After 3 months in development, hopefully it will have been worth the wait: The Powers System

[TheOneAndOnlyCreeperJoe]

About The Pull Request

Adds the Powers system to Doppler, a heavily debated topic for several years in the community that is meant to propel Doppler deeper into the Science Fantasy genre by giving people unique powers and capabilities that vastly exceed the standard round start power, managed by a point system.

The sheer amount of added content is massive, and whilst this design document goes in-depth, below is it in quick summary.

Adds the roundstart system to prefs, allowing you to tweak your character with various powers, choosing from 2 out of 9 paths.
Thaumaturge
Using an overarching system of spell charges, which are replenished by sleeping, the Thaumaturge has to plan their magic around their plans, as well as needing to dress like a wizard to gain power.

• Can do minor magical action with prestidigitation with no cost, such as summoning sparks, make things glow and clean stuff
• Can blend objects anywhere with Blend for Me, and people.
• Can summon magical cuffs that can be used to bind people and shut down their resonance powers
• Can summon rain to make an area wet, or douse it in another eagent.
• Can summon blasts of wind to knock back objects and people
• Can summon phantasmal copies of tools to use when needed.
• Can draw blood from the surrounding area into a target o heal them.
• Can heal and grow plants around them in an area.

Enigmatist
Won't be included upon release, will come later, specialized in runes and transmutation magic.

Theologist
Driven by conviction, these holy men are empowered by their good deads. Split into 3 distinct paths, each seperated by a powerful healing spell and various subpowers.

• A Burden Shared lets you even out damage between yourself and another target
• A Burden Twisted lets you heal someone over a period of time for random amounts, and dealing half that healing back as damage.
• A Burden Revered, which slowly heals someone's brute and burn damage.
• A Burden Unattended, which provides no bonuses but costs only 1 point.

These powers grant the Theologist piety, which they can use for various other powers.

• Can kill mining and various other unholy mobs to gain Piety
• Can convert pre-mitigation damage into Piety
• Can pray with a special power to gain Piety, increased potency depending on circumstance
• Can randomly negate blows proportional to Piety, at the cost of Piety.
• Can remove poisons from a target and dispel them, and convert objects into holy objects
• Can speed up the effects of time on a target, tripling metabolization and blood regen, and healing wounds.
• Can imbue weapons with powerful smites, knocking back and dealing damage.
• Can pass these weapons onto others

Psyker
Wielders of great minds, they can exert their will on reality itself using the power of their mind. The only thing holding them back is the strain on the body, regulated by an unique organ. Uses a stress system with negative effects if one overindulges their powers.

• Can Meditate to regulate their stress.
• Can Levitate to fly in any environment, even without legs.
• Can move objects with their mind.
• Can interact with objects from a distance
• Can summon illusory copies of themselves that draw aggro.
• Have an extrasensory awareness of specific keyphrases.
• Can use blood to view the world from the owner's eyes.
• Can communicate mentally with targets
• Can shield their mind from external mental aggression.

Cultivator
Aligned with the natural resonant energies around them, Cultivators draw power from themselves and their environment. They use a special resource called Energy, which builds through either meditation or being near their relevant element, such as a Shadow Walker Cultivator gaining Energy while in darkness. This resource is spend to enter a heightened state called Alignment, granting armor bonuses and strong unarmored strikes, alongside other bonuses.

• Shadow Walker Alignment, which lets you see well in the dark passively. When activated, grants armor bonuses, increased brute damage on strikes and makes you entirely unrecognizable. Builds energy through darkness.
  • Can become immune to resonant scrying effects and all slowdowns while in darkness or in alignment
  • Can teleport from darkness to darkness within line of sight while in alignment
• Astral Touched Alignment, which makes you resistant to cold. When activated, grants armor bonuses, increased burn damage on strikes and immune to pressure and cold.
  • Can fly in alignment, whether in space or elsewhere.
  • Can shoot lights that illuminate a large area. Can be detonated while in alignment to damage adjacent creatures; can be stacked on nearby spaces. Demoman TF2.
• Flame Soul Alignment, which makes you resistant to heat. When activated, grants weaker armor bonuses but extreme bonuses against laser and fire, and becoming immune to fire. Increased burn damage on strikes.
  • Can raise the body temperature of creatures they strike, and fully ignite them if they get hot enough.
  • Can ignite any object they touch (including cigarettes for style). Can shoot flameblasts while in alignment for a cost.

Finally, a generic energy dash power lets them dash to their cursor, automatically pathfinding to the target location, whilst in alignment.

Aberrant
A collection of creatures with odd traits, these come in three, non-mutually exclusive categories.

Anomalous, which are creatures with odd, paranomal traits.

• Can become immune to resonant magic, at the cost of never being able to wield any thesmelves.
• Can see special linked rifts and teleport across the station using them
• Can heal from radiation
• Can be summoned from thin air by speaking a special word

Beastial, which has a massively increased list of things they can eat. Most powers cost hunger.

• Can sniff out the direction of creatures by sniffing their blood.
• Can use their tail as a deadly weapon
• Can craft webs and various web-like items depending on upgrades, including tripwires for detection and bolas for tripping foes.
• Can cocoon enemies to make sure they don't get away, or objects so they can be carried in a neat handbag. hashtag slay queen.

Monstrous, which are sturdy and morph their body into deadly weapons.

• Have vastly increased amounts of blood in their body.
• Can passively heal their wounds overtime.
• Can convert their wounds into toxins damage
• Form a deadly armblade to attack their foes (and tables)

Some powers are shared between Monstrous and Beastial

• Can shapechange into harmless pets
• Can shapechange into deadly wolves and spiders
• Can crawl in vents if not wearing too much armor, or if small
• Can glow in the dark
• Can see in the dark

Warfighter
They are the Human Fighter of powers. Good at fighting and most combat related antics. Has three distinct categories.
Commander, which buffs other people with various abilities. gaining bonuses if they're in the same department or the user is a head of staff.

• Can force people to stand up from distance
• Can make people immune to pain and damage based slowdown.

Martial Artist, which specializes in unarmed striking.

• Deals more damage baseline with punches
• Can learn Krav Maga
• Can innately Tackle
• Can Tackle even better

Equipment Specialist, which specialize in using specific items and weapons to their advantage.

• Can draw an item on their person without needing to search their inventory, as well as snag it from their environment
• Can dual wield with two melee weapons, striking with two at once.
• Can do a big AoE slim with two-handed weapons
• Can do a timed block with any large or blocking item
• Can see the countdown on grenades

Expert
Various non-magical powers that offer strong utility to your character.

• Can see the reagents in food, drinks and chems unassisted.
• Can falsify their security records
• Can hide their security records
• Can lift crates and objects without slowdown
• Can carry equipment on their person without slowdown
• Can punt objects in a direction
• Can befriend any animal
• Can tame any animal that is normally tameable.
• Can hide their voice to be unknown
• Can speak a metric ton of languages
• Can perform great feats of surgery
• Can start the round with assloads of money

Augmented
I never asked for this. Augmented changes the body with augments, both standard ones and special premium augments, with the latter having special quality mechanics that have to be maintained for optimal performance.

• Can teleport to medbay from anywhere upon crit
• Can shield themselves from mental and scrying effects
• Can punch people and knock them back with special arms
• Can have a reagent cannon embedded in their arm.
• Can automatically dodge projectiles at the cost of a heavy amount of stam.

Standard augments also provided include various toolset implants, eye huds and other various misc implants.

Other Stuff

• There's an antimagic system associated with a tier called resonant. It is seperate from existing antimagic, but antimagic from that system works on resonance. The nullrod dispels (ends) effects prematurely, as do other antimagic mcguffins.
• Cargo can order a few new things. Sec has special antimagic cuffs and a miniature reality anchor that dampens magic in the area when activated. Costumes for thaumaturges can also be bought.
• Sec Records list all the powers for crewmates.
• Genemodded got TK removed, the Telepathy quirk got removed, and the Permitted Cybernetics Quirk has been removed since these have been rolled into the Powers system.

Why It's Good For The Game

This has been the number one most popular and most requested feature for Doppler (unironic), and will send us fully into the Science Fantasy realm. It has been wildly requested by most of the playerbase, the Board and more.
The previous system was not even wholy implemented, an unfinished draft that had changes many times until at last ending up in this state.
I don't think I need to elaborate much more on this.

Testing Evidence

With several members of the Board as my witness, there were two testing sessions hosted to check for bugs and odd interactions, including one just a week ago.

Changelog

🆑
add: Adds the Powers system, a massive overhaul to player power and granting them unique thematic abilities.
add: Adds support to the Security Records to list all these new powers.
del: Removes Telekinesis from the Genemodded Quirk
del: Removes the Permitted Cybernetics quirk
del: Removes the Telepathy quirk (the mutation and QoL still exists)
/:cl:

[TheOneAndOnlyCreeperJoe]

Additional work has happened, whilst this is mainly systems work to make sure that they're both up to snuff code-wise and a bunch QoL, it is also to make a lot of previously mono-root paths now have the space to add custom roots. I've added one root each just as examples.
Predominantly:

• Thaumaturge now costs 0 for its baseline Spell Preperation. It now has a secondary version called Hemomancy, which uses your blood to cast spells! It costs 5 points and doesn't prepare spells, instead having always access to them. The cost of the power determines the blood cost * 4. Casting with high amounts of bloods consumes extra blood to boost the affinity. Cannot gain affinity normally, has a blood-hand power they manifest to gain affinity. Can also be used to drain blood from various sources, so you can drain people's bloods without being gross about it.
• Psyker now costs 0 for its baseline Paracausal gland. It now has a secondary version called Chemotropic Gland, which recovers at a much slower rate and doesn't give Meditate, but instead gains highly boosted regen from substance use (nicotine, ethanol and hard-drugs), boosted further by having the matching quirks.
• Psyker roots can now use the organs of other roots, at 33% normal efficiency. E.g putting a Chemotropic Gland into a Paracausal Gland user lets them gain the drug bonuses but at a reduced rate.