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View Full Version : Player Help Mutants and Masterminds hero help.



janusmaxwell
2014-06-15, 11:44 PM
I'm a fairly competent DnD player regarding Pathfinder, 3.5 and Dark Heresy. The previous Saturday I was introduced to Mutants and Masterminds, and the first session was basically a giant character creation potluck. Unfortunately I'm so new to the system that while everyone else seemed to get their heroes statted out very quickly, I was still asking questions that felt like I was asking "HaY gUyz How I MINe 4 fIsH!?"

That said, I know what I want, I've got the backstory and a generally good idea of how to get everything statted out...but not enough, which is why I currently throw myself on the Giantitp forums tender mercies.

The setting is Power level 10:
What I'm trying to do is a Conduit from the infamous series with power over electricity and ice/cold, similar to Cole in the Good path of Infamous 2, except while Cole was master electrical with some ice flavored extras, this character has equal power in both. For ability scores I stated the guy out to have 16 in everything (not original I know) and his skills be based around solitary exploration (Backstory flavor, explained below) so not much to do with computers, gadgets, or people skills except Diplomacy, otherwise survival, investigate, Search, Notice, and medicine got some ranks.

2 weaknesses, one to water (Standing water up to knees or higher is painful, but since he has cold powers, it's not hard to quickly make a block/shield so he doesn't end up drowning or something) and one to hot, de-humidified locations, like Frozone in The Incredibles. If he ends up in a desert or that blast furnace room from the first Metal Gear Solid his ice powers disappear.

[EDIT] Forgot to mention, while his ice powers disappear in heat, being in a very cold environment actually makes his ice powers easier/supercharged, like making a giant ice battle suit or a freezing laser beam, a la, the Vermach 88 Ice Titans from Infamous 2.

It's the Powers where I'm having a metric **** load of troubles figuring out how to set this stuff up.

I want the (relatively slow) Regen from the games, where I can take a bullet and be fine in a few minutes, but too many at once and I'm down for the count. I don't know even where to start with this...upgrading Toughness? I did manage to figure out the power for absorbing electrical energy at a distance to heal myself and making myself entirely immune to cold damage and cold environments.

I want to be able to shoot enemies from afar with lighting bolts or freezing sprays/ice shards/hail stone fists. I know/think it's the Blast power with the Alternate feat but I'm at a complete loss to the other fine details, like making my lighting having the "Stunning" option...I managed to mostly figure out how to make Bursts for cold grenades that are "selective"

I thought of having some Iceman/Frozone ice shaping power (More Frozone then Iceman) useful in doing ice wall type shenanigans.

70% Ranged combat, but able to do decent in melee, either by having a punch or metal object charged like a taser, or by quick forming a block of ice to swing into someones head or stomach. (larger fist around my regular fist, grabbing a stick/rod and forming a quick ice sledge hammer for a solid whack)

Currently thinking of flight being more "Glide" like the Infamous games, supplemented by the Ice shapes to get/keep my height and momentum, but if the power level increases or I get more power points, I'll upgrade it to straight flight

If there are points left over and/or the Power Level increases, I'll get the pseudo mind-reading powers Cole Mcgrath had in the first Infamous and the Telekinesis to throw stuff around from the 2nd one.


All that is the stuff that I know what I want, but I don't know how to make it "Gel" into a finished character that will fit into what I'm trying to set up. If anyone knows the rules MUCH better than I do, and figures out how to make all or most of this stuff work (the rest can wait until there's more PP later) please help me. A slight addition is that the remaining members of my group are slightly munchkining (in an amusing way, not evil) and have set up magic/alien time travel stuff which includes all of them having "Immunity 9: Life Support" And I can't figure out how to get that added onto my characters stats at the moment in a way that "Makes sense"



That's all the stuff regarding crunch, if anyone is curious about the fluff for my character, backstory and motivations, read on.


Character concept: Johnathan Ezekiel Mcgrath, Only refers to himself as Zeke and no superhero name. A conduit from the bad ending of Infamous 2. (Not second son) The son of Lucy Kuo and Cole Mcgrath after Cole chose to usher in a new, all-conduit society and cause the extinction of the rest of the non-conduit human race.
Raised knowing the sins his father committed, John Mcgrath set out to explore the world which now had 0.0001% of the Human population living on it, all with some form of super power. It was partially to get a sense of the 'world no longer there' but also to see if any ordinary humans survived in the isolated locations of the world. The discovery of regular human settlements, no matter how small, would give a small beacon of hope ("Dad didn't kill everyone!"), and a chance for redemption, if not for Cole, but for his relatives and descendents.

John succeeded, and actually discovered numerous non-conduit settlements of varying stripes. Elated, he returned home, only to be betrayed by his father. Claiming that being spread out and isolated would only hurt their chances for survival, especially in a world now populated by conduits, Cole left to save the remaining humans.

Saving them...by doing what he had done long before John was ever born, sacrificing the pitifully small human settlements to create what amounted to less than 50 conduits. (Infamous process for making conduits, a BIG F-ING EXPLOSION of "Ray Sphere Energy" or equivalent mcguffin)

John was horrified when he realized what had happened and what he had been unknowing/unwitting party to, but that later changed to rage at his father being every bit the bastard that history would end up painting him as.

As John tells it, he challenged his father to a fight and like most father-son fights, he got is ass beat. Rather than killed, his mother spoke up on his behalf and Cole simply banished his son into an alternate dimension/timeline. (Yes electricity can do that....shut up....)

This is tragically a lie as John did fight his father, but Cole was the one who lost. Enraged beyond reason at the self-serving cruelty, John absorbed Coles "Power" (the evil finishing move you could do to bad guys or civilians in both games to recharge) The result of the absorbtion was being catapulted into the alternate timeline (Possibly granting him the power to dimension hop on his own in the future...) and over charging his powers so that he no longer needs to "recharge" as his father did to keep using them.

Kid Jake
2014-06-16, 12:27 AM
Which edition? Sounds like 2e (which I'm fairly familiar with) since you said you have 16's in everything but that could also refer to 1st I believe.

janusmaxwell
2014-06-16, 10:54 AM
sorry, 2nd edition. Skills are 1 point for 4 ranks, Abilities are 1/1, etc.

Kid Jake
2014-06-16, 02:13 PM
Alright, the regeneration is easy: 3 Ranks Injured, 3 Ranks Staggered and 5 Ranks Disabled let's you fully heal after a minute or two of rest.

Your blast powers could all be built around Alternate versions of Blast and if you'd like to add extras to them, all you need is the linked extra, which is a +0 modifier. So you can add Stun to your lightning attacks or Snare to your ice blasts (to represent being frozen in place) you just have to buy those powers as normal.

Melee attacks, no matter how flavorful can just be statted as Strike.

You can use Leaping to represent being hurled into the air by a burst of ice and just take the Glide modifier to one or two ranks of Flight.

The ice armor could be represented as Battle Form (basically Alternate Form that only lasts a few rounds) from Mecha and Manga that's only available in cold locations.

Don't panic when making an M&M character though, the simplest way is always the best way and most of your power descriptions are pretty straight forward. With your eclectic power list though the real problem is fitting them all in.

janusmaxwell
2014-06-16, 05:04 PM
Thanks for the help...my issue with the system is largely tied with "What needs to be written down" as a power, and what's just a flavor text, like the Melee stuff. This should help me out a lot for ironing out all the wrinkles.

Sith_Happens
2014-06-17, 12:33 PM
Thanks for the help...my issue with the system is largely tied with "What needs to be written down" as a power, and what's just a flavor text, like the Melee stuff. This should help me out a lot for ironing out all the wrinkles.

Everything besides the mechanical end result of the power is "just flavor text," though I put that in quotes because the "flavor text" does affect various possible interactions (like Immunity, to name the most obvious and straightforward example), so you do still need to write it down.

By the way, is the series actually based on inFamous at all? If not then your backstory is likely to get some serious eyerolls.

janusmaxwell
2014-06-17, 06:00 PM
Considering another player is using a hero concept of a knock-off Doctor Who, who has back-up from a knock-off Elizabeth from Bioshock Infinite, I predict I will have no issues with people rolling their eyes or making "Jerk-off" motions with their hands.

S'all good, as long as we're all having fun there's no problem. The guy doing the pseudo buddy-cop thing with Doctor Who and Elizabeth is playing a Red Hand of Doom game with me, and from session 1 I've been telling him he needs to put up the story of the campaign because almost every session has resulted in me laughing myself sick at somepoint...think I should add something to the 'no-context' thread....

janusmaxwell
2014-06-17, 09:35 PM
Frustrating delays aside, I've statted out my character as follows:

Reset all my Ability scores down to 10, and kept the 20 PP spent on skills, leaving me with 130 to work with.

Regeneration 11: 3 Injury, 3 Staggered, 5 Disabled = 11 PP
Flight 2: Flaw;Glide = 2 PP
Absorb Electricity (heal) 2: Power magnet, Flaws; Ranged, Limited. (I need faster healing, ranged attack to something electrical in 20 feet to heal up) = 4 PP
Immunity 11: 1 cold environments, 5 cold damage, 5 electrical damage = 11 PP

3 feats so far. Power attack, Precise shot and Accurate Attack = 3 PP

Now the bane of my current existence, the powers.

Do I take Blast Cold or Electricity, and get the Alternate Power feat to have the other...and then spend god knows HOW long statting out the variations I want in to one power box on the character sheet.

OR, do I get the Cold Control power, and the Electrical control power, and use those ranks individually for the various Blasts, Bursts and other mechanical necessities?

It's a concern of both running out of paper space, or spending more PP then I needed to for the same result.

janusmaxwell
2014-06-17, 11:06 PM
Wrote down what I've got so far, so if anyone with more knowledge then me would like to "Proofread" I'd appreciate it

Blast, Cold and Lightning, Ranks 12 = 24 PP
Stunning lightning; extra, linked power (stunning) 2 PP: 12 Ranks
Frost Grenades; Extras: selective, area:burst, linked power (snare) 4 PP: 8 Ranks

Strike, Cold and Lightning, Ranks 12 = 12 PP
Taser: Extra, linked power (Stunning) 1PP: Ranks 12
Piercing Cold: Penetrating extra 2 PP: Rank 6 (Flavor reasons, sharp and superdense ice shard, a la the “Stalrhim” from Elder Scrolls Skyrim)

Create Object, Ice Ranks 7 = 14 PP

Leaping 4 ranks = 4 PP
Able to launch myself 10 times my normal jumping distance (or is it 25?...)

Accurate Attack, No penalty for shooting into a melee: 1 point
Precise shot: Trade damage for attack bonus 1 point
Power attack: Trade attack bonus for damage boost 1 point
Accurate feat for the lightning attacks: 1 point
Alternate Power feat (Blast): 1 point
Alternate Power feat (Strike): 1 point

Total points spent on Powers: 46

Character weaknesses: Being in standing water causing pain is a weakness that is Moderate and Common, which gives 3 power points, and according to the DM “Cold 2 in hot environments”
Which I kinda don’t get yet...so it means that when I’m somewhere hot, I can’t use my Ice powers but get 2 PP to re-stat out and spend wherever? or I just lose 2 ranks to any of my Ice powers when I’m somewhere hot?

Jlerpy
2014-06-19, 06:03 PM
That sounds to me like they're saying you'll treat hot environments as extremely cold? Or something.

Beleriphon
2014-06-20, 03:02 PM
Character weaknesses: Being in standing water causing pain is a weakness that is Moderate and Common, which gives 3 power points, and according to the DM “Cold 2 in hot environments”
Which I kinda don’t get yet...so it means that when I’m somewhere hot, I can’t use my Ice powers but get 2 PP to re-stat out and spend wherever? or I just lose 2 ranks to any of my Ice powers when I’m somewhere hot?

Well the Moderate needs have some mechanic involved, its probably a -2 to skills checks (but it could be penalties to stats so you need to check) or attack rolls, and it happens whenever you are immersed in water which isn't a rare substance on this planet by any means.

Drawbacks for a character rather than a specific power mean you get the listed number of points to spend on your character in general.

janusmaxwell
2014-07-04, 12:49 PM
So I just had a brilliant (imho) idea for a heavy duty bruiser type of character, to be used just in case my current M&M character get's killed. It doesn't seem likely considering how the campaign is going so far, but still good to have a back-up plan.


This idea is coming from a similar place as my last character, being a Conduit from the Infamous 'verse. But the larger gag with this stuff is that going by the established canon of Conduits, whatever power a conduit has, they need to periodically recharge with an associated element. Electric powers mean stocking up by draining cars, streetlights and various machinery. Second Son had the Smoke and Neon powers which had to be re-charged by finding campfires or chimney stack, and glitzy bar and nightclub signs.

I had an idea for a conduit power over Metal. The Character in question (which I picture as a blonde woman for some reason...) would be able to absorb various base metals into her body. Anywhere on her body but mostly through hands, like she presses her hands onto an Iron door and her hands just sink in forming a perfect hand impression, rather than "Siphoning the overall mass" or something equally wtf like that. She can't absorb man made metals...maybe steel but not very well, but higher end metals that aren't naturally occuring she's got bupkus.

What does the power over metal do? She can use her internal "Stockpile" of metal to shoot out various types of bullets, which would mean anywhere from small caliber to buckshot, but could also mean things like spikes, or giant staples that could pin somebody to a wall or floor.

The gag? The internal stockpile she has is not just "metal is metal is metal" If she only has copper around and absorbs some of that to recharge, her shots are going to be copper rounds rather than lead or iron. Furthermore, she can have many types of metal in her body at a time and while she can't absorb man-made metals, she can use her body and willpower to create unnatural metals. She's fighting on a broken bridge/highway where rebar is sticking out and grabs some, and fires out tempered steel. She can even blend together, from trial and error, types of metal that science hasn't even conceived of yet.

Besides the shot, she could of course create blades and armor. But a distinction would be that rather than Wolverine from Xmen or the guy with the armblades from Mortal Kombat, she would simply exude the materials and metal from her body and either form what amounts to a bladed bracer, or an actual sword to hold in her hand, and a kind of armor covering for a given situation.

Sound like I've got a good concept here?