r/mutantsandmasterminds

Hey, so I’m planning on running emerald city knights for my friends and I wanted to give them the player’s guide since it would probably help them but the first few pages show the final boss and mention the Silver Storm. Has anyone made a version without these huge spoilers?

Somewhat new, the terminology is confusing me a bit in some places.

So there's a section of "Powers", but then within that same chapter it calls them "effects", and then the one that confuses me most is the description for the Removable flaw which gives an example of someone's suit containing multiple powers, which woudl suggest a single "power" can be made of multiple powers in the book.

How do I determine that for the purposes of the Removable feature? And how would I write that down anyway? Do I basically write a single power on my sheet and then list all the effects of it?

so a player is a sort of vampire type character, and they have the "fast grab" advantage, allowing them to make a free grab action after an attack action. but they also have a grab-based linked array vampire bite sort of deal... and "grab-based" states that the attack occurs after the successful grab ?? meaning they can standard action attack, then free action grab, then reaction bite-array??
is this correct because this seems crazy broken please help me

So, this is my first character in M&M 3e, I have not played before (about 6 years of D&D DM experience, so I have some TTRPG background) I have a speedster built primarily on the Quickstart Generator in the handbook that I would like to make dependent on a speed drug for his abilities. I currently have 3 different powers (Rapid Metabolism, Speedster Stunts with Rapid Attack and Sonic Boom, and Hard Target) and I would like to make all of them rely on a single activation. It doesn't make sense for him to take 3 different drugs to activate 3 different powers when they're all just ways of using his superspeed. I would like to add the Activation flaw on his Rapid metabolism ability, and I'm wondering if there's any way to add a flaw to the other two powers that make them dependent on the first being active. None of the flaws I'm seeing seem to do that, but I was wondering if there's one that will do the job that I'm not understanding. Thank you!

Long time D&D player. I've played 3.5 through 5e. I get these systems. I'm trying to understand M&M 4e, but I have a few questions. The two biggest ones: Is there a way to play a character who has to transform to access his powers (like Captain Marvel, or the green lanterns, or even sailor moon)? And what is the point of linked (IE, linking flight to intangibility seems to have no benefit over just taking intangibility and flight separately, though I assume I'm just misunderstanding something.)

I’m making a character with the power to inject mutagens into others and himself to make them superhuman (mechanics wise this is an “enhance traits” + “affects others” effect). While my character stays below PL limits when this power is used, I cannot guarantee that’ll apply to others i use the powers on. If i use it on a teammate, and it would send them above the limit, what would happen? Would it be limited to only going up to the limit, or would it work at all?

I’ve started a campaign with one other person but it wasn’t all that fun cause it was just us two and we were both somewhat new to the system. And on top of that I think I did too much prep.

I’m currently in a game as a player and I’m having a lot of fun.

What I struggle with is coming up with puzzles or non-combat scenarios. I’m pretty confident that I can make combat somewhat interesting but it’s the story, the characters, and again any non-combat related stuff that I struggle with. Any tips?

Hi there! I recently bought the MnM 3rd edition book from Gen con and I have absolutely loved reading through it. One thing that I saw was that there was options for archaic weapons like swords and battleaxes, and it made me wonder, “Could I run a high fantasy game using this system?”

If so, are there any big changes that I would have to make to accommodate for it? I know people will probably just say “use another system,” but I’ve never found a system like this one that is so open to letting you actually use your cool abilities as much as you want.

__**Dad Joke**__

__Cost:__ 4 PP at start, 6 per additional rank

__Descriptor:__ Spiritual 

__Action:__ Reaction  - Attack

__Range:__ Audio Range

__Area:__ Perception Audio 

__Duration:__ Instant 

__Willpower DC Check:__ 16

• As a reaction attack, those with the power of ‘Dad Joke’ forces all within audible range that can hear and understand the language to take a DC 16 Willpower check or suffer spiritual damage to their toughness.
• This attack can only be made when the character has made a truly awful joke.

 

———————————————

Damage (1) + Area Perception (2): Audio + Reaction (3) + Alternate Resistance (1) + Limited (-1): To telling jokes = (6)

Quirk (-2): The target must understand the persons language 

———————————————

Mechanically, how would one have a personal power turn into a burst area power? I've seen the idea bounced around for enhanced advantages with area burst as a means to buff a lot of different people. How would you rule/have someone making something like enhanced trait or variable be turned into a burst area? Additionally, how would you rule it so that the caster could also benefit?

Burst area first clarifies that it can only be applied to something with close range. Personal powers can basically (but not RAW) become close with the affects others extra. Would you rule it as having that qualifies it for burst area? If it does, does the caster still benefit? Burst area on close specifies that if the caster wants it they need to use an extra point per rank and that's equivalent to taking the affects others. So why take both?

Im not a very good GM. But, I like creating stories for the team to play through. I set up a mini-boss fight for the team that was just a being with an aura that puts everyone to sleep. There was a... energy field of sorts that was protecting the boss, who was also asleep. The player in question (a telekinetic), says "I use my power to lift him up." I tell him that the force around the being is preventing them from being moved. The player snaps back with "I spend all my chips (hero points)... I'll win, eventually." I told him that I wouldn't just hand-wave away a boss fight. He seemed to disengage with the session and got quiet. Is there a better way I could have dealt with the situation?

Edit: Thank you for the responses. I see what I did wrong. I ran most of this campaign as a kind of Hack N Slash. Letting them them blow up and smash everything in their path. I tried throwing them a curve ball that needed a specific solution. Forcing that on them wasn't good. But, in my defense, I told you that I'm not a good GM. Lol

The text of the power say "You can make prodigious leaps, far more than even a skilled athlete. Your Leaping rank, minus 2, is the distance rank you cover in a single standing jump: so 15 feet at rank 1, 30 feet at rank 2, up to 1,000 miles at rank 20! You do not suffer any damage from landing after a jump, so long as it is within your maximum distance.

The speed rank of your leap maxes out at 7 (around 250 miles per hour), so leaps of greater than distance rank 7 take time equal to the distance rank minus 7. For example, a massive leap of 500 miles (distance rank 17) takes time rank 10 (17 – 7, or two hours) of time in the air! Because of this, leapers may choose to make shorter 'hops' of just a couple miles, leaving them airborne for only a minute or so, to better control their direction."

Just to confirm, do the "Leaping rank, minus 2, is the distance rank you cover in a single standing jump" (assuming it is under rank 7) cover both vertical jump nd horizontal distance (e.g., a character with leaping 1 can jump both 15ft high and do a standing long distance jump clearing 15ft casually)?

So I consider myself semi experienced with 3e now (35 sessions into my campaign and counting), and its been a good deal of fun to GM. Combat has however been something I've struggled heavily with making feel interesting. For context I am running for a party of 5 players at PL10. I generally like to have fewer enemies than there are players just for the interest of time, which then means I have to make the villains a couple PLs higher (highest ive currently gone is 15, and on average ive gone for 12)

What typically happens is that in combats where the villain(s) lose the initiative to the party, they get overwhwlmed heavily by action economy before they even get a turn. My players have a lot of functions covered between them, having various control afflictions, good damaging attacks and supporting effects for each other, so if they get to act first they can generally steamroll the villain quite hard. If the villain wins initiative, they at most deal a little bit of damage to somebody and then proceed to get steamrolled due to action economy.

In the times I've run a PL15 enemy against them, the villain was able to survive a couple rounds thanks to just having better stats, but they also hit so hard that the players could also just get one tapped at the whims of the dice so it didnt nessecarily feel that fair. That being said action economy and teamwork won out in the end in those fights too.

All in all im left quite unsure of how to make a villain threatening but fair. The players having more turns to act than them is frankly too strong of an advantage for me to wrap my head around it. An Idea ive pondered is to frankly just give villains a bunch of reaction attacks so that they effectivly have as many actions as the party does, but that feels like cheating.

Combat design has been something ive historically performed poorly at in all my history of GMing ttrpgs. MnM feels even tougher to work with though since the kinds of powers the characters can have are so diverse.