Adepts

Adepts channel their magic into their bodies to become extraordinary. Narratively, this boils down to:

• Extraordinary skill: they do mundane things well
• Extraordinary feats: they do magical things

For that, take this stunt:

Feats

In Fate, a feat is permission to do something cool, usually by rolling the associated skill + Magic. Adepts also have stunts for their abilities that have mechanical consequences (such as soaking up or dealing out more damage).

If a feat applies to multiple skills you’ve enhanced, you need only take the feat once. e.g.: if your Consulting Mystic Detective has enhanced Brains and Recon, they only need to spend one of their feats on Analytics. If a feat references using a different skill (such as Nerve Strike using Heart+Magic clearing nerve strike consequences), you do not need to enhance the related skill to support that. (But Nerve Strike and Chi Healing do make a great matched pair of feats!)

Bod

Your magic is channeled into your strength and stamina. You can gain extra physical stress boxes and consequences if your Bod+Magic meets the usual thresholds.

• Fire Within: A naga-developed technique that uses magic to directly heat the flesh. Unlike the yogic heat generated by Metabolic Control, this is obvious on the astral plane. Panhumans have little use for such a technique until it gets quite cold, but naga adepts use it to operate freely outside tropical climates. There is a spell of the same name that requires the Fire and Health arts. Using it to constantly stay warm does not increase the appetite, unlike Metabolic Control.
• Metabolic Control: You sleep 3× as efficiently and automatically enter hibernation when badly wounded; you can voluntarily do so if you need to conserve air or really mean it when you say wake me up when it’s springtime. Jet lag is not a problem for you as long as you can nap on the plane. (Street Grimoire p172) This includes the discipline of yogic heat, improving survival in extreme temperatures.
• Rapid Healing: people healing you, whether through mundane or magical means, add your Magic Edge to their roll; this includes you healing yourself! (SR5 p311)
• Sustenance: You can go much longer without food or water. (Street Grimoire p174)
• Youthful Vigor: you look your age, but you can keep up with the youngsters and will only start getting frail toward your metatype’s maximum lifespan (e.g.: 120 for humans). The power can lead to extremely long eyebrows if not trimmed.

Stunts:

• Hard Hitting: you may have as many blue dice of Mystic Armor (SR5 p309) as you have points of Magic Edge. This applies during astral combat as well as physical altercations.
• Pain Resistance (1): at Magic +1, when your mild consequence slot is occupied with a physical consequence, it does not generate a free invoke until a higher slot is also so occupied. At +2, the same for your moderate. At +3, the same for your serious. (SR5 p311)

Brains

You can perform amazing feats of recollection and abstract thought.

• Analytics: your mystically enhanced powers of observation improve pattern recognition, evidence analysis, observation, puzzle solving, and logic-based problems. (Street Grimoire p169)
• Eidetic Sense Memory: you can remember any sense memory you choose to memorize. You can read novels after taking a moment to glance at each page. (Shadow Spells p23)
• Linguistics: you can pick up the basics of a language in a matter of hours. (Street Grimoire p172)
• Memory Palace: you use the method of loci to keep a library in your head. If you have the Divination metamagic, you can perform divination by touring your memory palace instead of using augury and sortilege. (See John Crowley’s Little, Big or Katharine Kerr’s Daggerspell and Darkspell for examples of this in fiction.)

Con

You have devoted your magic to manipulating people and the power of disguise. If you take disguise feats on a qi focus, you must keep that focus active for the entire duration of using the feats.

• Melanin Control: change color of skin, eyes, hair for a period of Con+Magic hours. (Street Grimoire p172)
• Facial Sculpt: reshape bones, muscle, and cartilage in your face for up to Con+Magic hours. Changing either way takes about a minute. (Street Grimoire p171)
• Body Sculpt: change your body as long as you keep within a 10% mass change; this includes switching gender. Requires Facial Sculpt. (Bloody Business p160)
• Voice Control: you can mimic voices and animal sounds, even things your throat shouldn’t be able to produce, like a lion’s roar. (SR5 p311)
• Keratin Control: grow a full beard or long hair in six hours, half that if you want to take your Winded condition, and mere minutes if you want to be Weary. (Shadow Spells p24)
• Kinesics: your Magic adds to Face, Con, and Focus when people try to read you. (SR5 p310)
• Kinesics Mastery: you can communicate with other adepts with Kinesics Mastery without anyone else knowing. Requires Kinesics. (Street Grimoire p172)
• Memory Displacement: you can postpone selected memories from your recollection, so you can truthfully say I don’t remember under all forms of truth reading. The memories return after a rough time you have determined (e.g.: in a few minutes, later today, tomorrow, in a different moon phase, when the seasons change). (Shadow Spells p24)
• Feign Illness: you can fake illness well enough to fool a biomonitor, medkit, or doctor. (Bullets and Bandages p22)
• Suggestion can be used with Con as well as Face.
• Ventriloquism: you can make your voice come from a nearby location, while no one sees your lips move. (Cutting Aces p153)

Crime

Your nimble fingers make you a better pickpocket and lockpick.

• Flexibility: you are unnaturally flexible and can escape restraints and get through tight spaces. You can also add your Magic to Move/Hit if someone is trying to put you in a lock. (Street Grimoire p171)

Face

Your magic helps you connect with other beings.

• Cool Resolve: Magic adds to Face, Con, Focus in social interactions where it’s important to play it cool and confident. (Street Grimoire p170)
• Voice Control (SR5 p311): when you wish it, your voice is extremely pleasant.

• C

  Suggestion: by subtly providing magical emphasis to your words, you can plant a suggestion in someone’s mind that will feel like their own idea.
• Gist: you can speak with people with whom you don’t share a common language, with much gesticulating and exaggerated facial expressions, and can understand someone who is making a similar effort. Roll Face + Magic to convey concepts; basics like which way to the food, drink, bathroom are Mediocre (+0), doctor, repair shop are Average (+1), how to operate a simple device is Fair (+2), explaining social relations (I’m with the rescue mission) is Good (+3), explaining complex social relations (Your boss is going to betray you) is Great (+4). This takes much longer than it would if you shared a language.

Focus

You have devoted magic to control of your own mind, and can add your Magic when someone tries to influence you against your will.

• Adept Accident: You can use the Accident power. (Hard Targets p190)
• Adept Spell: You can cast one spell as if you were a sorcerer. Adept powers are kept if the spell is (Critter) Form. (Hard Targets p190)
• Heightened Concern: you can ignore up to your Magic in penalties caused by distractions. This can be combined with the Adept Centering metamagic. (Shadow Spells p23)
• Living Focus: a sorcerer can hand you a spell to maintain, as long as it was cast with skill no better than your Focus+Magic. It cannot be further transferred (even to a sustaining focus), and you take the usual penalties for sustaining a spell. (Shadow Spells p24)
• Spell Resistance: your Magic Edge always applies when you want to resist a spell, even if you haven’t spent a slot on the skill to resist. (SR5 p311)

Heart

Your magic helps you understand other beings.

• Emotion Sense: a form of subliminal astral sensing like Magic Sense. You can sense the presence of strong emotions; a person needs excellent Zen to sneak up on you. If you have Astral Perception, you can read that quality of a being’s aura without becoming astrally active.
• Empathic Healing: roll Heart+Magic with a difficulty of the size of the consequence (plus the subject’s Chrome) to transfer a physical consequence to yourself; extra shifts can reduce the size of the consequence. This requires one action for each point of difficulty. (Street Grimoire p171)
• Chi Healing: using techniques of acupuncture, shiatsu, reiki, kiatsu, or the like, you can roll Heart + Magic to initiate the healing of consequences and create advantages like Restful Sleep and On the Mend. (Augmentation p123)
• Laying On of Hands: you can cast the Heal spell using Heart + Magic.

Hit

You have woven your magic into the combat arts.

• Ballistic Dance: with an attuned gun, bullets can take impossible trajectories with curves and ricochets. The adept can target someone who is entirely behind cover and ignore aspects like Human Shield. This feat is very rare in 2050, but is taught by the Gunslinger mentor spirit.
• Killing Hands: your bare-handed or -footed attacks can deliver breaking as well as bruising damage, and can bypass the immunity to normal weapons of spirits. (SR5 p310)
• Missile Parry: you can use Hit to snatch incoming objects out of the air, as long as they’re only moving as fast as arrows. (SR5 p310)
• Missile Mastery: miscellaneous thrown objects strike with deadly force, even if they would normally be too light. (Street Grimoire p172)
• Rapid Draw: drawing a weapon is a free action; when the timing matters, you add your Magic to the test. (Street Grimoire p174)
• Smashing Blow: You can break through barriers with your unarmed blows. (Street Grimoire p174)
• Spirit Claw: you can temporarily create a small weapon made of spiritual energy that has as many red dice as you have points of Magic, only usable against astral forms. (Street Grimoire p174)
• Nerve Strike: your strikes inflict consequences like Paralysis that you can clear up out of combat, even if they are occupying moderate or serious slots. The difficulty of clearing them up is still the size of a slot (so you need to roll Fantastic (+6) Heart + Magic to fix up a serious consequence). (Street Grimoire p173\)

Stunts:

• D

  Bullet Parry (1): by exercising split-second precognition, you can parry bullets using an active weapon focus. On a success with style, the boost is related to a ricochet. Requires Missile Parry.

• D

  Bullet Bender (1): your mystic connection to firearms is so deep that you can bend the trajectories of bullets to avoid you, and you can defend against firearms with Hit+Magic. Only adepts with the Gunslinger mentor spirit know this rare technique.

• D

  Counterstrike (1): when you defend with style in melee combat, excess shifts are applied to your opponent’s stress track. (Street Grimoire p170) If you also have Missile Parry, you can throw something you just caught. (Forbidden Arcana p38)

• A

  Elemental Strike (1): requires Killing Hands. Your hands (or feet) are wreathed in an elemental aura, chosen at time you take this feat. On a success with style, your target gets an aspect from your elemental attack, such as Burning, Electrocuted, etc., and you don’t pay a shift for it. With Lightning, you can use your hands as a stun baton. (Street Grimoire p170)

• A

  Elemental Weapon (1): like Elemental Strike, but requires an active weapon focus. (Street Grimoire p170)

• A

  Hard Hitting: you may have as many red dice of Critical Strike (SR5 p310) or Focused Archery (Hard Targets p190) as you have points of Magic Edge.

• A

  Inertia Strike (1): on a success with style in melee, your opponent is Knocked Down, and you do not pay the shift that goes with an Attack creating a boost. (Street Grimoire p172)

• D

  Redirection (1): requires Counterstrike. On a success with style, you can redirect your opponent’s attack to another opponent in a scrum, or a convenient wall or article of furniture. Your defense roll becomes the attack roll against the opponent, with red dice appropriate to your attacker. (Street Grimoire 159)

Make

Your magic is channeled into the act of creating with your hands.

• C

  Percussive Maintenance: roll Make + Magic against the object resistance of a device to Create an Advantage for keeping it going or clearing a problem.
• Crafted with Passion: when crafting an artwork, you can weave a metaphysical intention into it; in game terms you can Create an Advantage with your art, such as Warm, Safe, and Sound in a scarf. Each time the recipient spends a Fate point on your creation, it creates a nudge of probabilities to fulfill the intention. Only one such creation can be tagged in a single action. The item assenses as having a strong aura, but not as enchanted.
• Spirit Goods: you can craft artwork that is pleasing to spirits, which can help with the process of payment. Ephemeral creations possess a durable astral form that passes to a spirit when it is given to them in the process of conjuring, even as the physical form crumbles or burns. When you create such goods, treat it as an Overcome action; shifts in excess of the spirit’s Force add to the number of services obtained when the spirit is conjured, or the conjuror gets a +2 to their roll.
  This can also create durable artwork that is useful in creating magical lodges where spirits feel welcome.

Move

Your magic is channeled into bodily movement.

• Hang Time: you can telekinetically adhere to surfaces for five minutes at a time. (Street Grimoire p171)
• Freefall: ignore Move+Magic meters of falling. (Street Grimoire p171)
• Light Body: you can leap Move+Magic meters horizontally, or half that straight up. (SR5 p310) You can also hover slightly off the ground while meditating, so your legs don’t fall asleep.
• Power Running: you can run at a horse’s movement scale. Running at such speeds is blatantly magical and will get you disqualified from the unaugmented marathon. (Shadow Spells p24)
• Power Swimming: can swim at a dolphin’s movement scale. (Shadow Spells p24)
• Skate: you can run across Move+Magic meters of a surface that won’t hold your weight, even water. With Traceless Walk, you can sneak across the water without even a ripple. (Street Grimoire p174)
• Wall Running: you can run Move+Magic meters up a wall; you need to pause at the end of the run with a ledge, suction cup, magnet, Hang Time, etc. before doing so again. (SR5 p311)

Stunts:

• Extra Action: you may use as many levels of this as you have points of Magic Edge.

Prod

You can put magical emphasis behind your words. This is more of an aura than a spell, but it won’t cross wards and barriers and spell defense stops it.

• C

  Animal Magnetism: you can roll Prod+Magic to project an emotion onto another being.
• Commanding Voice: five word Jedi mind tricks. (Stolen Souls p191) An initiate can make the commands laster longer by taking mental stress. (Street Grimoire p159)
• Aura of Menace: when you choose, people and animals have to make a Focus check against your Prod + Magic simply to approach you while you are on other business. This is not quiet— people will talk about you, and you might attract attention from ambitious troublemakers— but it’s a great way to avoid entanglements with low-level gang members when traversing the Barrens, or to get animals in the wilderness to decide you’re an apex predator. (Street Grimoire p157)
• Abundant Peace: you can radiate peace and calm. If you’re out front, people need to make a Focus check against your Prod + Magic to escalate the situation. If your friends start something, this will not protect them, though you might be able to sit out the fracas. Wild animals may ignore you or relax in your presence.
• Wildwalk: You can use Prod + Magic to make yourself unexceptional to creatures. This makes it possible to get close to creatures that would otherwise spook or attack, and begin the process of making friends with them. This power works on sentient beings who are not in a mental state of vigilance; a delicately built human using this power could dine at the Big Rhino without a challenge until they bumped into a Son of Sauron.

Recon

Your powers of concentration and visualization help you to be extremely thorough when investigating a scene.

• Analytics: your mystically enhanced powers of observation improve pattern recognition, evidence analysis, observation, puzzle solving, and logic-based problems. (Street Grimoire p169)
• Three-Dimensional Memory (Street Grimoire p175)

Ride

In a vehicle with completely manual controls— you may need to do some work to render a modern vehicle so— you can connect with it metaphysically with an attunement ritual. You can use power steering and brakes, but need a manual transmission.

• One With the Machine: you add your Magic when your ride takes punishment, but you take stress when the vehicle does.
• Song of the Open Road: you can roll Heart + Magic to follow a dream. The dream has to be something you’re passionate about, whether it’s food or fun or revenge. If you’re pursuing a specific person, the road may lead you away from them at the start, but it’ll prepare you for your eventual confrontation... or for letting go of it.

Rock

You channel your magic through your performance, which is spectacular for a live audience and very pleasing to spirits. Part of this is extraordinary technique, but recordings lose –1 off your performance.

• Enthralling Performance: your performance distracts the audience from shenanigans going on nearby. (Shadow Spells p23)
• Rock the Astral: if a conjurer has spirits on friendly terms, you can bribe them for extra services with a performance, effectively extending their contract. If a conjurer uses Rock + Magic to summon spirits and has a compatible performance style (whether you’re singing counterpoint, playing an instrumental line, or having a rap battle), you can also roll when they summon a spirit, and if you both succeed, they can add your shifts to theirs when determining the number of services; alternatively, you can roll your Rock + Magic with a difficulty of the conjurer’s Rock + Magic to give them a boost that helps with the difficulty of their summoning. This takes a fair amount of time (minutes at the very least) and can attract other spirits if performed outside a lodge; said spirits might be quite friendly about it, or may think you would look great in a gilded cage. This feat cannot be put into a qi focus.

Sneak

You have woven your magic into stealthy movement.

• Traceless Walk: you don’t exert pressure on the floor when you sneak. (SR5 p311)
• Cloak: you can evade magical detection with Sneak+Magic. (Street Grimoire p169)
• Stillness: you can become very still and hard to spot on thermographic vision, without getting cramps from lack of motion. (Street Grimoire p174)

Spot

You have woven your magic into opening your senses.

• Astral Perception: You can use astral perception. (SR5 p309)
• Borrowed Sense: you can use a sense that you learned from a being you’ve befriended, or were taught by a spirit. (If you have an animal mentor spirit, they would have taught you the special senses of that animal; you might even learn from a friend’s mentor spirit if you have done something greatly pleasing to them. Making friends with a beast spirit with the Astral Gateway power may be easier than befriending some creatures.) Have fun roleplaying this. I recall all the times I’ve rolled on the floor with puppies and invoke a canine sense of smell. I think about the summer I spent rehabilitating injured animals at the Shasta Sanctuary... Low-light vision and thermographic vision can be learned from metahumans, sensitive hearing from cats and dogs, scent from a bloodhound, protection from snow glare by invoking a spectral version of a polar bear’s nictitating membrane, electroreception from sharks and platypi, ultraviolet light from reindeer and birds, distance vision from birds of prey, magnetic fields from migratory birds, echolocation from bats and dolphins (this is better than standard human echolocation but limited by the ability to generate ultrasound), perfect pitch from musicians, and Daredevil level tactile perception. A moment of shamanic mask may appear over your face as you activate the sense. Having one extraordinary sense is free; activating subsequent ones under pressure requires rolling Spot+Magic against the number of active senses, and you can have as many active simultaneously as you have Spot+Magic. You can take a supplemental action while activating a sense. (This is a complete rewrite of Improved Sense [SR5 p310].)
• Combat Sense: you get your Edge on Move for dodging or Hit for parrying, even if you haven’t enhanced those skills. (SR5 p309)
• Danger Sense: you get your Edge against surprises. (SR5 p309)
• Deepsense: you can use Spot + Magic to sense the structure and texture beneath the surface of an object; difficulty is the object resistance. This can be handy for woodworkers, sculptors, surgeons, and more.
• Magic Sense: you can sense magic in your vicinity; if you also have Astral Perception, you can detect astral forms without opening yourself to the astral plane. (Street Grimoire p172)
• Motion Sense: you sense motion in your vicinity, which includes people sneaking up behind you or invisible in front of you. (Street Grimoire p173)