Shielding

You keep people safe with invisible walls of force. It’s not flashy, but it’s a solid defensive ability.

Basic Shielding: With a moment’s concentration, you can erect a barrier between your zone and an adjacent zone, which lasts until the end of the scene or you will it away. This barrier is transparent, but no matter can pass through it. When someone attempts to attack through the barrier, or attacks the barrier itself, you intercept the attack, using Will to defend. If the attack succeeds, you may either take the shifts as mental stress or allow the barrier to shatter and take mental stress equal to half of the shifts, rounded down. You may erect multiple barriers, but each active barrier after the first reduces your Will roll to defend by one.

Enhancements

Master Shielding: You gain +2 to Will when attempting to maintain your barriers.

Opaque Shields: When you create a barrier, you can make it transparent, opaque, or anything in between.

Precision Shielding: You can create much smaller shields, surrounding a single human-sized target within your zone.

Semi-Permeable Shield: You and your allies can attack through your barriers, but at a -2 penalty.

Common Power Synergies

Telekinesis: With a little concentration, you can demonstrate finer control over your shields, letting you manipulate objects in your own zone or an adjacent zone.

Invisibility: Light doesn’t pass through your shields quite cleanly; it bends a little. With practice, you’ve learned to get light to bend all the way around your shield, making everything within invisible to the naked eye.

Drawbacks

• Because you can throw up protective barriers with ease, you’ve never had to really defend yourself. As result, anyone who breaks through your shield will find that you’re Quite Frail.
• Your barriers don’t appear instantly; instead, they coalesce as the air solidifies. Your shields are Slow to Form.

Collateral Damage Effects

Shield Bubble: By creating a small shield around yourself and expanding it out at high speed, you can knock every target—enemies and allies—in your zone into an adjacent zone of your choice. Each pushed character takes one physical stress. Using this effect also pushes around anything else that happens to be in your zone.

Deflection: If you are aware of a projectile attack against you, you can generate a shield at a precise angle, redirecting the attack to any other target in your zone or an adjacent zone. The new target defends against the attack. Doing this makes your shield break apart, however, throwing shards of invisible force all around your environment.