Power Methods

Krendel is designed to help you build whatever setting you want. One of the ways it does this is with powers. These are extraordinary abilities grouped around common themes, called methods. The core method, which is common to all settings,  consists of powers that are simply natural, albeit exceptional, permutations on skills and natural abilities. Meanwhile, the implants method (from Krendel Powers), draws power from components implanted within the character.

The power methods dictate what powers are available, how they are learned, and how they work. For instance, by default, the power calming lull is only available to the faith and resonance methods, but not others. The requirements are different for each method. More, the faith version uses sight range and has a set duration, while the resonance version uses earshot range and stays in effect so long as the character keeps singing.  

Methods get refined a step further by using styles. These are simple variations to the method. All styles provide cosmetic flavor, showing how you can adapt a method to a variety of settings. Some styles also have mechanical twists. For example, implants offers the following styles:

  • Cybernetics: The baseline embodiment of imprints replaces living tissue with glistening metal, high tensile ceramics, advanced carbon meshes, and chemical circuitry.
  • Bioengineered: Implant devices grown from tissue samples taken from the character. 
  • Clockwork: Composed of bulging gears, hydraulics, coils, and similar components of Victorian science fiction, clockwork implants are impossible to be mistaken for anything natural. 
  • Enchanted: The implants are magical creations of an artificer. 
  • Symbiotic: Living organisms of different species that are implanted into the character's body to grant benefits. 

Suddenly, implants aren't just for sci-fi anymore. You can now easily apply them to steampunk, fantasy, or a tale of interdimensional exploration where otherworldly insects burrow into your flesh to feed... yeah, I'll leave the rest to you.

You're probably already seeing how you can easily slap this all together and how it can affect a setting. You can readily run a sci-fi game dominated by cybernetics where one company just made a breakthrough into bioengineered implants, combining two styles of the same method in one setting. You can just as easily add other methods and styles on top of that, like artifice (esoteric architects), focus (juicing), and psychic (psychotropy). Better yet, you can seize what we all know to be true: you can make up your own methods and styles.