Power Modding Made Easy!

[UtilikiltManiac]

In looking over the M&M:2E book, I notice one thing that needs adjusting very rapidly: The Time, Distance, and Value chart. For an epic superhero game, the values here are fine and dandy, but they don't work nearly as well for a much lower-scale fantasy game. That's going to take some work.

Also, in looking at the Warrior and breaking him down level by level into M&M terms, he's built on 150 points over 20 level, which ought to mean 7.5 points per level, but the reality of it is a bit different.

The levels are worth a varying amount of points, dependent upon when his saves increase. It breaks down a little something like this:

1st level: 14 points (worth more due to the additional skill points and 4 feats instead of 1)
6th, 12th, and 18th levels: 9 points each (all saves increase by 1)
3rd, 9th, and 15th levels: 8 points each (Ref & Will saves increase by 1)
2nd, 4th, 8th, 10th, 14th, 16th, and 20th levels: 7 points each (Fortitude save increases by 1)
5th, 7th, 11th, 12th, 17th, and 19th levels: 6 points each (no saves increase)

As you can see, it's the save increases that make the cost differences between the levels.

Shadow's done amazing work, but I thought this could use a wee bit of clarification.

=)
Brian

[UtilikiltManiac]

Breaking it down further, we get the following:

All classes have the same save progression, just with different saves as the "good" save, so we can ignore that for our purposes.

Adept: 2 points per level to Combat (granted every other level). 1 point to Skills. 2 points to powers to increase the overall caster rank. Feats buy "alternate powers" as the Magic power from M&M. One power should therefore be "free."

Expert: 3 points per level to Combat. 2 points to Skills.

Warrior: 4 points to Combat and 1 point to Skills.

The breakdown is actually quite simple. Individual spells, should one wish a more D&D feel, are a bit tougher, but it would be easy enough to do it the standard True20 way by making each feat an Alternate power that levels up as the character does.

This seems a very happy medium that would also really open up the number of powers available to Adepts.

[mamelon]

Hey everybody. This is my first time posting on this forum, but I've been a lurker for over a year. I'm a big fan of the True20 system and I've enjoyed reading all the discussion that goes on here.
One of the areas of greatest interest to me is the treatment of the Powers system and how diverse it can be. I like the system for Powers in True20 more than I have for any other system of magic or superpowers I've ever encountered. It has a lot of room for flexibility because it is so simple and exoteric.

Anyway, The Shadow, I am extremely impressed by the work you put forth in this thread about developing diversity of powers. I have never played Mutants and Masterminds, so I didn't know much about its system of powers. And what really gets me about all of this is that it's very similar to a set of custom rules I was already in the process of developing for myself and my own playgroup.

The way I had it, every character had a Power Rating, something similar to Combat bonus. It's basically the same mechanism as having different Power Rank progressions as described in the True20 Companion book. A character can have a Power Rating of Full, Medium, Half, or Poor, each determining maximum ranks that character can have in a power. So at 10th level, Full Power Rating would give you 13 max ranks, 9 max ranks at Medium, 6 max ranks at Half, and 3 max ranks at Poor.
Adepts have Full Power Rating for all powers, and Experts and Warriors have Half Power Rating for all powers. I had also come up with some custom roles like Master (equivalent to a Martial Artist, such as presented in the Companion) which has Medium Power Rating for a group of powers (like Body Control, Enhance Ability, etc). and Half for the Rest, and Champion (equivalent to Clerics, Paladins, etc, that have less supernatural power but a little combat ability), which have Medium Power rating for all powers.

I had been using an option that was similar to adding flaws to powers (I was just calling them power drawbacks). I had created a list of power drawbacks, and each one would raise a character's effective Power Rating when applied to a power. Using that system, anyone could learn a power, but obviously at their own Rating (it was more of a high magic setting - I started out using Blue Rose).
When learning a power, a character could learn it with one or more power drawbacks. Each drawback could raise a character's effective ranks in that specific Power.

As an example, I had a drawback called Wild Power, which required the power user to make a Will save, a "consequence" save, when using the power (as well as a fatigue save if the power was normally fatiguing), with a Difficulty of 10 + half the power's rank + 1 per Wild Power used in an hour's time. If the power user failed, the power would go out of control like with the Wild Talent feat they had in the True20 PDF, only it had a chance of occuring every time they used a power, instead of only during times of stress. Wild Power was a +1 PR drawback, meaning anyone who had a Wild Power would raise their effective Power Rating by one step when determining their ranks in that power only.

So using that custom rule, a 4th level Expert could choose to learn the Heart Shaping power. Normally, she'd have 3 ranks in Heart Shaping, but she could choose to learn Heart Shaping as a Wild Power. If she did, she'd have Heart Shaping at 5 ranks instead of 3 (Medium Rating instead of Half), only it'd be more dangerous. If she failed her save to control the power, her subject could react with hate towards her when she was trying to instill friendship, or she could end up inflicting an emotion in herself or an ally as a freak accident.

I had it that someone with Full Power Rating already (i.e. an adept) couldn't learn power drawbacks, but now I almost think it'd be a cool way to let adepts learn some powers with a greater or additional effect, such as you describe extras.

My list of drawbacks was pretty small compared to the ones you listed in the Mutants and Masterminds book. I think I'll look in that book and familiarize myself with some of their rules and flaws.

And I have a question: have any of you ever done much exploring in the way of a depth of special 'power feats' like they have in M&M?