Mega-Stamina
A nova with Mega-Stamina is hardier, more durable and
more resistant to injury than your average nova. Although not always as
resilient as novas who actually buy defensive powers such as Force Field, novas
with Mega-Stamina are still mighty tough. Furthermore, they tend to have a
great deal of endurance; it's almost impossible to tire them out. Some of them
display little need for sleep, staying up for days at a time.
Perhaps most importantly of all, a nova with Mega-Stamina
feels very little pain. Regardless of the source — injury, disease, accident —
a nova with Mega-Stamina can shrug off the pain and keep on going. Unconfirmed
rumors speak of novas who were so resistant to pain
that they didn't feel the effects of injury until their wounds killed them. In
game terms, novas with Mega-Stamina suffer reduced dice pool penalties based on
their health level, as indicated in the following table.
x
• Stupendous: You can go for weeks without sleep, and
your healing rates are tripled. Base Resistance and Endurance ratings of 3
each. Lifespan 150+years. Dice pool penalties due to
injuries and pain are reduced by one. The character receives one extra soak
against bashing damage and one extra soak against lethal damage.
•• Amazing: Torturers despair of breaking you. Your
healing rates are four times faster than a baseline's. Base Resistance and
Endurance ratings equal 3 apiece. Lifespan 150+ years.
Dice pool penalties due to injuries and pain reduce by two. The character
receives two extra soak against bashing damage and one extra soak against
lethal damage, as well as one extra "Bruised" health level.
••• Incredible: Participating in a few triathlons in a
row doesn't even phase you. Your healing rates are
five times those of a normal human, and your base Resistance and Endurance
ratings begin at 4 each. Lifespan 180+ years. Dice
pool penalties due to injuries and pain reduce by three. The character receives
three extra soak against bashing damage and two extra soak against lethal
damage, as well as one extra "Bruised" health level.
•••• Spectacular: Bullets practically bounce off your
chest, and your healing rates are six times that of a baseline. Base Resistance
and Endurance ratings equal 4 each. Lifespan 200+ years.
Dice pool penalties due to injuries and pain reduce by four. The character
receives four extra soak against bashing damage and two extra soak against
lethal damage, as well as two extra "Bruised" health levels.
••••• Godlike: Missiles practically bounce off your
chest. Your healing rates are seven times better than any normal human's. Your
base Resistance and Endurance ratings equal 5 each. Lifespan
250+ years. Dice pool penalties due to injuries and pain reduce by five.
The character receives five extra soak against bashing damage and three extra
soak against lethal damage, as well as three extra "Bruised" health
levels.
Mega-Stamina
Enhancements
Enhancements that characters with Mega-Stamina may learn
or purchase include:
Adaptability
This enhancement allows the nova to survive nearly any
adverse environmental condition. In effect, the nova uses ambient quantum
energies to evolve and bolster her body's natural defenses, thus allowing her
to survive in environments normally hostile to human life, such as the vacuum
of outer space or underwater. Adaptability also allows the character to do
without food, sleep or other necessities of life. Often, a nova with
Adaptability spontaneously manifests gills, toughened skin or whatever feature
is needed.
System: The character is able to sustain herself indefinitely on residual quantum energies, so long
as she has at least one quantum point in her body. She does not need to eat,
sleep or breathe, and can survive indefinitely in conditions as hostile as
Death Valley,
Adaptability does not confer protection against
weaponry or nova attacks such as flame blasts or the like, only against natural
environmental conditions.
Durability
The nova is tough as nails. Although she's not
necessarily capable of ignoring attacks outright, she instinctively channels
deadly kinetic energy away from her body, rolls with otherwise lethal blows, or
is otherwise capable of reducing an instant-kill attack to a "Gee, that
stung" level of injury.
System: Whenever the character is hit with a kinetic
attack inflicting lethal damage (bullet, knife, missile, etc.), she may spend a
quantum point and roll her Mega-Stamina dice against a Standard difficulty. If
she succeeds, the incoming damage is converted to bashing damage, which she may
soak with her bashing soak score. The character may not convert energy attacks
(fire, electricity, Quantum Bolts, etc.) in this manner, nor may
she use this enhancement against bashing damage applied after she is
Incapacitated.
Hardbody
This enhancement offers protection of a different sort
from Resiliency. Although it doesn't help defend a character against ordinary
damage, it allows him to soak certain forms of damage against which he
ordinarily would have no protection at all.
System: A nova with Hardbody
may use his lethal soak total to soak aggravated damage. This costs one quantum
point, but the nova may activate the enhancement as an automatic feat. This
enhancement stays in effect for one turn.
Regeneration
All novas heal more quickly than the human norm, but a
nova with this enhancement heals even quicker than most novas. Sometimes her
wounds literally close right before your eyes!
System: A nova with this enhancement may spend quantum
points to instantly heal bashing and lethal damage, at the rate of one quantum
point per health level healed. Doing so is an automatic action, but the nova
may heal a maximum number of health levels per turn equal to her Mega-Stamina
rating. Additionally, this enhancement allows a nova to regrow
severed limbs or organs, but doing so takes a very long time (weeks or months,
typically). Regeneration does not heal aggravated damage.
Resiliency
Toughened by the rigors of channeling quantum energies,
the nova's frame is even more resistant to damage than are most Mega-Stamina
novas' bodies.
System: The soak bonuses provided by the nova's
Mega-Stamina rating are doubled. Thus, a nova with Mega-Stamina 3 and the
Resiliency enhancement receives +6 soak against bashing, +4 against lethal
damage, rather than the +3/+2 bonuses available to other novas with an
equivalent level of Mega-Stamina.
This enhancement is "built in" and costs no
quantum points to activate.