M&M Alternate Power Feat Confusion

[D-naras]

I just picked up Mutants and Mastermidnds 2ed and i am going through the rules... It looks pretty sweet but this particular part of the rules confuses me.
Supposedly, power feats cost 1 point, but how does that work with the Alternate Power feat? You pay 1 point and get an alternate power, on your primary power's rank, or you have to purchase ranks normaly from the particular power you chose from the feat? Still confused I continued to the Dynamic Alternate Power section...... And I got lost... :smalleek:

Can you fellow playgrounders explain this to me? I am looking forward to giving MnM a try!

[infinitypanda]

Alternate Power lets your reassign points you spent on the base power. So say that you take Blast 5 with the Area extra (15 points). Now when you take Alternate Power (which costs one point), it lets your reassign those 15 points into a different power. So now you have a 15 point blast, the alternate power feat, and another 15 point power, for 16 points.

It seems a bit overpowered, but it's not, really. You can only swap between powers in the same array once per turn.

[D-naras]

Thanks! That's what I thought it did initially, but then how do Dynamic Alternate Powers work?

[The Dark Fiddler]

Dynamic Alternate Powers, if I remember correctly (Away from Book right now) can be used in the same round, as long as they don't use conflicting action types (standard and standard, for example).

[infinitypanda]

If two alternate powers are Dynamic, then you can split those points between them. For instance, if you took Blast 5 [Area] (15 points), then Time Control 2 w/ Progression Feat (15 points), and took Dynamic for both of those (total of 18 points), you could, rather than having to choose Blast or Time Control, split points. So you could do Time Control 1 and Blast 2 at the same time, for example.

[Prime32]

If two alternate powers are Dynamic, then you can split those points between them. For instance, if you took Blast 5 [Area] (15 points), then Time Control 2 w/ Progression Feat (15 points), and took Dynamic for both of those (total of 18 points), you could, rather than having to choose Blast or Time Control, split points. So you could do Time Control 1 and Blast 2 at the same time, for example.Thanks for this. I had been having trouble understanding what Dynamic Alternate Powers were supposed to do.

[D-naras]

So this means that I can Blast someone and buff myself with the same action? Or it would have to be different actions? For example Blast and Teleport? (standard and move action).

[shadow_archmagi]

So this means that I can Blast someone and buff myself with the same action? Or it would have to be different actions? For example Blast and Teleport? (standard and move action).

It doesn't let you do two things at once. It *does* let you do a lot of things for the same point cost.

For example, if I decided I wanted to be a Static Shock-esque character, then I could take Electricity Control 15 with Blast and Fly and Telepathy. (I am hearing the tiny electrical impulses that travel along their nerves)

At that point I'd have spent 18 points, but I'd have four different powers at rank fifteen (A 60+ point value!)

The only disadvantage is that I couldn't Fly, Blast, and Telepath (OH GOD THERE IS NO VERB FOR TELEPATHY) at the same time unless I took Dynamic Power, in which case I could choose to do them at once but at a fraction of the power.

Thus, Alternate Power really shines if you take powers that don't work well together! (Example character has one power for punching, one power for flying, and one power for diplomacy. Since it's very rare to punch people in the air while chatting with them, these make GREAT alternate powers!)

[D-naras]

So I am looking at Spatial Control, and it says it functions as Teleport of the same Rank. It also lists Teleport (Attack+0 or Portal +2) among it's Alternate Powers. My first question is what does the +0 and +2 mean? Extra cost on the feat?

My second question is this: I am making a hero that uses a magical sword to cut through space, but I only want him to do so at short range. Spatial control works as Teleport of the same rank. Does this mean I can use the Short-Range Flaw of Teleport? If yes then what's the point of including the above options from the Teleport power as Alternate Powers? Should I just get Teleport and be done with it?

[Beleriphon]

So I am looking at Spatial Control, and it says it functions as Teleport of the same Rank. It also lists Teleport (Attack+0 or Portal +2) among it's Alternate Powers. My first question is what does the +0 and +2 mean? Extra cost on the feat?

Those aren't power feats, they're Extras. They make the cost per rank more expensive. Thus the +2 extra makes the basic cost more expensive. Thus a 1pp/rank power is now a 3pp/rank power.



My second question is this: I am making a hero that uses a magical sword to cut through space, but I only want him to do so at short range. Spatial control works as Teleport of the same rank. Does this mean I can use the Short-Range Flaw of Teleport? If yes then what's the point of including the above options from the Teleport power as Alternate Powers? Should I just get Teleport and be done with it?

Does the sword do damage? If it does then its a Strike power with nothing to do as an alternate power. I think you need to be more clear on what the "sword" is supposed to do, or rather what the final result of using the sword would be.

I'll try to reexplain APs. An alternate power feats lets you tack an another power onto a main power. In theory they are supposed to be thematically linked.

As an example:

A Blast power that is a fire blast worth 2pp/rank. Its a Rank 10 Blast power worth 20 points.
A fireball is a Blast power with the Area (burst) extra. Area (burst) is a +1 extra making the power worth 3pp/rank. For 10 ranks it costs 30 points.

I can take both powers separately for a total cost of 50 points. Its pretty expensive, and doesn't add any extra options since I can normally only use once per round anyways.

Instead of spending 50 points I could take my normal Blast 10 for 20 points, and then AP the fireball of that power. Now, doing this limits me to 6 ranks of the fireball power since the AP cannot be more expensive than the base power. This costs 21 points.

I could AP things the other way and make the normal blast an AP off of the fireball, but I would still be limited to spending 20pp on the normal blast power since I'm still limited by power level to rank 10. This arrangement would costs 31 points.

A dynamic power works effectively the same way, but the DAP costs two points for the feat rather than one. This lets you distribute your total available points (from the base power) among all of the DAPs in your setup, or array.

As such you could have:

Perception Range Telekinesis 15 is a worth 45 points. TK is worth 2pp base and increasing the range to Perception is a +1 extra.

You could AP a blast off that, again a max of 10 ranks even with no extras because of the PL limits. So lets do that.

We have TK 15 (perception range) 45pp + (AP: Blast 10) 1pp = 46 points.

Lets make them both dynamic now.

TK 15 (perception range; dynamic = 1pp) 46pp + (DAP: Blast 10) 2pp = 48 points

This lets us distribute our 45 points for the base power between TK and Blast according to the rank costs. Thus you could have:

Blast 10 (20 points) + TK 8 (24 points) = 45 points -- this "wastes" 1pp in the array.

You can add a third power, lets say Flight 5 (5 ranks x 2pp/rank = 10 points).

TK 15( perception range; dynamic) 46 pp + (DAP: Blast 10) 2pp + (DAP: Flight) 2pp = 50pp

We could then set our powers as such (to a max of 45 points total): Blast 10 (20 points) + Flight 5 (10 points) + TK 5 (15 points) = 45 points.

You could change it up to this instead:

Flight 1 (2 points) + TK 14 (42 points) = 44 points -- This has no blast component, but it lets you move slowly with flight and use TK at nearly full power.