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View Full Version : Alternate Power Confusion (Mutants and Masterminds)



pyrefiend
2009-07-18, 12:32 PM
I tried to run a Mutants and Masterminds game before, but it didn't work out. Everyone got bogged down trying to learn a new system, and in the process decided they didn't like it. But I think that most issues were due to rule confusion, so I'd like to give it another shot.

That said, there's one thing that makes no sense at all to me: the Alternate Power power feat. As far as I can tell, you spend one power point to get superpowers that would have cost way more than that without the feat. And with the Magic power it gets even more ridiculous. You could just spend power points on Magic up to the limit, then spend one more on Alternate Power and get every other power up to the cost of Magic. And the drawback is that you can't use them at the same time? I must be missing something here.

HamHam
2009-07-18, 12:38 PM
I tried to run a Mutants and Masterminds game before, but it didn't work out. Everyone got bogged down trying to learn a new system, and in the process decided they didn't like it. But I think that most issues were due to rule confusion, so I'd like to give it another shot.

That said, there's one thing that makes no sense at all to me: the Alternate Power power feat. As far as I can tell, you spend one power point to get superpowers that would have cost way more than that without the feat. And with the Magic power it gets even more ridiculous. You could just spend power points on Magic up to the limit, then spend one more on Alternate Power and get every other power up to the cost of Magic. And the drawback is that you can't use them at the same time? I must be missing something here.

On the contrary, you pretty much already got it. Basically, it's the idea of the action economy. It's one of the reason stuff like Mystic Theurge is considered bad and the reason a Gestalt character is not twice as powerful as a normal character. Having additional options and thus versatility is good, but it doesn't actually make you that much more powerful. Being able to shoot people with fire or fly is not as strong as being able to do both at the same time.

Thus, Alternate Power comes with a significant discount because it doesn't make you more powerful in any given round of combat, just gives you more versatility throughout and adventure which may or may not even be relevant.

kamikasei
2009-07-18, 12:45 PM
There's also the fact that it's supposed to be used on powers which can reasonably be said to be the same basic power used in different ways.

Bear in mind that M&M places a lot of responsibility for balance in the hands of the players and DM.

PLUN
2009-07-18, 01:08 PM
The important thing to remember though is always one at a time. Wanna use your Badger Scent? Well looks like you'll have to put away your Badger Claws. So if you have say, your magic flight spell on, and magic is your only power, then you have zero defenses or attack modes available to you.

A great example is Marvels own Dr Strange. He has a cloak of levitation, an example of a flight power bought seperately, and thus can fly all the time. Pretty much all his other powers? One at a time requiring his concentration. Meanwhile his fellow New Yorker Spider-Man can always rely on having fast reflexes, danger sense and super strength even when he's shotting web (and if he wants to swing and shoot at the same time, that's two seperate powers. If he's happy to concentrate on one or the other, that's one).

awa
2009-07-18, 01:16 PM
Another thing you need to be careful of that they mention in other books is that some of the abstract powers like the magic power may need to be limited. take ice powers as a more normal example you can create object, snare, environmental control and maybe a few others but its not an every thing power.

The big thing to remember about mutants and masterminds is the game is not designed to be run completely raw. The game master is assumed to be their looking over charecter sheets and stopping bathroom Psychic and so on.

The_Snark
2009-07-18, 02:09 PM
Mutants and Masterminds is really not a system that can stand up to players that try to abuse it. Yes, you could rationalize almost every other power in the book as an alternate power of Magic, but you're not really supposed to do that.

Alternate powers are there to let heroes get some extra tricks without paying unfairly high costs to do so. A hero who has two attack powers (say, Blast and Entangle for a hero who creates ice) is not significantly more powerful than a hero who has one, and because using a single superpower to accomplish more than one thing is common for comic book superheroes. If you have alternate powers that aren't attack powers (like Flight or Create Object), they're still less useful than a non-alternate power would be—you couldn't fly and shoot ice blasts, or use any of those attack powers while you had an object around.

In short, you become more versatile—you have more attack options, or some powers that are useful for solving problems out of combat—but you don't become significantly more powerful in a fight. It's possible to go overboard (as with the Magic example; I feel like generic Magic is a really bad power because it's open-ended and generic), but the game assumes that most characters will have a variety of options, whether through alternate powers, skills, or something else.

Ultimately though, the real limitation is supposed to be player self-restraint.

(Minor nitpick: You spend 1 point per alternate power, not 1 point to get all the alternate powers you want. You may have known that already, but the phrasing you use sounds like 1 point for all the powers you want.)