List of Evolved Powers

This list is not, by any measure, meant to be comprehensive; it is an overview and explanation of powers you might see on the game.

Manipulation of Specific Things

Atmokinesis

The ability to mentally control barometric pressure in the atmosphere and humidity at will, resulting in the change of weather patterns and formation of freak weather conditions. In many cases, people with this ability can shift the atmosphere and thus generate any natural weather occurrence from fog, mist and rain to hailstorms, blizzards and hurricanes. One with this ability is also usually rendered resistant against extreme weather conditions, or uses this ability to predict, generate, calm or resist any weather condition.

Audiokinesis

The ability to manipulate sounds. May include damping or amplification of extant sounds and the generation of sound by 'willing' it into existence. May include sensitivity to sounds beyond the normal human hearing range. Does not include the vocal induction of resonance.

Cryokinesis

The ability to control and manipulate ice; often means creation of ice and the ability to shape it into various structures. Usually includes some degree of cold tolerance for the user; does not necessarily allow ice to be dispelled/melted. This power is not synonymous with temperature control.

Electrokinesis

The ability to generate and manipulate electricity. May not necessarily include resistance to electric shock. This does not extend to Technopathy, the power to communicate with and control electronic equipment.

Gravitokinesis

Control of local gravitic fields. Can be used to increase or decrease gravitic attraction, resulting in something seeming heavier or lighter, respectively.

Magnetokinesis

The ability to manipulate, generate, and cancel out local magnetic fields. By extension, allows indirect manipulation of objects made from magnetic materials (iron, nickel, cobalt, and their alloys; hematite and magnetite).

Osteokinesis

The power to manipulate bones. Generally translates to inducing and controlling bone growth, but may extend to bone dissolution/reabsorption.

Photokinesis

The ability to control light, usually in the visible spectrum only. Effects range from altering how light reflects off a surface (changing color/appearance) to bending its path to concentrating light upon a target. May include the potential to generate light, or to concentrate it to laser intensity. While this power can be used to produce visual illusions and to effectively make something invisible, it is not synonymous with either of those abilities.

Pyrokinesis

The ability to generate and/or control fire. May include the ability to force the combustion of materials that do not normally burn. Usually confers resistance to fire and/or heat upon the user. Is not synonymous with control of heat and temperature.

Radiation Manipulation

The ability to generate and manipulate electromagnetic radiation, especially gamma rays (nuclear radiation).

  • Past Characters: Ted Sprague

Spacetime Manipulation (restricted)

Control of space and time. Includes teleportation, time travel, and stopping of time.

Teleportation

The ability to bend space in order to instantaneously teleport to different locations.

Temporal Manipulation

The ability to affect the flow of time in a small area — speeding it up, or slowing it down for a Matrix-like 'bullet-time' effect.

Terrakinesis

The ability to manipulate the classical element of earth: stones, sand, and soil. The most common usage is to reshape earth, e.g. creating a structure of packed soil, or in transforming rocks into sand. May include the potential to alter a subject material consistent with geothermal processes (e.g. transforming coal into diamond, as an extreme example). May include generation of earthquakes.

Thermokinesis

The ability to control heat by manipulating the speeds of moving atoms. Includes both making something warmer and making it colder. Does not allow direct manipulation of the item whose temperature is being altered. Is not synonymous with Cryokinesis, the manipulation of ice.

Umbrakinesis

The ability to manipulate shadows. In effect, this is akin to Photokinesis — save that, rather than concentrating light in an area, lightwaves are moved away from it or absorbed.

General Effects on the Surroundings

Atomic Transmutation

The power to transform one element into another on an atomic level, e.g. the 'Midas Touch'. May be restricted to one or several possible transmutations (e.g. turning lead into gold, turning anything into iron) rather than turning anything into anything else.

Forcefield Generation

The ability to generate a field of energy which acts as a wall, preventing anything from physically passing the barrier. May include the potential to produce a selectively permeable forcefield, e.g. one that allows air to pass through. Fields are usually limited in scale and duration.

Liquefaction

Liquefaction is the ability to convert a solid into a liquid without the use or production of heat. Generally requires physical contact with the object to be liquefied, and is more effective on small objects.

  • Past Characters: Zane Taylor

Telekinesis

The ability to move an object by force of will, by thinking it from one place to another. This does not include teleportation; the object so moved must trace out a course from point A to point B.

Manipulation of Living Things

Agrokinesis

The ability to manipulate plants and their growth. Can range from the capacity to speed and direct plant growth to inhibiting growth to altering a plant's characteristics, depending on the individual.

Animal Telepathy

The ability to communicate with and potentially even control higher animals. This power generally does not include insects.

Biochemical Manipulation

The ability to control or affect the levels of hormones, neurotransmitters, and other regulatory molecules in a living organism; may be applied to the user and/or other individuals.

Healing

The ability to speed the healing of another living thing. May include the potential to induce regeneration of lost or scarred tissue; for some individuals, may extend to the opposite effect, causing harm. Generally does not include the ability to heal oneself.

Hypnotic Charm

Hypnotic Charm, or Charisma, is the power to enthrall another person, especially of the opposite gender. May include animals. Charmed subjects are generally the worst sort of hangers-on, living only to please the user. The effect generally fades with separation and over time, though long-term use on an individual can have permanent impact. This is distinct from Persuasion.

Illusion

This is the power to directly affect what someone else perceives. This power can be used to tell someone they are sensing something that isn't actually there, or to hide an object from their senses. Illusions may extend to any one or more senses. Generally, the more senses involved, the more complicated the illusion, the longer the illusion lasts, and the more subjects to deceive, the more difficult the power use.

Insect Telepathy

The ability to communicate with and control insects. May include individual control and/or control of a mass of insects. Distinct from Animal Telepathy.

Invisibility

The ability to make oneself invisible; to not reflect visible light. Others with this power can still see the user. This power does not affect any other sense, and generally does not apply to light outside the visible spectrum. It is not synonymous with Photokinesis.

Memory Manipulation

The ability to change another person's memories — erase, add, and/or alter them as befits the user. Repeated use on an individual generally has serious psychological consequences. This power may have detrimental side effects for the user as well.

Metabolic Control

The ability to control the metabolism of the user or another person or animal. Includes speeding up and slowing down metabolic processes (e.g. digestion, respiration). Is not synonymous with either Biochemical Control or Regeneration.

Persuasion

The power to make someone do something, whether they might otherwise want to or not. Such a command may be subtle, the subject not even realizing it wasn't their own idea, or overt. This is distinct from Hypnotic Charm.

Pheromone Manipulation

The power to control the pheromones one produces, or generate them separately. This can be used to induce fear, aggression, attraction, etc.

Possession

The ability to take control of another person's body and/or mind. May extend to animals. Generally, only one subject may be possessed at a time, and while in possession of someone else, the user is very limited in their awareness and control of their own body.

Power Activation

The ability to bring forth a latent power in another Evolved, allowing its use.

Power Boosting

This is the ability to amplify someone else's power use. It generally does not give the subject greater control, merely greater power, which may be a detriment to themselves or others.

Power Negation

The ability to prevent use of other Evolved powers, usually within a given range. It may extend to nullifying the effects of other powers that come into that sphere of effect.

Telepathy

The ability to hear (receptive telepathy) the thoughts of others, and/or project (projective telepathy) one's own thoughts into another mind. Projected thoughts may be interpreted by the recipient as words spoken aloud or assumed to be a thought of their own creation. A telepath of sufficient willpower can project commands that are difficult to ignore. This is generally limited to human minds.

Mental Abilities

Anatomical Intuition

The superhuman awareness of the capabilities, limitations, and weaknesses of any body part or system in any creature. This includes detection of congenital effects, disease, damage, cancer, etc. It may or may not extend to the same awareness of the user's own health. This power solely allows detection of condition; it does not confer the capability to heal or harm.

Astral Projection

The power to send one's mind or spirit out while leaving an inert body behind, often in dreams/while asleep. Projections generally cannot interact with the physical world, nor be perceived by most people. This may include the ability to enter another's dreams or explore alternate planes of existence. Prolonged use is generally detrimental; if the mind becomes lost, the body is left comatose and eventually dies.

Aura Reading

The power to sense energy fields, generally around another living being. These fields generally reflect emotional state and/or physical health, allowing the user insight into another person's condition. Perception of auras typically does not require the use of normal sight.

Danger Sense

The superhuman ability to detect nearby threats, especially other people with the intent of doing harm. May or may not include a sense of distance and direction. Generally is less effective, or not at all effective, in detecting nonliving hazards.

Empathy

Empathy is the ability to sense (receptive empathy) and affect (projective empathy) the emotions of other people. This may extend to animals, but generally does not. Someone with this power may be limited to sensing emotions or solely to projecting, either what they feel at the moment or what they want someone else to feel. There are also empaths with both abilities. This power does not confer Telepathy, the ability to read another's thoughts.

Energy Conversion

The ability to absorb one form of energy and release it as another. This may be the capability for a single conversion (e.g. absorbing only sound and converting it to light, or converting any absorbed energy into light) or the ability to convert any energy type into any other. Does not allow storage of energy, and generally does not directly confer resistance to any form of energy.

Lie Detection

The awareness of when another person is deliberately lying or attempting to mislead the user. Generally does not work on people who are telling the truth as they know it, even if their truth is false in the grand scheme of things.

Mechanical Intuition

The superhuman ability to invent new gadgets and machines, and/or to understand the design and function of someone else's machine. This is not the same as Technopathy.

Omnilingualism

The power to rapidly comprehend and learn any language, once the user has been exposed to it. Fluency is usually limited to the mode presented; e.g. listening to a conversation in Russian would confer fluency in spoken Russian, but learning to read and write it generally requires exposure to the written form as well. This power may extend to any communication with language-like rules, including codes and computer programming languages.

Postcognition

The opposite of precognition; this is the ability to similarly perceive an event that has already happened. Unlike Psychometry, such impressions do not necessarily require an object as focus and anchor.

Power Absorption (restricted)

The ability to copy a power from someone else and use it independently. May allow permanent collection of abilities; is generally detrimental to the subject from which a power is taken.

  • Existing Characters: Sylar

Power Mimicry (restricted)

The ability to copy a power from someone else and use it independently. May allow permanent collection of abilities. Unlike Power Absorption, the abilities of other Evolved may be acquired simply by being in physical proximity to them.

Power Sensing

The power to detect other Evolved in proximity. This may extend as far as recognizing what ability the subject has, whether it is latent or active, and/or how strong they are in their power.

Precognition

The ability to perceive events before they happen. This is distinct from predictions based upon logic, information, and experience. Precogs may receive vague and fleeting impressions, experience the event as though they were present, or receive some intermediate amount of information.

Probability Manipulation

The ability to make random chance less than random. People with this power can make the unlikely probable, and the probable rare; they can affect their own luck and that of everyone around them, for good or ill.

Psychometry

The ability to receive impressions and information about past events from an object upon physical contact with it. Generally, only strongly emotional or highly repetitive events can be picked up; relatively few objects have the requisite associations. Information received can include images, sounds, smells, and even emotional states of people present at the time of the event in question.

Superhuman Accuracy

The ability to make something go exactly where you want it to. The ultimate in hand-eye coordination. This power may include awareness of one's own position and movements, e.g. not misstepping when walking a narrow beam.

Superhuman Memory

The superhuman ability to recall information; not only words and data, but sights, sounds, smells, etc. Someone with this power may remember everything that ever happened to them, everything they ever did, everything they ever learned, with the same clarity as the moment the event occurred.

Technopathy

The power to communicate with and control electronic devices, often by a mental interface and without any intermediary programming language. Physical contact with some part of the machine, or with some sort of conduit for carrying a signal to the target machine, is typically necessary.

Physical Abilities

Infrared Vision

This is the ability to see heat, allowing the detection of warm-blooded animals at night, and other thermal differences between an object and its environment.

Invulnerability (restricted)

Resistance or immunity to all forms of physical damage.

Matter Ingestion

The ability to digest anything, or at least take no harm from anything consumed. People with this ability are immune to food poisoning and ingested toxins or drugs (including theraputic ones).

Metamorph

The ability to alter one's own appearance. This may be restricted to copying another person's characteristics, or in degree of mass and proportion changes; e.g. a short metamorph may not be able to make themselves very tall. Metamorphs are limited to human appearance; this is not shapeshifting.

Muscle Mimicry

The power to duplicate any action or series of movements that the user has seen performed by someone else. Such actions are generally reflexive rather than consciously performed when used, and so may be difficult to elaborate or expand upon in practice.

Night Vision

The ability to see well at low levels of light, or even to perceive one's surroundings clearly while in the absence of visible light. Usually accompanied by sensitive vision, the inability to cope with strong lighting conditions.

Phasing

The ability to rearrange one's own molecular structure and 'slide through' another object. This may extend to phasing another object with the user, bringing it along, or even phasing the other item on its own, without the user phasing as well. May include the potential to perform the opposite effect, pushing molecules together to create a temporarily impermeable surface.

Powered Flight

The ability to move oneself by force of will, potentially to supersonic speeds. Does not extend to moving other objects (Telekinesis), nor does this power include manipulating surrounding forces (e.g. Gravitokinesis).

Rapid Cell Regeneration (restricted)

The ability to heal rapidly from virtually any injury. May also confer longevity, an immunity to the aging process. A small amount of blood from someone with this power can be used to temporarily induce regeneration in another person or animal. This ability is generally inhibited if a foreign object is lodged within brain tissue, or if the user is decapitated.

Regeneration

The ability to heal oneself from virtually any injury. Distinct from Rapid Cell Regeneration.

Resonance

The ability to induce resonance in a suitable material using soundwaves from one's voice. (In other words, the way opera singers shatter crystal glasses by singing on its resonant frequency.) May include the ability to hear and/or produce sounds beyond the normal human audible and vocal ranges. Only pure or nearly pure materials are susceptible to resonance. This power is not synonymous with Audiokinesis.

Size Shifting

The ability to become larger or smaller, usually within a given range from one's natural size. May or may not include a corresponding increase or decrease in physical mass.

Superhuman <sense>

One or more senses heightened beyond normal human ability.

Superhuman Endurance

The ability to withstand more stress than the normal human; to keep going in spite of all odds, whether it's running a marathon or coping with serious damage. This may include the superhuman ability to endure mental strain; a person who is very well-grounded and difficult to disturb, intimidate, frighten, etc.

Superhuman Reflexes

Having a reaction time far faster than normal human capability, potentially seeming even to react just before the causal event happens. Generally applies only to reflexive, instinctive actions; this is not synonymous with either Superhuman Speed or Danger Sense.

Superhuman Speed

The power to move quickly, e.g. to run much faster than the normal human. May include superhuman reflexes.

Superhuman Strength

The ability to lift more and hit harder than any normal human. May also include the ability to resist forces (e.g. not falling back when hit), somewhat greater stamina, and/or somewhat greater speed due to increased muscle strength.

Telescopic Vision

The ability to clearly see distant objects, making out details far beyond the normal distance at which the human eye can observe them. This is distinct from Superhuman Vision in that the user is able to selectively alter the focus point of their eyes, much as a camera lens might zoom in on a distant point; it also tends to have a greater range.

X-Ray Vision

The ability to detect x-rays in the same fashion as most people receive visible light. People with this power can see through less-dense materials, such as plastics, but not through more dense objects (metals,stone, bones).

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