Basics of Mutants and Masterminds

[michael]

With our second session coming up, I thought I'd make this thread to list some of the mechanics of the M&M system here for us to look over. For now, this is just a refresher, but I figured it would help keep it in our minds, and be nice to have as a reference.

I'll make more posts later, and get more in-depth as I go along, but we'll start with some basics.

Differences between D&D and Mutants and Masterminds

No hit points.
When you've been hit, you make a toughness save (d20 + TOUGH bonus).
If you fail that save by less than 5, you're bruised. (-1 to TOUGH)
Fail by 5 or more, you're bruised and stunned. (unable to act for 1 round)
Fail by 10 or more, you're stunned and staggered. (can take either a move or standard action, not both. If you're staggered twice, you are unconscious.)
If you fail by 15 or more, you're unconscious.

No attacks of opportunity
Fairly straightforward. Combat is meant to be more fast-paced, so there's no tactical combat or attacks of opportunity.

Less risk of death
All damage is assumed to be non-lethal unless otherwise specified. Even if you lose a fight, you usually aren't killed. Instead, you're captured, or the enemy gets away, or innocents are killed, etc.

More to come. And if you have any specific questions, feel free to ask.

[michael]

Combat and Power Level limits

ATK is your to hit chance
DMG is damage
DEF is your evasion
TOUGH is damage resistance

Half of your DEF bonus is added on as a dodge bonus. So if you've paid for a DEF of 8, then you have a dodge bonus of 4, bringing your total defense to 12. Your dodge bonus is lost when you are flat-footed. (Unless you have the dodge focus feat.)

At power level 10, the total of your ATK and DMG cannot exceed 20. So you could have ATK 5 and DMG 15, or ATK 12 and DMG 8, etc. The same is true of your DEF and TOUGH.

In general, I think it's a good idea to bring these 4 stats up to the maximum. (ie, make sure they add to 20.) I noticed after our first game that almost all of the premade characters in the book do that. We didn't, and I think it made combat drag a bit. (Harry, this obviously wouldn't apply to your character, since he hits automatically.)

[michael]

EXTRA EFFORT

Extra effort is used to give the players an edge over their enemies. When you use extra effort, you become fatigued. (-2 to STR & DEX, -1 to ATK & DEF) The fatigue sets in at the beginning of your next turn following use of Extra Effort. If a character suffers 2 fatigued results, he is exhausted. (-6/-3) If a character suffers a third fatigued result, he is unconscious.

You can use Extra Effort to...
-Add a +2 bonus to an ability, skill, or power check.
-Add +5 to your effective strength for carrying capacity.
-Double your movement speed for 1 round.
-Add 2 ranks to a power. (This is one of the only ways to increase your damage or toughness past the power level limits.)
-Add a power feat to a power. E.G., if you're fighting a ghost, you could use Extra effort to add "affects insubstantial" to one of your powers. This lasts until the end of the encounter.
-Immediately gain an extra standard or move action.

There's also Extreme Effort and Ultimate Effort. Extreme effort is 2 uses of Extra effort in one round, and you're exhausted afterward. Ultimate efforts is 3 uses, and you're unconscious afterward.

[michael]

HERO POINTS

Like extra effort, hero points are used to give the players an edge. You start every game with 3 hero points per player, and earn more as you progress.

You can spend a hero point to...
-Improve a die roll. You can reroll any die, and take the best result. If the second roll is a 1-10, you add ten to it. (So you will always have at least an 11 when spending a hero point.)
-Gain the benefits of any feat for one round.
-Double your dodge bonus for one round.
-Immediately shake off a stunned or fatigued condition.
-Gain inspiration in the form of clues from the GM.
-'Edit' the story. E.G., you're fighting a fire based villain, and you ask if there are any fire extinguishers near by. I could require you to spend a hero point and say there's one on the wall right next to you.
-Automatically stabilize a dying character.

I encourage you to get creative with both hero points and extra effort. If there's anything you want to do that isn't covered by the rules, you can see if I'll let you do it by using these.

Earning Hero Points

You can earn hero points from just about anything. If you
-Suffer the worst result from a saving throw. (Get knocked out, get mind-controlled, etc.)
-Roleplay well
-Defeat a strong enemy
-Do something truly heroic and self-sacrificing.
-Suffer from some complications, such as a recurring villain, a phobia, kidnapped relatives, etc.
-Pretty much any time I feel like it.

[michael]

Now I'm going to get into more specific ideas/suggestions for your character builds. Harry, I think your character has the most flexibility, and was the most inefficient in terms of Power Points (my fault) so we'll start with...

The Dove

Perception

I want to define your 360 degrees of perception a bit better. I'm going to say that you have a hard time sorting through a lot of items close together. So if you're examining briefcase that has a camera with that foam packing material surrounding it, or a purse with a lot of loose items, you're going to have a very tough time discerning what's in them. Anyway, you'll probably be making a lot of notice checks, so putting points into that might be a good idea.

Your range right now is at 100 ft. Feel free to extend that, but I'm going to say that any notice check is going to be at a penalty unless you're specifically focusing on an area, and that penalty rises with the distance. There's just too much information coming in at once for you to give anything as much attention. If you specify one particular room to examine that's 900 feet away, though, that will be the same DC as a check right in front of your face. Also with range, even though your TK attack is perception based, its attack range will still be limited by your TK level. (10 ft per rank) So extending your perception from 100 to 1000 won't extend your attack range unless you put more ranks in TK.

I think that if I don't limit your perception in these ways, it'll make building a challenge much harder.

You also might want to consider taking one rank of the Sensory Link extra from Mind Reading. With only 1 point in it, you probably won't be able to tap into the senses of any enemies, (unless they flop their will save) but you could still use it to tap into someone's senses if the allow you to. You could then see through your allies' eyes in order to read, see colors, etc.

You have a ton of combat options available, too, and I'll cover those next time.

[michael]

Combat for The Dove

In our first session, you seemed to want to pick things up and hurl them with your TK, and I did a poor job of accommodating you. One thing you need to know is that most objects you throw with your TK won't hit automatically like your normal attack. You'd have to make an attack roll. Unless, of course, you're throwing something large enough. If it's big enough, it counts as an area attack, and the opponents makes a reflex save to try to reduce damage. If the object you throw has a toughness score higher than your TK level, it will also give you a +1 or a +2 bonus to damage. If you try to throw an object that's attached to something else, like a lamp post, I'm going to say it's a full round action for you to rip it out of the ground and throw it. (Assuming you're able to break it free at all.)

Alternate Power Feats

You initially had Mental Blast in your build, and got rid of it. However, it's an alternate power for Telepathy, so you can take it for only 1 power point. There are a few other alternate powers to Telepathy that you might want to look at, too.

You can also take Blast (Different than mental blast) as an alternate power for Telekinesis. You've got 40 points in TK, so you can make it pretty powerful. It could be pushed all the way to rank 20, (max for this power level) but you'd still have to make an attack roll. If you add an area attack extra onto it, you can get it to rank 13 and it would auto-hit.

If you want to use your telekinesis to lift yourself, that would be the flight power. I'll let you take flight as an alternate power for TK, but only with the levitation flaw. If you want more, you'll have to take the power normally.

There are a few ways for you to free up some power points. You could take a flaw in one of your powers, like making TK take a full round action. You could even do away with your damaging and perception extras on TK altogether. You could still have Blast, Mental Blast, and your ability to hurl giant objects around, none of which would require attack rolls.

[michael]

Moving on to Franco's character.

Marcus

In general, you're going to want to put as many points as you can into your Alternate form.

I realized that we were both using the Density power wrong. We were treating it as though it made you grow in size every 3 ranks, when it just makes you go up in weight. You'd need to take Growth to become larger.

For your water form, I think you should ignore elongate and put more ranks in blast. Most of the benefits of elongate you can already get from your intangibility and concealment, and blast would cover the ability to make ranged attacks.

You could also consider ranks in immunity that mimic water's resistance to physical damage. You could be immune to all cutting damage, or something, for 10 power points. That might make sense, since blunt attacks could still make you fly apart, but a blade would just pass through you. Or you could be completely immune to all nonlethal physical damage for 20pp. (You could also make yourself immune to nonlethal energy damage for your gaseous form.) It really depends on how many power points you put in Alternate Form to begin with.

I think I initially said that I would only allow you to take one additional alternate form with an alternate power feat. I'm going to renege on that, so feel free to take a solid form. In fact, it might be a good idea for you do build one even if you don't spend the power point on it. Since extra effort can be used to gain an alternate power feat, you could still use it to change into a solid when you really need it.

If you want powers for a form that are not listed under that form, I might let you take it anyway. Even if I don't, I'll still give you a discount on it. So say you did built an ice form, and wanted to have Cold Control as a power. I won't let you spend your Alternate Form power points on Cold Control, but I will give you a discount on the regular cost, since you can only use it in your solid form.

[michael]

Rabbit, I think you have a pretty good idea of what you need to do with your character, but I have a couple of suggestions to throw out there.

Halo

Autofire

Perhaps the most useful extra that I've seen is Autofire. It's similar to Power Attack, but you switch your excess attack into damage after you've rolled to hit. When you succeed on an attack roll, you can choose to take any excess points of your attack and add it to your damage. More ranks increase its efficiency.

At one rank per level, your damage increases by 1 for every 2 points your attack exceeds their defense, up to 5 points total.
At two ranks, you move excess attack into damage at a 1 to 1 ratio, up to 5 points.
At three ranks, you can increase your damage by up to 10 points.

So say you had the Strike power at rank two, with the Mighty extra, which adds your strength modifier onto your strike. If you have a Strength modifier of 3, you would deal 5 damage. Adding 3 ranks of Autofire into it would cost 15 power points. (3 points for every rank of strike and and for your strength modifier.) The damage you deal with a hit now ranges anywhere from 5 to 15, depending on how well you do on an attack roll. Use power attack with that, and you could be dealing up to 20 damage. Since the damage bonus of Autofire isn't limited by the power level of the campaign, you can make accurate attacks and deal heavy damage.

(Just a side note, even though it's called autofire, I imagine a flurry of hits at close range represents the same thing.)

Linked Powers

One other thing you might want to do is link powers. Say you could channel electricity into your glove, and could stun enemies with it. You could link that with your strike at no extra cost, and every time you hit, the enemy would have to make both a toughness save against your damage and a fortitude save against being stunned. The down side to this is that linked powers can never be used separately, unless you pay an extra 1 point per rank for all the powers being linked. If you don't pay that cost you can't can't choose to deal damage without stunning, or use stun without dealing damage. (You are always allowed to pull your punches, though, reducing your damage dealt to 1.)

Powers other than Stun that might be appropriate for Halo: Nauseate, Trip, or Fatigue. (For Stun, Nauseate, or Fatigue you will have to have a device that allows you to inflict that on an opponent, but Trip can just represent your natural skill.) You can link more than two powers together, as well, so you could have a hit that would inflict all of those at once, but the cost of all of those powers might prove to be prohibitive.