Quick Fix: Superpowers in Fate

When our ongoing campaign had to go on hiatus, my group and I discussed what we would like to play next. We decided to try Mutants and Masterminds. After a couple frustrating sessions of players not understanding how their powers worked and me faking rules decisions and generally BSing, we decided to convert our new superheros back to Fate. The following is a distillation of the rules I created for those characters.

First we created Aspects as usual. We gave everyone 5 aspects. I'd suggest focusing on dependent NPCs and secret identity issues for true superhero flavor.

Next, we generated Skills. Our group used a slightly modified SotC skills list, and each character had a Great skill pyramid. In addition, characters identified two of their skills as "meta-skills." A meta-skill could either be a skill they made up to define one of their super powers, (Superman could have a "Flight" skill), or a normal Skill that the character had superhuman ability with (Superman could have Meta-Might). Meta-normal skills received an automatic +2 on all checks. Other Meta-skills didn't get a bonus; their coolness made up for the difference.

We picked stunts out of the SotC book, or created our own from scratch. Many characters supported their powers using stunts. The Herculean Strength stunt is perfect for your super-brawny characters and a number of Athletics stunts are nice for speedsters.

I also house-ruled that characters didn't start with any stress boxes. High Endurance and Resolve ratings gave characters boxes, and they could also use these skills to actively defend. I hoped that reducing the number of boxes would let us get to Consequences faster. The decision to make Endurance an active defense was meant to emulate super-tough characters bouncing bullets of their chests.

This turned out to be surprisingly effective. The trickiest part was creating Meta-skills that effectively modeled the powers our characters already had. We determined there were a few different types of meta-skills.

• Meta-Normal Skills: These were the easiest. Our Iron-Man knock off had Meta-Might, and our Luck Manipulator had Meta-Athletics.
• Maneuver-Based Skills: Some characters had skills built around declaring aspects. Our weather controller used his "Weather Manipulation" skill to declare weather aspects on the scene; Our Luck Manipulator used his "Luck" skill to declare lucky coincidences.
• Super-Skills: These were the skills characters needed to make up to model their other powers. As a rule of thumb, I assumed that the Super-Skill should allow the character to do something they would normally be able to do with a device. Our Power Armor character took a "Blast" skill, which we treated as a Guns skill without requiring a gun. At the extreme, our Weather Controller took a Flight skill, which we treated as Pilot without requiring a Plane.
  

If people are interested, I can post the characters we made. I'm also happy to answer any questions if the mechanics are unclear.