapons are light speed. Accurate redirection of directed energy weapons requires incredible reflexes, precision, perception, and skill.

Longevity

These are techniques, health practices, and various minor enhancements that can greatly extend the normal human lifespan, leaving experienced practitioners hale and hearty into their second century.

Mind/Machine Interface

Your ability to link up with a machine or computer through a DNI Port is more verbose. This can affect ease of use of your cybernetic parts, from flexibility to overall degree of control. For instance, a high level of Mind/Machine interface would make it much easier to pick up an egg or wood pencil without breaking it with a arm/hand optimized for melee combat/strength.