Many games have characters that are able to do extraordinary things, which can't be done by just anybody. Magic, stunts, martial arts, tricks -- all these can be generally referred to as "powers", things that are available to a specific character but not to everybody else.

The main purpose of powers in a game is to provide variety and uniqueness to characters, be it tactical, narrative or other.

Anatomy of a Power

There are two main things that define a power -- its type and the duration of its effect.

We'll identify two types of powers, mechanical and narrative. A narrative power is one that is meant to affect the narrative, either by providing it with color or by defining the sort of conflicts that will occur or the way things will unfold. Mechanical powers are meant to provide with many choices on how to perform a task or win a conflict.

It's important to note that sometimes, a same general description may fall into both categories. For instance, the ability to run on a wall can be seen as a narrative power, meant to provide colour, or it can be seen as a mechanical power, meant to provide tactical advantages. However, while the description is the same in both cases, its implementation will be different depending on its type.

As for duration, we'll identify three possible durations for powers: permanent, temporary and short term. Permanent powers are powers which always work -- once you have it, it's there. Temporary powers work for the duration of a single scene or more. Short term powers are either immediate or work for a duration shorter than a single scene. The difference between short term powers which aren't immediate and temporary powers may be vague, of course. For instance, a power that works for three combat rounds is short term if you expect combats to last at least four rounds (and preferably more) on a regular basis, but is temporary if a combat rarely lasts more than three rounds, which makes the above power effectively last for the entire duration of the combat. In this regard, it is advised to try and stay away from this grey zone as much as possible. Powers should either last obviously less than a single scene or should be consciously designed to last for the entire duration of a scene, and defined accordingly.

Mechanical Powers

Mechanical powers are usually attached to an existing subsystem within the game, doing things such as giving a bonus to a roll, altering some resource etc. -- essentially, they take a specific element in the relevant subsystem and alter it. The more complex the subsystem is, the more parameters which can be changed it will have, thus increasing the number of possible powers.

These powers tend to not have any narrative effect, and thus, it is advised to keep only those that actually offer something new and different. For instance, if there already is a power giving +1 to some ability, there's no need for another power that does the same thing but has a different name. Making the first power scalable saves a lot of text and confusion. In the 4th edition of D&D, for instance, at-will powers automatically "upgrade" every 10 levels, instead of getting replaced by a supposedly different power which is essentially the same.

Balance

Balance is a broad term with many possible meanings. In the context of designing powers, however, it usually means that all powers should have roughly the same cost-benefit ratio, with benefit being the degree to which the power assists in solving conflicts or performing tasks.

When dealing with the same type of conflicts or tasks, balance is relatively simple to do. When it comes to powers dealing with different types of conflicts or tasks, however, things become much more complicated. When balancing between such powers, you must bring into account how many conflicts of a given type exist in the game. For instance, if the game is designed to deal mostly with combats, then powers affecting diplomatic conflicts will cost less than powers affecting combat. Specifically, if you intend to have three scenes of combat for every scene of diplomacy, then a power which assists in solving conflicts revolving around combat should cost three time as much as a power which is equally useful in solving conflicts revolving around diplomacy. Naturally, things are rarely that simple, especially since the dosage of different types of conflicts may depend on a given group -- but you must do your best to consider all those elements.

Sometimes, the difference in pricing may become too extreme. For instance, Mutants & Masterminds prices powers which aren't related to combat overly cheaply -- disappearance, flight, mind reading, teleportation etc. are extremely cheap in relation to how useful they may be in solving relevant conflicts. (In fact, those powers should be considered narrative and not mechanical, as they allow players to more or less ignore certain types of conflicts to begin with.)

Permanent Powers

In the context of mechanical powers, permanent powers usually permanently change one of the character's characteristics. These powers create a mini-game within the character creation and advancement process, where the player attempts to gain the most bonuses in a certain area -- which might lead to a sort of "arms race", as has been discussed in the previous article.

Temporary Powers

Since temporary powers last for the entirety of a scene, most players will try to bring themselves into a position that the powers are activated before the scene begins. Essentially, the decision becomes how they want the following scene to look and what they want available for them in it. Thus, temporary powers are usually more appropriate for narrative powers and not mechanical powers (and relevant considerations will be discussed when we get to narrative powers). If the power at hand is a "buff" power, giving a permanent bonus for the duration of a scene, it might be simpler to make the power permanent instead -- if the reason for it to be temporary is one of balance, it might be better to find another way to balance it against other powers. The reason is that temporary powers increase the required bookkeeping for the game, which isn't something that should be done without good reason.

Short Term Powers

Since mechanical powers are attached to a specific subsystem, there are many ways to play around with them, and the more complex the subsystem is, the more variety there can be in the provided powers. This can provide with a lot of tactical depth -- and it doesn't matter if the subsystem relates to combat or to discussions (or anything else). Providing with many mechanical powers will necessarily move the game into a more tactical zone and will encourage players to treat the game from a tactical point of view. If that's what you want -- great. But if this isn't what you want the players to be doing in your game, then it is highly advised not to include a variety of mechanical powers in the game (though not necessarily to eliminate them whatsoever -- a few of them can spice things up without really making them overly tactical).

For tactical interest, short term powers are much more effective than permanent powers. This is since the only decision players have with permanent powers come in the process of character creation and advancement -- they provide no new decisions during the play itself, and tactics are all about decisions. With short term powers, the game of "what do I use now" arises in every situation where they might be useful, and each time in a different manner.

Short term powers are better used for actions and not buffs -- the latter are better suited for permanent, or at least temporary powers. This is well applied in D&D 4th edition, which includes an extensive list of combat statuses, considers position on the map and thus provides with a large variety of parameters which can be used to create powers. In addition, most of its powers are actions and not buffs -- the buffs are mostly left to feats, which are permanent.

An important concept in regards to mechanical powers, especially short term ones, is the concept of emergent gameplay. Generally speaking, this means certain sorts of play which can't be easily seen or foretold when merely looking at the rules of the game. Tactical games are usually more interesting when they allow for emergent gameplay, that is, when the possible tactics and combinations aren't obvious from merely looking at the rules. The issue of emergent gameplay is very broad and can itself be the subject of many articles. Designers who are interested in tactical games are advised to read more on board-game and video-game design, where relevant issues are discussed quite a lot. Here we'll provide a little advice on what can be done to encourage emergence in the game.

In order to encourage emergence, three things should exist in the game. One is the existence of many "boards" within the game. A board is a set of elements which interact with each other, but are relatively isolated from other elements in the game (the powers are what breaks that isolation). For instance, in the D&D 4th edition, there is a board of position on the battlefield and there is a board of hit points and what surrounds them.

The second thing is chains of powers, which can also pass between boards. A chain of powers is a series of powers where the activation of one assists in the activation of another. For instance, one power may move an opponent on the battlefield, and another power may damage opponents based on their location on the battlefield. This is a chain of two powers, which passes between the two boards mentioned above. In order to allow for such chains, there should be various powers whose effect can be affected by various conditions, and other powers that can affect such conditions. The third necessary thing is the ability to combine various powers into patterns and chains such that players are able to foretell the effects of their activation. This may seem obvious, but what's important to notice is that it may be negated by too much luck. If the effects of powers depend too much on chance, then chains become very hard to construct.

Narrative Powers

Narrative powers usually aren't incorporated into a specific subsystem and are usually more freely described -- thus, there are usually less of those than of mechanical powers. These powers aren't meant to provide with tactical options, instead focusing on describing what the characters can do and how they can do it.

One variety is powers that describe how characters do things -- these are mostly meant to help the game follow the rules of a given genre, and don't really affect how the game is played and how events unfold. For instance, the ability to run on walls in many anime games falls into this category -- it isn't meant to change how the game is played, only give it a certain flavour.

The more interesting variety, however, are powers which seriously affect the game, either by making certain types of conflicts significantly easier or by negating them whatsoever. These powers give the players some narrative control over the game. For instance, a power that allows characters to teleport means "no place is out of reach" and a power that allows characters to read minds means "no more secrets". The ability to gain such powers as the game progresses allows for a change in how the game is played over time, which has been discussed in the previous article, "Arms Race".

If you want to limit the use of such powers, it is highly advised to limit them using narrative means -- either by having the players give up something important or put some narrative requirements on them (that is, that something needs to happen in the story before the power can be used). Putting the narrative requirement essentially means that the game will revolve around meeting that requirement, not around the conflict that the power helps to deal with. For instance, if some complicated ritual must be performed for a character to use teleportation, then the game will revolve around that ritual, not around "how do we get into the enemy's castle", which is negated by the teleportation.

This can also be used to put focus on certain events and situations, if the powers are only available when specific conditions are met -- for instance, werewolves may have some powers only available during the full moon. For some more discussion on this issue, see the first article, "When the Juice Runs Out", for resources which are only available under certain conditions. The concept of requiring the players to give up something important has been brilliantly implemented in Demon: The Fallen, where characters had to give up their humanity in order to use their more powerful powers -- the very humanity for which they've been fighting to begin with.

Limiting the effects of narrative powers with purely mechanical means is advised against. Firstly, it wastes the potential of using those powers to focus the story on what's relevant to the game and provide players with meaningful narrative decisions. Secondly, it doesn't really work as well. If you give the power a limited number of uses, it likely won't do much to help, since the most important conflicts that the power negates will still be negated. For instance, you might make a teleportation power which is only available once per session -- but really, how many important conflicts which can be negated using teleportation do you expect to occur in a single session? On the other hand, if you make it too rare a commodity, players might always avoid using it, constantly trying to save it for the absolutely most important event where it may be required -- and ending up never actually using it.

Finally, you've probably noticed that temporary powers are quite useful when it comes to narrative powers. Temporary powers with seemingly mechanical benefits can be used in this regard if you actually want your players to focus on preparation before a conflict. This can be useful, for instance, for anime games, with "power up" scenes, Dragon Ball Z style.

Generic Powers

Lastly, many generic games employ a more general approach to powers, providing with many various effects and their price, out of which the players or the GM can construct various powers, which the players can then "buy". This can be seen in HERO System, for instance. The benefit is that such a system can create a very large variety of powers without the need to actually list all of them, and essentially gives the ability to construct any power which can theoretically exist in the game.

There are two downsides, however. One is that the powers lose their flavour when dissected into their elements, and the colour needs to come from someplace else. The other is that new players, or players which aren't certain about their character concept, can get lost in the jungle of possibilities.

Both of these problems can be solved by pre-play preparation on the side of the GM -- he collects the various elements and creates the needed powers in accordance to the theme and flavour of the current game. Of course, unless the GM buys a setting book which does that for him, it means he's got quite a lot of work to do before the actual game may begin.

Summary

In this article we've talked about powers. We've discussed two types of powers, mechanical and narrative. Mechanical powers are useful for providing tactical depth, for which the best type of powers is short term powers. For the tactical depth to be actually deep, the game should try to encourage emergent gameplay. Mechanical powers should also bring up the issue of balance, where the designer needs to consider the power's effect and also the frequency at which the sorts of conflicts it is designed for appear in the game.

Narrative powers can help create colour and also can dictate the sorts of things that will occur in the game, giving the players some narrative power. In order to limit the effect of such powers, it is advised to use narrative means, such as having the players give up something important to use the power or have the power require interesting narrative conditions. Temporary narrative powers may also be used to focus on certain situations or create "power up" scenes.

Lastly, a generic approach to powers may be useful for easily creating many possible powers, but in the process loses the powers' colour and may overwhelm players with possibilities.