MUTATOR

By Dr Mike

You develop random superpowers at the drop of a hat!
MUTATORs have two 'power cycles' - a primary and secondary one consisting of mainly offensive and mainly defensivce powers. These both update eevry 40 seconds or so, and out of phase with each other, effectively giving you a gradual change of powers every 20 seconds. At each refresh, a new random power is picked from the list, always different to the existing one. You are notified by the Mission Status bar, with messages like 'PLANT CONTROL ACTIVATING' or 'FLAME POWERS FADING'
Characters with this attribute can be very unpredictable to play obviously, and are often hazardous to their team-mates, but prove to be a lot of fun despite this. The current list of powers is by no means comprehensive, but should be enough to throw up constant surprises for now...

Primary Power Cycle

• Flame Powers You can throw a fireball via a FIREBALL command on targets, or explode using a FIREBOMB command on yourself. You also radiate heat like an OVERHEATED character, and your material type changes to fire.
• Ice Powers You can attack targets with an ICE BEAM that freezes them or by creating an ICE PATCH under their feet. You can protect yourself with an ICE SHIELD command on yourself. While this power is active your material type changes to ice.
• Superstrength Your lifting strength and the power of your punches increase for the duration of this power. You also gain SUPERLEAPING abilities with a LEAP TO command on all targets. A QUAKE command on yourself allows you to stamp the ground and knock all opponents off their feet. The FFX density effect (yellow blobs) plays on you while this slot is active.
  Note: My suggestion is to give MUTATORS the JUMPER attribute and a punch with low knockback to fully feel the effects of this slot.
• Plant Control You gain ANIMATE commands on all plant-forms nearby, and can SUSTAIN or DEANIMATE the summoned minions similar to the PUPPET MASTER (NATURE) attribute.
• Gravity Powers You can increase or decrease gravity on targets using GRAVITY UP (an upwards knockabck direct power) or GRAVITY DOWN (similar to the FFX mass increase attacks). You also have a GRAVITY WELL command on yourself which pulls all nearby targets towards you.
• X-Ray Powers You can fire off X-RAY BEAMS at targets to do radiation damage. You can also assume an X-RAY FORM using a command on yourself. In this state your are displaced, and cannot be harmed, but cause irradiation dmaage to those around you.
• Electro-Magnetic Powers You can use the ELECTRO-ZAP command on targets to trigger a direct electrical attack, and gain the FFX MAGNETIC power temporarily, allowing you to lift and throw heavy metal objects remotely, or REPEL or ATTRACT metal characters. An electrical spark effect plays around you while this slot is active.

Secondary Power Cycle

• Invulnerability You become temporarily invulnerable to all damage (but not state attacks or knockback) while this slot is active.
• Superspeed Your speed and agility increase dramatically while this slot is active, and the FFX speed effect of a yellow whirlwind plays around you while the slot is active. You also regenerate health during this cycle due to your increased healing speed.
• Force Field A bubble appears around you and you cannot be harmed at all during this state. You also repel nearby objects and characters, as the forcefield cannot be turned off.
• Duplication You can create duplicates of yourself (with your base powers but no mutations) using a DUPLICATE command on yourself. The duplicates all immediately dissappear when this cycle deactivates.
• Probability Control You radiate bad luck on all nearby targets like the JINX attribute. You can focus the bad luck on a target with the JINX command, which triggers a HEX attack.
• Acid Blood You spray nearby targets with an acid burn attack whenever you take damage, like the ACID BLOOD attribute, and can fire off an acid burn attack at targets using the ACID SPIT command.