Interest Check: Mutants and Masterminds

Under and over-powered are kinda fuzzy concepts in MnM. It’s real easy to break the system, so yes, there are ways to make a more powerful character, but I can’t think of any that don’t take away from the concept you seem to be going for. Which is fine, it looks like a good concept, and a lot of those stronger builds would get vetoed because “stop destroying the planet.”

The only concerns I have are that I’m not sure what you mean by “Only used on Toughness bonus from Con” on Protection, and having “Hungry Work” on Growth. This might be a balance thing I need to work out on the flaw (or maybe Hunger in general), but this would almost require eating every round just to stay effective, which is restrictive when you haven’t got any of the speed eating feats. Now, since you’ve got Engulf on snare it looks like this is going in a vorish direction, and I don’t have a problem with that fulfilling the Eat requirement, but you’d have to catch someone every round. Basically you’d be really god in a crowd fight, but peter off quick in any kind of sustained one on one brawl. If you’re fine with that until you can buy the feat, then it’s not a huge deal.

Hmm. Might put together a feat for overeating in advance to build up a reserve. That could work.

Aside from that I just did some housekeeping. Added your super strength bonus to the carrying capacity calc. Split the Impervious cost into the extra/flaws cost instead of the main power cost and added it’s bonus to Toughness (between all the bonuses you’ve got in Toughness, you could probably afford to drop this for now. With the leather jacket you’re already capped out even before getting big).

Overall, it looks like a fun build.

Nope, weight is just weight. Power weight is just there to do the math for you and make it easier to keep track. I’m not going to stop anyone from having their character gain for non-power related reasons, so nailing that down wasn’t where I wanted to go.

Editable character sheet. Excellent, let me know if you have any questions. Some of it can be a little confusing until you get your head around it.

Ah, okay, I wasn’t ensure how much hungry equated to having to eat. I was just thinking that her being in her larger form would make her hungrier the longer she was in the form. I can remove it and pull the 2 points from somewhere. I didn’t intend for her to need to keep having to eat that much that quickly. The toughness on con thing was just that I meant the the Impervious is applying to Toughness she already has instead of buying more toughness with Impervious on it.

Yeah, it’s under status effects. Each level of Hunger lowers power rank. Like I said, that whole mechanic might need adjustment. I don’t want to add another save that will have to be tracked, but Hunger is already halfway there…

What do you think of Hunger requiring a Will save vs becoming Fatigued → Exhausted → Unconscious? I’m open to suggestions.

I’ve played some other d20 games, so far this looks kinda like D&D 3.5 rules + comic book powers. As with Masterful, I like having a balanced team (mostly I just like being special) so I’m trying to figure out what to pick… it looks like we have a defensive support (healing + barriers) and a giant tanky super-strength character, so something like an blasty energy manipulator or a mage might round things out nicely.

Just tracked down a couple of online sources that support this ruling: If you wanna just put down an Impervious power that costs one point per rank, that will cover adding Impervious to Con without having to pay out for Toughness you can’t use.

Think I might try this, though I don’t exactly understand much of M&M’s rules, or even how to really set up the character sheet, though I think I might go with a character who’s power is absorbing or draining properties from objects, or at least stealing weight from them.

Just tracked down a couple of online sources that support this ruling: If you wanna just put down an Impervious power that costs one point per rank, that will cover adding Impervious to Con without having to pay out for Toughness you can’t use.[/quote]

Okay, cool. I think the sheet might be done-ish, then. At least mechanically. I figure the cell phone/camera/PDA in equipment basically allows her to have a smart phone since those weren’t really a thing back when the book was published. I’ll flesh out a bit of backstory and personality and post it here when I get a chance.

I’m making progress, have read most of the stuff for the system and am trying to get some details down. I was wondering if / how many points I should devote to more mundane skills, which are unfortunately less exciting than powers :p. Is secret identity type stuff going to be heavily featured, or does it only need a few token points?

I can’t say for certain what Heavy is planning for the campaign, but in general it really depends on what your character concept is. My character is basically terrible at everyday life and the only thing that makes them stand out is their power, so I have almost nothing in skills and feats. But a hero like Batman would have a ton of points in skills because it’s what they do.

Made a few changes to my sheet.

Namely added a shield power and a physical shield.
Also redid my ability scores
adjusted weight so i could grab the extra padding perk
Also calculated my dodge bonus which if i am not mistaken should be equal to
(12/2)+4+2=12

Look under your chair. It’s an editable sheet!

I think the power you’d want is Transfer. That will let you drain Toughness (the only trait inanimate objects have) and add it to one of your traits. Or, for another point per rank, you could use it to Boost a range of traits matching a descriptor (A descriptor is a couple of words that describe a powerset, like “fire” or “psionics”). Gravity Control might be a good idea, it seems thematically appropriate and fills a solid area control niche on the team.

So, Transfer, Limited to inanimate objects, Boosting a single trait, would come out to one point per rank, or two points per rank if you want to Boost multiple traits matching a discriptor. You might want to throw a couple levels of Slow Fade on there so you can hold onto it for more than a round at a time.

I can’t say for certain what Heavy is planning for the campaign, but in general it really depends on what your character concept is. My character is basically terrible at everyday life and the only thing that makes them stand out is their power, so I have almost nothing in skills and feats. But a hero like Batman would have a ton of points in skills because it’s what they do.[/quote]
That’s about right. A couple ranks in whatever your out-of-mask career is wouldn’t go amiss in case “I should know how to do this” comes up, but day-to-day stuff shouldn’t come to the forefront too often.

It looks like you’re still three points over the limit.

There that should fix it

Hm… Okay, I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can get behind this… Again, sorry for wasting your time.

So question: The sheet has separate spots for Ranged and Melee attack bonus’s, and a base attack spot. Upping each of the separate one’s costs 1 pt each, but I only see a way in the rules to increase base attack. Am I missing a way to increase only ranged/melee?

There’s feats that let you do ranged and melee separately. It’s 2 points to raise both, 1 point to buy the feat for only one. So if you want to be able to hit with one but not the other you can basically buy it at half cost.

There’s feats that let you do ranged and melee separately. It’s 2 points to raise both, 1 point to buy the feat for only one. So if you want to be able to hit with one but not the other you can basically buy it at half cost.[/quote]
Right, just don’t mark down the feat in addition to filling in the score, the calc would pick up both. Fun fact: If you fill in a base attack and a melee/ranged attack, the calc will only pick up the points past the base score on the specializations.

Finally finished up a quick background blurb for my character:

To say that Emma Barrett was a bit of a loser before the Wave would be a bit of an understatement. In fact, to say that she was even average would have bordered on a compliment. While she wasn’t quite dumb, a passable intelligence combined with a number of poor decisions led to her only barely making it through high school without failing, and college was completely out of the question. A waitressing job was enough that she could just barely afford half of an apartment in the city, but beyond that she had few prospects for a true career and hardly showed any inclination to pursue one anyway. Perhaps her only gift in life was a pretty face, but she lacked any of the charm required to truly take advantage of it.

When the Wide Wave began, Emma’s life only got worse. Her roommate and a few of her coworkers were some of the first to gain powers and quickly moved on to new lives on both sides of the law, now leaving the girl with a full rent and plenty of shifts to make up at work. Over the next few months her already meager finances began to dwindle dangerously low. But then one morning Emma awoke to the puffy belly and ravenous appetite that heralded those marked by the Wave. But even as she packed on a couple of dozen pounds, she could see no sign of any supposed powers manifesting. Given her luck, she simply assumed that she was suffering all the downsides of the Wave without gaining any of its benefits.

Emma became so convinced that this was her lot in life that on her way to work she stepped out into a crosswalk without noticing that it was bright red. There was no time for the driver of the oncoming car to stop, his foot barely able to reach the brake in time. But for Emma some second nature kicked in. As she braced herself for the impact her tiny form began growing, nearly doubling in size before the car collided with her. While Emma was knocked back a fair distance and received quite a few bruises, she suffered none of the broken bones and internal injuries that a normal person would have sustained. Suddenly her true purpose in life was realized.

As a hero, Emma takes an incredibly straightforward approach to the job. The shortest distance between two points is a line, and so that’s the path she tends to take even if there’s something in the way. Rather than investing in a fancy suit or exotic weapons like many other heroes have, she simply fights in her street clothes and lets her thick hide and fists keep her safe. She doesn’t even bother to take any steps to keep her identity safe like wearing a mask. Enough people witnessed the first revelation of her powers that the cat was out of the bag right away. Besides, it’s not like she really has anybody or anything she needs to keep safe other than herself.

Background blurb done for me as well

Temperances life was fairly ordinary before the wave hit her, high-school had been difficult as she was not exactly the sharpest tool in the proverbial shed. But through the power of many sleepless nights and her bordering on abusive parents she had come out of with the points required to go do the job her parents had planned out for her.

That job was to be a doctor and even As she watched others around her develop these powers it was still not something she concerned herself with. It seemed so far away and unimportant. she told herself repeatedly that she was going to live a simple and normal life with her adoring girlfriend during which not a single interesting thing would happen. She was wrong.

When her girlfriend woke up one day with bloating and intense cravings. Temperance said it as an allergic reaction and did what she did whenever something bad happened, she ran away to work. When she returned home all she found was a letter with a single tear stained word “Freak”. Her girlfriends body was found two day later washed ashore. The police reported that she had thrown herself of a tall bridge. So when two week later Temperance awake with bloating and hunger pains she did what any rational person would do. She tried to kill herself.

She got her affairs in order wrote a will and said her good buys. Her method was to walk into the most criminal area she could find and shout racial slurs. If her powers hadn’t saver her it would have worked. A man with a knife did what angry men with knives do and stabbed her. Or rather tried to stab her when on instinct she put her hands in front of her face the knife slid of it blocked by some invisible shield. The criminal took one look at her bloated stomach and then bolted. Temperance took this moment to heart as she realized that powers weren’t such a bad thing and that maybe she could help people even outside of the operating room.

As a hero she goes by “Aegis” and generally leaves the violence to others. She instead creates cover and uses her shields to deflect attacks back at the attackers themselves. If the time comes when she needs to help on the offensive front she will attack by dropping constructs on top her enemy’s.

She fights in a red and white leotard with armor pads on her arms legs stomach. She a hood and a domino mask to help conceal her identity

Awright banged out a quick backstory to catch up. Looking forwards to this, I like what you guys have got!

Mia had been mostly happy before the wave. She’d grown up focused on academics and spent most of her time with her nose in a book and her butt in a chair. This love of books eventually brought her to her job as a research librarian, where her extraordinary memory served her well to point a visitor to just the information she needed

Despite this job, her own reading habits drew her to the fictional and fantastic, rather than the purely factual. Her job suited her talents almost too well, but she longed to use some of her knowledge for something instead of merely directing others to what they needed. She didn’t know how soon her chance would come…

She’d heard of strange phenomena happening, but the news had little solid information and was filled with strange stories. It was close to closing at the library, and she walked towards the exit thinking of getting home for the night. When she looked up however, instead of seeing the bus stop she expected, she walked directly into the inside of her locked front door, and was hungry… A few days of experimentation and news coverage of the Wave. Her general inactivity had left her on the chubby side, but as the powers piled on so did some additional pounds. She could jump though space, teleporting short and long distances, and if she whispered the right words, arcane forces would spring to her command. She had read enough comics to know what came next.

With a mask, some gloves with plastic gems glued on the backs of the hands and a hooded mage cloak that started life as a bathrobe, Mia created her costumed identity of the Fae Witch! She hoped the name was catchy enough. Her lack of protective powers tends to make her take less direct approaches, but one of her spells hits hard enough to make criminals think twice.