Mutants & Masterminds 3rd Edition Revised: Week 5 - Powers

[Nintendogeek01]

Boy oh boy oh boy... four prior weeks of solid discussion on M&M 3rd ed. and we've now, after some delay on my part, hit the bread and butter of the entire system; that's right, you love them. You hate them. You can't have M&M without them. It's Powers!

Powers are the biggest vehicle for allowing players, and GM's too, to make characters that can fit in almost any setting. They're what let your character run around the world in far less than 80 days. They're what let you use skyscrapers as improvised clubs. They're what let you help your landlady take out her garbage... with YOUR MIND...!!! Do you use magic equipment? Powers can do that! Do you know long-lost martial arts with quasi-mystical Qi techniques!? Powers can do that! Do you fight with super-bouncy-balls that are loaded with pepper, sewing needles, or steaming hot coffee!? Yep. Powers can do that too! Powers definitely help make the system fun by having the room to let players be what they want to be.

So in 3rd edition powers are created through three things: Effects, Modifiers, and Descriptors. Effects are what most people think of when one thinks of powers as they define exactly what the power does, be it a damaging effect, an affliction that hinders enemies, or a means of moving yourself farther and faster, or a means of perceiving the world around you beyond the range of your human senses. Those effects are further expanded on or weakened by modifiers; modifiers raise or lower the final cost of resulting power by improving on the base effect or worsening the base effect respectively. A modifier may allow an effect to work over an area or at a longer distance, or it may make it so the power only works on specific things instead of working generally, or make it so the power has limited uses. Finally we have descriptors, which are important for defining the flavor of your power and how it interacts with other powers; so you have a ranged damage attack, well descriptors decide whether that ranged damage attack is a gout of flame or high-tech buzz saw discus. So you can fly; either you lift yourself with your mind or you propel yourself with jets coming out of your shoes. They're what determines that your water blasting power can also double as a fire-hose for that apartment fire, or whether your target is immune to your noxious gas breath, or whether you can counter that darkness blast with your light blast. Unlike the other two facets of a power, descriptors don't affect the cost of the power but they're still important.

Now powers cover a HUGE range of things so I'm not going to be reviewing each and every single power. Though if there's any I don't hit on that you feel should be covered do let me know. I will be covering effects and modifiers below, I may bring up descriptors later in the topic.

Affliction
Affliction is one of the go-to powers for when you want to harm your opponent without dealing damage to them. A few distinct points about afflictions is that, unlike damage effects, afflictions require only three degrees of failure to effectively take the opponent out of the fight. That said, unlike damage, affliction needs the purchase of an extra to be cumulative (or one more extra for its meaner cousin with a prison record, progressive!!!). Afflictions, unless built around them, are seldomly used to end fights by themselves, but if your teammates go before the recently afflicted enemy, usually the affliction leaves them that much worse off to fend off your teammates; so affliction is a useful power to have in M&M simply because of the team value.
Now having said that the afflictions in-and-of themselves are what I wish to discuss, not the effect itself. Namely there are three I want to discuss; vulnerable, impaired, and disabled. Vulnerable halves your active defenses, which isn't a big deal for those who are toughness-shifted but crippling to those who rely on their active defenses. Now as I touched on in the last topic I don't have the same problem with defenseless since, put simply, both defense paradigms are going to get critted at defenseless either way, but vulnerable winds up feeling a bit more punishing to defense shifted. Lastly is Impaired and disabled, different GM's have different opinions on how broad or narrow one should read "A(n) Impaired/Disabled character is at a -2/-5 circumstance penalty on checks."
Proposed Changes: None to the affliction power in-and-of-itself, but a few for specific afflictions. To vulnerable I propose a flat penalty to dodge/parry/defense (I'm thinking -5 personally, but I've not settled). For Impaired/Disabled it's less a change to the afflictions themselves, but that we clarify that all checks refers to skills, attacks, and the rare ability checks simply because we have afflictions to cover active defenses and the weaken power is a more sensible means of targeting defenses. If we let impaired and disabled also affect saving throws, the recovery rolls could otherwise become dangerously self-feeding to the impaired/disabled afflictions.

Communication
As the description says it lets you send out communications by some other means besides your voice. Via visual means (laser or fiber optic), ultra or infrasonic means, but the most common forms of this I've seen are radio and mental (telepathic communication). Useful... but... I don't know, it strikes me as being a little on the expensive side for what it does, especially since it needs extras to broadcast simultaneously or pick and choose who hears it.
Propose Changes: I think maybe this one needs to be dialed back to maybe 2-points-per-rank, though if anyone can explain to me why its base cost is so high I'm all ears (or eyes since... y'know, I'm reading...)

Create
This effect is for creating objects. No not weapons and whatnot, those are honestly best handled by the damage power; but this creates magical bridges, icy barricades, statues to drop on people, barriers of hard-light, seemingly flaming cages, you get the idea. It's ordinarily a sustained duration effect though at least in my experience it's more commonly given one of the duration improving extras for understandable reasons, I'd like people to gawk at that glorious statue I willed into existence after all. I do have one sticking point with the power in that players are able to indefinitely repair their created object with no limit; I recall one time I was GM'ing and a fight came down to one PC and one villain (well, more like one PC and one villain got separated from the rest of the fight) and the PC just kept re-creating and re-creating a dome to keep the villain from getting to them, which kept going until people started getting bored and I just had the villain fly off in frustration, mirroring my own mental state at the time admittedly.
Proposed Changes: We need a clause on repairing/re-creating damaged objects via this effect. Honestly I don't know what that clause should be but we need a clause that limits this in someway to avoid the potential for an endless loop.

Growth/Shrinking
Ho ho... boy... ho boy. This one's gained some infamy for the mind-boggling cost imbalance between the two. What the effects do should be obvious, the first one makes your monster grow (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUelB-OSneY) while the other makes your character shrink. Both of them come with bonuses and drawbacks and I'd like to take a bit to compare the costs here...
Growth = 2pts per rank
+1 Strength per rank = 2pts
+1 Stamina per rank = 2pts
+1 intimidate per 2 ranks = 1/4pts
+1 speed per 8 ranks = 1/8pts
-1 stealth per rank = -1/2pts
-1 Dodge & Parry per 2 ranks = -1pt
Total value per rank = 2.875 pts
Shrinking = 2pts per rank
+1 to Dodge & Parry per 2 ranks = 1pt
+1 stealth per rank = 1/2pts
-1 Strength per 4 ranks = -1/2pts
-1 speed per 8 ranks = -1/8pts
-1 Intimidate per 2 ranks = -1/4pts
Total Value per rank = 0.625

Yes, Growth is worth almost a whole point more than it costs (and that's not even getting into the practical applications of the things it gives you) while Shrinking is worth less than 1 point! Exacerbated by the fact that to make up for the shortcomings of being really small one often has to buy other powers to accompany it while growth could hypothetically stand on its own for a character. Now to be fair, it is hard to quantify the value of your options for hiding places expanding dramatically thanks to your small size, which nicely complements shrinking's stealth bonus, but growth likewise has a hard to quantify value in being able to reach across the field to your opponents. Furthermore growth received an extra that removed the size-changing aspect along with some of the bells and whistles (while still raising character's weight), essentially getting two abilities for the price of one with only a relatively minor hit to active defenses though at least a hit to ground speed got added IIRC. However other powers can cancel any disadvantage of being a super-heavy character trivially easily (ugh... one particular build I loathed comes to mind but I won't name names).
Proposed Changes: Make it so growth universally affects toughness instead of stamina. And give +1 bonuses to the Close Combat and Ranged Combat skills for every two ranks in shrinking. These won't bring the math into line perfectly, but it brings them closer together and avoids the ranks inflating the affected stats too quickly per rank.

Healing
The healing effect removes damage conditions from someone depending on how well you roll, success removing any damage conditions starting from the worst one. The difficulty is a paltry DC10 so with just a few ranks it's not hard to succeed regularly, which sort of kills the point of the penalty (must wait 1 minute if you fail to use it). But really the easy-to-avoid penalty isn't what's wrong with this power, it's that M&M doesn't rely on hit points. In a hit-point system healing is sort-of counterbalanced by the fact that you may or may not be able to out-heal the damage that's being dealt out, but in M&M whether someone stays up or gets knocked out comes down to a single dice roll that suffers cumulative penalties that are unquestionably easy to out-heal. A top toughness guy only ever failing by one or two degrees will only have a single bruise to heal which is then healed up back to top toughness and suddenly the guy's virtually untouchable. Same could be said of the healer. Only way to REALLY overcome healing is with egregious amounts of focus-firing which, depending on the scenario, strains immersion in the game.
Proposed Changes: Reduce healing to a 1 point per rank power with the added penalty that it may only be used once per minute on any single target. Removing the once-per-minute limit (except on a failed roll) becomes a 1-point-per-rank extra, if a GM doesn't mind the headache they're free to allow that extra. That's just the latest idea I've tossed around lately and I'm certainly very open to other suggestions.

Regeneration
The cousin to Healing, except this takes no action on the players part, if you have it you heal over time even in combat. How much you heal depends on your ranks in it, and unlike healing regeneration works on your bruises first before it can heal any other conditions. It also is the only way by which constructs (or other characters without stamina) can "naturally" recover from damage.
Proposed Changes: Absolutely none. I'm just bringing this up as an advisory to any GM's reading this topic that if you aren't already you really need to limit how many ranks you allow your players to take. The more toughness they have the more you ought to limit it. Exactly to what degree is up to you, this is just an advisory.

Senses
The various effects that improve your character's five senses beyond human limits; seems harmless enough? Don't. Be. Fooled. The proper combination of senses can absolutely ruin your game. Able to mentally detect life-signs in a radius? Ambushes become a lot harder. Able to see through walls? Your PC's can find that hidden vault no problem. The biggest ones to watch out for are extranormal accurate senses, and those that can penetrate concealment (like walls). Note that these are difficult but still able to be planned for... alright, but they get to game-breaking levels if they can go vast distances or work in a radius.
Proposed Changes: None really, again this is just an advisory.

Accurate
This is a flat-value extra that gives the power you've attached it to a +2 bonus to hit, same as it would be to invest a whole power-point into the close or ranged combat skills; the difference is that the flavor implies that this extra accuracy comes from the power rather than from training it via the skill. At first I thought this was a cool extra... but lately I've become jaded to this; it's frequently nested into arrays so that a given PC never pays for close attack or ranged attack skills, subverting M&M 3rd ed.'s attempts to promote the idea of specialized training for specialized forms of attack. Never-mind that books provide examples of where a character has one of their ranged attacks be [Insert name of array here], meaning that this is an attempt to dodge costs that isn't even necessary if your array consists mostly of ranged attacks or close attacks. I'm fine with accurate (or its sister flaw, inaccurate) being used to correct a power-level discrepancy in the same array by using accurate to boost the accuracy of a lower level effect (or vice-versa), but using accuracy entirely in place of close-combat or ranged-combat skills has become about as bad as nesting skills into arrays.
Proposed Changes: None mechanically, I just want to advise GM's that this is a potential subversion of the close and ranged combat skills.

Impervious
When attached to a saving throw impervious makes it so that you don't even need to bother rolling to resist the effect if it is equal-to-or-less-than half the impervious ranking you purchased. That said... well in a PL10 game it'd be odd to NOT encounter something with more than half your impervious ranking (especially since most GM's, myself included, agree it's weird to have an impervious ranking higher than the defense you apply it to). And in the event you do encounter an effect you are impervious to, odds are the opponent is only one power attack away from making that untrue. So why don't we buff it? Well once-upon-a-time in 2nd ed. impervious (if I recall correctly) made you immune to any effect that was less than your impervious rating, which on a high-toughness character was outright game-breaking. Now in fairness to impervious, if your game has a lot of minions then it's more likely that you'll get consistent use out of impervious, and it's about the only thing that rounds up in the player's favor in this game. Still these don't make up for the fact that 3rd edition's take on impervious is an underwhelming representation of an iconic show of super-human toughness.
Proposed Changes: Credit to Nunya B for this suggestion - make impervious worth only 1 flat point up to the ranks in the saving throw you attach it to since it's really only going to see seldom use, and do the same with its direct countering effect, Penetrating. My only personal concern is this doesn't leave room for nuance to showcase different degrees of invulnerability, but I think this is a step in the right direction.

I was tempted to talk about alternate effects and arrays... but honestly the main book also does its job about warning GM's to look out for abuses of arrays so I don't need to beat that dead horse.

As I said earlier, if there's other powers you feel need discussing, by all means bring them up and let's figure them out. As always, when discussing anything please keep in mind...
Keep the discussion focused on what aspect we are covering this week, namely powers. You may use other aspects they affect or are affected by but ultimately the discussion this week is about powers.
Criticizing ideas is constructive, criticizing people is insulting, Don't make things or take things personal when discussing items.
Naturally respect other rules on the forums.

So ladies, gents, and all others; Discuss away!

[Nintendogeek01]

Missed out on the rest of the discussions so far? The links below take you to the other discussions both here and on Ronin Army.



-
Ronin Army
Giant in the Playground


Abilities
Ronin Army Abilities (https://roninarmy.com/threads/7615-Mutants-amp-Masterminds-3rd-Edition-Revised-Week-1-Abilities)
GitP Abilities (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?561619-Mutants-amp-Masterminds-3rd-Edition-Revised-Week-1-Abilities)


Skills
Ronin Army Skills (https://roninarmy.com/threads/7636-Mutants-amp-Masterminds-3rd-Edition-Revised-Week-2-Skills)
GitP Skills (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?562231-Mutants-amp-Masterminds-3rd-Edition-Revised-Week-2-Skills)


Advantages
Ronin Army Advantages (https://roninarmy.com/threads/7682-Mutants-amp-Masterminds-3rd-Edition-Revised-Week-3-Advantages)
GitP Advantages (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?563318-Mutants-amp-Masterminds-3rd-Edition-Revised-Week-3-Advantages)


Defenses
Ronin Army Defenses (https://roninarmy.com/threads/7695-Mutants-amp-Masterminds-3rd-Edition-Revised-Week-4-Defenses)
GitP Defenses (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?563934-Mutants-amp-Masterminds-3rd-Edition-Revised-Week-4-Defenses)


Powers
Ronin Army Powers (https://roninarmy.com/threads/7740-Mutants-amp-Masterminds-3rd-Edition-Revised-Week-5-Powers)
GitP Powers (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?565245-Mutants-amp-Masterminds-3rd-Edition-Revised-Week-5-Powers)


Other
Ronin Army System (https://roninarmy.com/threads/7777-Mutants-amp-Masterminds-3rd-Edition-Revised-Final-Topic-System)
GitP System (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?566524-Mutants-amp-Masterminds-3rd-Edition-Revised-Final-Topic-System)

[Segev]

I cannot emphasize enough the sheer potency of Penetrating Accurate Senses. Buying up a huge radius is not difficult. Superhearing with the ability to pinpoint any sound source as well as a human looking at it in the same room, extending out to a 10 mile radius before you start suffering any penalties to perception, is very useful. Doing it with sight, instead (or in addition), isn't much more expensive. Both are fairly cheap (though I'm AFB and don't remember the costs off the top of my head).

This gets even sillier with Illusion, which can be set up to only require that you have an Accurate sense (i.e., one which lets you pinpoint things) that can perceive the location you wish to put it.

Add a touch of TK that is linked to Illusion, and now you can be anywhere you want within a huge radius of yourself, as far as anybody observing you is concerned. Not to mention the reality-warping potential of illusions scattered that far and wide.

[Nintendogeek01]

I cannot emphasize enough the sheer potency of Penetrating Accurate Senses. Buying up a huge radius is not difficult. Superhearing with the ability to pinpoint any sound source as well as a human looking at it in the same room, extending out to a 10 mile radius before you start suffering any penalties to perception, is very useful. Doing it with sight, instead (or in addition), isn't much more expensive. Both are fairly cheap (though I'm AFB and don't remember the costs off the top of my head).
You're telling me. One of my first games of M&M had someone get a miles-wide super-sense to accurately place things, and he had a perception range power to go with it. While I don't ban sensory powers outright, that game taught me to scrutinize them closely before I give the character the pass.

[Quellian-dyrae]

Affliction

Worth noting, while it is accurate that Affliction needs only three degrees of success to take someone out compared to Damage's four...Damage DCs are a full degree higher, so in practice taking someone out with either is equally easy (or, well, difficult, since the math is you generally can't one-shot someone with a resistance equal to your effective rank). Affliction generally causes more significant effects for a given degree, but Damage is more likely to cause at least some effect, stacks somewhat better out of the box, and is generally harder to recover from without powers (but easier with the right powers). Cumulative Affliction probably stacks better than Damage; if I'm wanting to spam an enemy down with multiple attacks, I generally find Cumulative Affliction better for it than Damage, although it can vary (over time, Damage is probably better because the Afflictions are easier to recover from). None of this is problematic or anything, just worth noting.

Far as the conditions, I agree with the Vulnerable nerf (also feel that it shouldn't apply to Defense-resisted attacks, but we covered that in Defenses). Honestly in my current set of house rules I just replace all notions of halving a stat with a flat -5. Fixes weird power differentials at higher levels. Impaired/Disabled I disagree with. I...don't actually understand the reasoning that there is GM interpretation for what qualifies. Of course, a GM is free to house rule whatever they want, but in terms of what the rules actual say...it's a circumstance penalty on checks. That's as straightforward as it gets.

That said, I also believe it's pretty reasonably balanced. Affliction has three bread-and-butter Tier 1-2 conditions. Dazed/Stunned, Vulnerable/Defenseless, and Impaired/Disabled. Hindered, Fatigued, and Exhausted are laughable, Immobilized should have been Tier 1, Prone should have been Tier 1, Entranced is a bit too strong if the GM rules it as being effective at all in combat (or useless if not), and Compelled is stronger than most Tier 3 conditions. But of the three bread-and-butter ones, Dazed/Stunned restricts actions, having a significant offensive impact. Vulnerable/Defenseless cripples you defensively. Impaired/Disabled has lesser effects than either, but applies to both, and makes the Affliction harder to recover from. If they only applied to attack rolls, skill checks, and ability checks, they couldn't compete. In combat, it's the -2 to attack rolls that'll matter most of the time; Dazed can do that and more just by forcing enemies to charge. And there is no way that -5 to attack rolls, skill checks, and ability checks ever competes with being unable to take any action period. They need to hit resistance checks too for the conditions to be balanced. I don't think them hitting recovery checks is unbalanced, but adding "except for recovery checks" to the conditions wouldn't break the conditions either, so it'd be a fair enough house rule for GMs who don't want Afflictions to potentially stick around for too long.


Communication

2/rank would be better for Communication, yeah. It's a nice power, but definitely too expensive (though it's still a solid choice for a utility array).


Create

I have had one really bad experience with Create a while back, but for the most part, I've found it not super-effective. Although that may just be the way I handle it; I rule that if you're trying to shoot through a Created barrier at someone beyond it, a Breached result lets the attack punch through to them (assuming they're in range). Between that and how stupidly easy objects are to destroy (auto-critted, three-degrees to Destroyed), they've never proven all that much of an issue.


Growth/Shrinking

Yeah, these are messed up. I've tried a few point-for-point fixes, but honestly the best rule I've come up with for these?

Buy the stats you want. Take both a Feature and a Complication to represent the miscellaneous advantages and disadvantages of your size. Done.


Healing

Regeneration

First thing's first, Healing is absolutely the bigger problem here. Regeneration...yeah, it can be pretty powerful, don't get me wrong. But there are ways to deal with it, and it heals Bruises first so it isn't awful. One on one against an enemy who only deals Damage, sure, Regeneration is huge. Most fights, it'll be very nice, but not unbeatable. I do think it deserves to be 2 PP/rank, though. And while I don't think you have to balance Regeneration against Toughness, you will rarely need more than Regeneration 5, and pretty much never more than Regeneration 10.

But Healing...my gods Healing. On an average roll, Healing 10 will take a one-shotted character from out to full health. Healing 9+ never even triggers the penalty short of like...maybe if you're Impaired/Disabled or something and roll low and don't have any rerolls to spend. Add Restorative and it trivializes Weaken as well. Depending on GM reading, it may be able to eat some Afflictions, even. A good Healing check can reduce an entire enemy team's contribution for a full round of combat to 0. It. Is. Ludicrous. As a GM, I would much rather deal with Impervious Toughness + Half Toughness Immunity than a bog-standard Healing 10 power.

In my current house rules, I've heavily adjusted the recovery rules. Although actually I'm not 100% satisfied with what I have written as of this moment. Planning on making some tweaking to how it all gets evaluated, which I'm including here (right now I still have it fully condition-based, planning to change it to include the more granular system for healing points):

Damage Recovery: The order of damage recovery is as follows. First, you have to remove all Bruises. Then, lower Staggered to Dazed. Then remove Dazed. Then lower Incapacitated to Staggered. Then go back to the Staggered->Dazed->Clear. So going from Incap to full health requires removing five conditions (these rules carry the implicit assumption that an Incapacitated result also results in Staggered), after all Bruises are gone. The Dazed for one round result from Damage is not the same as getting Staggered lowered to Dazed; it's just a side effect of being hit that hard. However, if you take such a Daze while suffering a lingering Daze from a partially-healed Stagger, you go back to being Staggered.

Healing: Still 2/rank. No clause about being unable to use it again for a minute if you fail because you can no longer fail. Roll a Healing check. Targets gain one point of healing per point rolled on the check. Each ten points of healing removes one Damage condition. Points of healing accumulate until you reach ten, so if in one round you receive 14 points of healing, you'll heal one condition and have four points leftover. If you receive another 18 points next round, you'll heal two more conditions and have two points left over. If the Healing is Restorative, you may spend up to two points of the healing per rank of Restorative to remove one point of Weaken. If the target has failed a resistance check against whatever type of effect you are healing since the end of your last turn, the points of healing received are halved.

Regeneration: Becomes 2/rank. Each round, the character receives one point of healing per rank, as per the Healing power (they do stack). In rounds where the character fails a resistance check against damage, it receives half as many points of healing.


Senses

Aside from certain uses (i.e. Bathroom Mentalist stuff) I'm not sure I'd agree that Senses are game-breaking, but they can definitely be story-breaking or just headache-inducing. My rule of thumb is max Extended 3 on Accurate senses, Extended 2 if they also Counter All Concealment, or Extended 1 if they also Penetrate Concealment. And for the love of your GM, don't Penetrate Concealment constantly; array it, give it Concentration duration, something so the GM doesn't have to try and tell you what's on the other side of every wall you come across. But that's me, mileage may of course vary.


Accurate
This is a flat-value extra that gives the power you've attached it to a +2 bonus to hit, same as it would be to invest a whole power-point into the close or ranged combat skills; the difference is that the flavor implies that this extra accuracy comes from the power rather than from training it via the skill. At first I thought this was a cool extra... but lately I've become jaded to this; it's frequently nested into arrays so that a given PC never pays for close attack or ranged attack skills, subverting M&M 3rd ed.'s attempts to promote the idea of specialized training for specialized forms of attack. Never-mind that books provide examples of where a character has one of their ranged attacks be [Insert name of array here], meaning that this is an attempt to dodge costs that isn't even necessary if your array consists mostly of ranged attacks or close attacks. I'm fine with accurate (or its sister flaw, inaccurate) being used to correct a power-level discrepancy in the same array by using accurate to boost the accuracy of a lower level effect (or vice-versa), but using accuracy entirely in place of close-combat or ranged-combat skills has become about as bad as nesting skills into arrays.
Proposed Changes: None mechanically, I just want to advise GM's that this is a potential subversion of the close and ranged combat skills.

Bah. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Attack Bonus (Whatever You Bother Using) is correctly priced at 1 PP per 2 ranks. Accurate is the single most reasonable way to buy attack bonus in the game. All the other ways just trick people into paying multiple times for the same thing, and Complications would do the job of specializing better. I am fully aware that I have no actual ability to convince people who believe otherwise of this, but I will say it every time.


Impervious

I had literally done different rules for Impervious in like each of three different games, and yeah I finally settled on just making Impervious and Penetrating flat-cost as well (though I think I used 2 PP?), although I also tend to specify that they only count base ranks, so Power Attack doesn't circumvent Impervious on the off case it does come up (and so they don't stack with half immunities). I also let them use 2e style "ignore attacks up to rank" against Minions and Equipment other than Installations.


I was tempted to talk about alternate effects and arrays... but honestly the main book also does its job about warning GM's to look out for abuses of arrays so I don't need to beat that dead horse.

Just gonna give a shout-out to my favorite mechanic in the game. (They could use a touch more guidance on what constitutes a reasonable array value and number of alternate powers and it would be nice if versatility and power were traded off a bit more rather than each contributing to the other, but meh, details).

[John Campbell]

Growth/Shrinking
Ho ho... boy... ho boy. This one's gained some infamy for the mind-boggling cost imbalance between the two. What the effects do should be obvious, the first one makes your monster grow (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUelB-OSneY) while the other makes your character shrink. Both of them come with bonuses and drawbacks and I'd like to take a bit to compare the costs here...
Growth = 2pts per rank
+1 Strength per rank = 2pts
+1 Stamina per rank = 2pts
+1 intimidate per 2 ranks = 1/4pts
+1 speed per 8 ranks = 1/8pts
-1 stealth per rank = -1/2pts
-1 Dodge & Parry per 2 ranks = -1pt
Total value per rank = 2.875 pts
Shrinking = 2pts per rank
+1 to Dodge & Parry per 2 ranks = 1pt
+1 stealth per rank = 1/2pts
-1 Strength per 4 ranks = -1/2pts
-1 speed per 8 ranks = -1/8pts
-1 Intimidate per 2 ranks = -1/4pts
Total Value per rank = 0.625

Yes, Growth is worth almost a whole point more than it costs (and that's not even getting into the practical applications of the things it gives you) while Shrinking is worth less than 1 point! Exacerbated by the fact that to make up for the shortcomings of being really small one often has to buy other powers to accompany it while growth could hypothetically stand on its own for a character. Now to be fair, it is hard to quantify the value of your options for hiding places expanding dramatically thanks to your small size, which nicely complements shrinking's stealth bonus, but growth likewise has a hard to quantify value in being able to reach across the field to your opponents. Furthermore growth received an extra that removed the size-changing aspect along with some of the bells and whistles (while still raising character's weight), essentially getting two abilities for the price of one with only a relatively minor hit to active defenses though at least a hit to ground speed got added IIRC. However other powers can cancel any disadvantage of being a super-heavy character trivially easily (ugh... one particular build I loathed comes to mind but I won't name names).
Proposed Changes: Make it so growth universally affects toughness instead of stamina. And give +1 bonuses to the Close Combat and Ranged Combat skills for every two ranks in shrinking. These won't bring the math into line perfectly, but it brings them closer together and avoids the ranks inflating the affected stats too quickly per rank.
Note also that they're not quite symmetrical, so for bonus ridiculousness, take them both at the same rank, Permanent and Innate, and net +¾ Strength and +1 Stamina per rank for being... (dun dun DUN!) the size of an ordinary human!

DCA reduces the cost of Shrinking to 1 point per rank, which even makes this cost-effective to do. For an extra point per rank, you can get Shrinking without the drawbacks, and so net +1 Strength, +1 Stamina, +½ Intimidate, and +⅛ speed per rank at 4 points per rank (the attribute bonuses alone are worth that) with no actual size change.

[noob]

Note also that they're not quite symmetrical, so for bonus ridiculousness, take them both at the same rank, Permanent and Innate, and net +¾ Strength and +1 Stamina per rank for being... (dun dun DUN!) the size of an ordinary human!

DCA reduces the cost of Shrinking to 1 point per rank, which even makes this cost-effective to do. For an extra point per rank, you can get Shrinking without the drawbacks, and so net +1 Strength, +1 Stamina, +½ Intimidate, and +⅛ speed per rank at 4 points per rank (the attribute bonuses alone are worth that) with no actual size change.

What is DCA?
Do you apply permanent on shrink?

[squirrelly sama]

First thing's first, Healing is absolutely the bigger problem here. Regeneration...yeah, it can be pretty powerful, don't get me wrong. But there are ways to deal with it, and it heals Bruises first so it isn't awful. One on one against an enemy who only deals Damage, sure, Regeneration is huge. Most fights, it'll be very nice, but not unbeatable. I do think it deserves to be 2 PP/rank, though. And while I don't think you have to balance Regeneration against Toughness, you will rarely need more than Regeneration 5, and pretty much never more than Regeneration 10.

But Healing...my gods Healing. On an average roll, Healing 10 will take a one-shotted character from out to full health. Healing 9+ never even triggers the penalty short of like...maybe if you're Impaired/Disabled or something and roll low and don't have any rerolls to spend. Add Restorative and it trivializes Weaken as well. Depending on GM reading, it may be able to eat some Afflictions, even. A good Healing check can reduce an entire enemy team's contribution for a full round of combat to 0. It. Is. Ludicrous. As a GM, I would much rather deal with Impervious Toughness + Half Toughness Immunity than a bog-standard Healing 10 power.

In my current house rules, I've heavily adjusted the recovery rules. Although actually I'm not 100% satisfied with what I have written as of this moment. Planning on making some tweaking to how it all gets evaluated, which I'm including here (right now I still have it fully condition-based, planning to change it to include the more granular system for healing points):

Damage Recovery: The order of damage recovery is as follows. First, you have to remove all Bruises. Then, lower Staggered to Dazed. Then remove Dazed. Then lower Incapacitated to Staggered. Then go back to the Staggered->Dazed->Clear. So going from Incap to full health requires removing five conditions (these rules carry the implicit assumption that an Incapacitated result also results in Staggered), after all Bruises are gone. The Dazed for one round result from Damage is not the same as getting Staggered lowered to Dazed; it's just a side effect of being hit that hard. However, if you take such a Daze while suffering a lingering Daze from a partially-healed Stagger, you go back to being Staggered.

Healing: Still 2/rank. No clause about being unable to use it again for a minute if you fail because you can no longer fail. Roll a Healing check. Targets gain one point of healing per point rolled on the check. Each ten points of healing removes one Damage condition. Points of healing accumulate until you reach ten, so if in one round you receive 14 points of healing, you'll heal one condition and have four points leftover. If you receive another 18 points next round, you'll heal two more conditions and have two points left over. If the Healing is Restorative, you may spend up to two points of the healing per rank of Restorative to remove one point of Weaken. If the target has failed a resistance check against whatever type of effect you are healing since the end of your last turn, the points of healing received are halved.

Regeneration: Becomes 2/rank. Each round, the character receives one point of healing per rank, as per the Healing power (they do stack). In rounds where the character fails a resistance check against damage, it receives half as many points of healing.
Healing points seems like it would cause a lot of clutter and be a hassle to keep track of on top of everything else. I'd propose healing instead be a check where damage already taken adds to the DC. Bruises being one point each and other statuses being worth increasingly more.

You have someone who goes down after a few hits, say he has 5 bruises and was staggered dazed and then incapacitated. That's DC 10 plus 5 points of bruises, 2 points from dazed, 3 points from staggered, and 5 points from Incapacitated for a total of DC 25 to start healing from the worst condition. It's rather high yes but you are bringing a character back to full health from KO. Precise could help isolate and heal a single specific injury but only that injury regardless of degrees of success.

[John Campbell]

What is DCA?
Do you apply permanent on shrink?

DC Adventures. M&M3 system, with a few minor tweaks, and DC-branded fluff.

And, yeah, Growth and Shrinking, both at the same rank, Permanent and Innate, so there isn't any actual size change.

It's obviously not something I'd let slide as GM in an ordinary campaign, but I've been keeping it in mind for next time we do a Mystery Men-style humor game. I'd be Giant Dwarf, the world's tallest dwarf (or possibly smallest giant), and look just like an ordinary dude, except I'd have stat bonuses for being ordinary human-sized.

[noob]

DC Adventures. M&M3 system, with a few minor tweaks, and DC-branded fluff.

And, yeah, Growth and Shrinking, both at the same rank, Permanent and Innate, so there isn't any actual size change.

It's obviously not something I'd let slide as GM in an ordinary campaign, but I've been keeping it in mind for next time we do a Mystery Men-style humor game. I'd be Giant Dwarf, the world's tallest dwarf (or possibly smallest giant), and look just like an ordinary dude, except I'd have stat bonuses for being ordinary human-sized.

I immediately imagined a Lilliputian ultraman which would then use its phenomenal power to grow to human size.(but then its size growth could be nullified)
Also if we stack dc adventures and the cost reduction of permanent on shrink(there is no cost reduction for permanent on grow) we can get all the listed bonuses for 3 points instead of 4 points.

[Cazero]

I'd propose healing instead be a check where damage already taken adds to the DC. Bruises being one point each and other statuses being worth increasingly more.That's only a relatively minor increase on the base DC. The main issue is the incredibly powerful scaling.
By RAW a +2 circumstance bonus translates into removing 2 extra bruises, with QD's idea the same +2 increase your probability of immediately removing an entire bruise by 10% but you will need 5 Healing actions for the same +2 to remove an entire extra bruise.

[Draz74]

Create
I recall one time I was GM'ing and a fight came down to one PC and one villain (well, more like one PC and one villain got separated from the rest of the fight) and the PC just kept re-creating and re-creating a dome to keep the villain from getting to them, which kept going until people started getting bored and I just had the villain fly off in frustration, mirroring my own mental state at the time admittedly.
Proposed Changes: We need a clause on repairing/re-creating damaged objects via this effect. Honestly I don't know what that clause should be but we need a clause that limits this in someway to avoid the potential for an endless loop.

I totally would have just said "the repeated strain of spamming your Create power gets to the breaking point, you can no longer use that power for a while," and given them a Hero Point for the Power Loss Complication.



Proposed Changes: Credit to Nunya B for this suggestion - make impervious worth only 1 flat point up to the ranks in the saving throw you attach it to since it's really only going to see seldom use, and do the same with its direct countering effect, Penetrating. My only personal concern is this doesn't leave room for nuance to showcase different degrees of invulnerability, but I think this is a step in the right direction.

That's ... huh. Interesting. I'd have to play around with some sample builds to tell if it seems balanced, but it certainly has more potential than most Impervious fixes I've seen.

[Segev]

I totally would have just said "the repeated strain of spamming your Create power gets to the breaking point, you can no longer use that power for a while," and given them a Hero Point for the Power Loss Complication.

This is a major problem I have with the Hero Point mechanics: frequently, the complication (read: "DM decides you just lose, now") introduced is something you'll wind up spending the Hero Point to get out of the worst of. And spending the Hero Point won't even get you back to as positive a status as you had before the complication! I know GMs can just hand-wave anything they want in any game, but this codification of it as "totally okay, because you're paying them a Hero Point" is actively encouraging bad behavior with a thing that is at best a booby prize.

[noob]

This is a major problem I have with the Hero Point mechanics: frequently, the complication (read: "DM decides you just lose, now") introduced is something you'll wind up spending the Hero Point to get out of the worst of. And spending the Hero Point won't even get you back to as positive a status as you had before the complication! I know GMs can just hand-wave anything they want in any game, but this codification of it as "totally okay, because you're paying them a Hero Point" is actively encouraging bad behavior with a thing that is at best a booby prize.

Also it encourage back up powers like getting the power to hit stuff with punches hard in addition to your rifle device which should not be stealable because you did not get the point discount that makes it stealable but you just prepare yourself for the day where the gm will steal it.

[Segev]

Also it encourage back up powers like getting the power to hit stuff with punches hard in addition to your rifle device which should not be stealable because you did not get the point discount that makes it stealable but you just prepare yourself for the day where the gm will steal it.

See, that's the mechanic working as intended. My complaint is that the hero point isn't WORTH the setback.

GM gives you a Hero Point and then says, "And so the bad guy captures you." You're likely to have to spend the Hero Point during your escape attempt, and still not have escaped nor have your escape guaranteed by the time you've spent it!

[noob]

See, that's the mechanic working as intended. My complaint is that the hero point isn't WORTH the setback.

GM gives you a Hero Point and then says, "And so the bad guy captures you." You're likely to have to spend the Hero Point during your escape attempt, and still not have escaped nor have your escape guaranteed by the time you've spent it!

I guess it means that some set backs should give more hero points than others.

[Nintendogeek01]

See, that's the mechanic working as intended. My complaint is that the hero point isn't WORTH the setback.

GM gives you a Hero Point and then says, "And so the bad guy captures you." You're likely to have to spend the Hero Point during your escape attempt, and still not have escaped nor have your escape guaranteed by the time you've spent it!
That's on the GM, not the system. Most other systems seldom have a means of paying the players for GM-induced setbacks, but bad GM's, or even good GM's making the occasional bad judgement, will still happen with or without that mechanic.

Now as a bad a taste as it leaves in my mouth to weigh in and then put a stop on something, I would like to remind posters this topic is about powers, not the misc. systems in the game; don't worry I plan to make that the next topic.

To put this back on the rails, while a lot of discussion has been done on growth/shrinking and healing (indeed once I finally have enough time in a day I need to weigh in on these topics) the Ronin Army forums have also touched on potential problems with movement powers, what do the rest of you think? Any movement powers that need revisions or advisories?

[noob]

Movement powers gives only as much trouble as you want them to give.
If you consider that flight is normal and give it easily then it is not a problem to have people with flight.
Dimensional travel is explicitly mentioned as depending on the setting.
Time travel is something that depends on the setting too.
So basically most movements are not exactly problematic unless they are rare.
Or if the player push way too far and gets 50 ranks in flight and goes so fast he gets out of sighting range no matter where he is thanks to your cap on range for senses.(but fleeing and swooping in for getting individuals does not solves everything for example if a villain is going to throw a city destroying lazer in five minutes then being fast will help but 50 ranks does not helps more than 20)
the only time speed is a problem is if you decide "flash is the coolest character" and make a flight 100 ranks that thing that allows to do non movement stuff 100 ranks character and then find yourself able to evacuate a whole planet.

[John Campbell]

I totally would have just said "the repeated strain of spamming your Create power gets to the breaking point, you can no longer use that power for a while," and given them a Hero Point for the Power Loss Complication.

I'd be very annoyed with a GM arbitrarily declaring that my power no longer works because screw you that's why.

When you've got a loop of "NPC does something, PC counters, NPC does the same thing, PC uses the same counter, NPC does the same thing, PC uses the same counter, rinse, repeat," the PC is not solely to blame. Half that loop is your fault. Have the NPC do something different. Mix it up. Change the situation. There are more ways to skin a cat than just throwing dice at it until it dies of boredom.

Can't break the PC's shield? Do something that'll make them come out from under it voluntarily. Take a hostage. Start the countdown timer on some mad-science device. Drop a building on them and leave to carry out your evil plan (You do have an evil plan, right? You're not just here to fight the PCs, right?) while they figure out how to get out from under it. Have reinforcements for one side or the other - or a third party with their own agenda - show up because the fight's dragged on so long that people have had time to respond to it. Or just because the fight with the other PCs has resolved in one way or another. Have the villain swap opponents with an ally who can better deal with the shield. Use some kind of power that can bypass the shield.

Don't just arbitrarily declare that the PC's powers don't work because you've got nothing but smashing your forehead into it until it breaks or you do.

Last time I ended up turtling under my Create shield while the villains tried to beat it down, it was to stall for time until my regenerating teammate got back up. It was a stalemate, but it was a stalemate that only had to last for a few rounds, and then our brick was back in the game and I was able to stop turtling and do something useful. And if it had lasted much longer than that, the villain's minions would have flooded in and buried me with action economy.

[Quellian-dyrae]

My view on movement powers is that they could be better balanced, but they aren't problematic.

By my mind, Flight is the Gold Standard of movement for a superhero game. I honestly tend to just replace most forms of movement with restricted forms of Flight, mainly because Flight already has two ludicrously low-impact Flaws (Wings and Platform) that basically make it cost the same as Speed with shockingly little downside. So Leaping is Flight (Limited [Straight Arcs Only], Quirk [Must begin and end movement solidly supported]), Parkour is Flight (Platform, Quirk [Must begin and end movement solidly supported]). Super-Speed is Flight (Limited [Must remain in contact with a solid or liquid surface]). And so on. ...Swimming is Movement 1 (Environmental Adaptation [Water]); Speed (Limited [Only For Swimming*]). Teleport and Burrowing have their uses.

*Actually come to think that should probably be a double-limit...seriously whoever thought Swimming was worth 1 PP/rank was nuts.

That being said, that's just because my basic premise is M&M allows ludicrous mobility, Flight is iconic for superheroes, whatever go with it. From a more practical design standpoint, what I'd do is just have Speed for determining your actual speed rank, and then make everything else options of the Movement power. Maybe Flight requires 5 ranks of Movement - now it's not super-cheap for low-speed Flight that lets you trivially circumvent obstacles (and functionally invalidate Athletics and Acrobatics), and even if you still call Wings a -1/rank Flaw now Speed 10, Movement 5 (Flight; Wings) costs 15 PP rather than 10, still appropriately more expensive than Speed 10 alone. Movement 1 (Underwater Adaptation) does Swimming's job better anyway, frankly. Leaping could be a rank of Movement to let you leap up to say Distance rank = Speed - 2 during movement. The parkour stuff would now appropriately take things like Wall Crawling and Water Walking as a build-up towards the unrestricted mobility of Flight, etc.

That's actually more-or-less how I'm handling it in my big ol' M&M rewrite thing, but I don't bother with it even in my general houserules, because "Meh, Flight" honestly works fine.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I'd add a few more to the list

Concealment has major potential problems if you're allowed to attack with it still up-- making Passive a default part of the package (for no price reduction) might help.
Extra Limbs can give you up to a +5 circumstance bonus to Grab checks. Given that you can get another +5 escape DC from Improved Hold, it's easy to crank Grab-based combatants up to dangerous levels of power.
Morph, Metamorph is... just universally broken, honestly. Use Variable instead.
Move Object is priced fine, but I feel like I've run into a lot of grey rules areas when it's in play-- especially the common Perception ranged version (which, honestly, should probably be the default, given how often it's taken).
Remote Sensing is... weird. It's insanely cheap compared to Extended, and utterly broken if you make a bathroom mentalist, but it's also prohibitively expensive if you want to use it for its intended purposes. I suggest using the range table from Communication, instead of a specific "distance rank=power rank" option. Perhaps with less linear scaling-- 1 pt/rank/sense type for "100ft" range, 2 pts/rank/sense type for "1 mile range," 4 pts/rank/sense type for "long range," 8 for "worldwide" and 16 for "universal" (Or just ban universal range altogether).



Affliction[/B]
I would add that a few of the condition options seem misplaced. Particularly around second-degree conditions-- Prone and Exhausted are in no way compatible to things like Compelled or Disabled, and Immobile is either crippling or useless, depending on the target. Not sure what to do about them, though, other than shift Prone to being a first-degree condition.


Communication
Communication is, in my opinion, the single most over-priced power in the game. About 90% of its uses can be replaced with a cell phone of other standard-issue modern communicator, which most groups won't even blink about including as a matter of course. Even with the advantages of Mental, i have a hard time justifying more than 1/rank, and even that feels high based on the gameplay I've seen.


Create
Remember that as objects, you only need two degrees of success on a Damage check to "bend or break" an object-- the intent seems to be "render it useless for its intended purposes," so I see little problem in letting people punch their way out of constructs with only two degrees. That said, if you've had problems with it becoming a "no escape as long as I concentrate" power, you could allow a new Dodge check to slip out anytime you recreate it? Or maybe use the Healing rules, however they're altered, so it's not an automatic "back to full."


Growth/Shrinking
I'm with Quellian-dyrae here. Not only are the costs all kinds of out of proportions, but they throw your power level caps all kinds of out of whack and don't even cover most of the special abilities you'd expect from being exceptionally big or small. A Feature is all you need.


Healing
I kinda like your idea of turning it into, essentially, a 1/fight thing. To be honest, I think this is another one that could be reduced down to a Feature-- stabilizing anyone dying at a touch and fix serious wounds when not in combat.


Regeneration
No Regeneration > Toughness? You could also probably reduce the granularity-- 1 point for "recovers from serious wounds when not in combat," 5 for "heals a damage every other round" and 10-20 for "heals a damage every round."


Senses
Extended is definitely the most dangerous. More than ~1 rank should probably be handed as Remote Sensing instead-- that way you have to focus on the distant area instead of just... automatically picking it up, which seems more in line with how characters like Daredevil and Superman* are usually shown operating.

*Outside "I hear an earthquake in Japan!" moments, which seem more like a Feature 1 or Danger Sense sort of thing.


Proposed Changes: None mechanically, I just want to advise GM's that this is a potential subversion of the close and ranged combat skills.
I've actually been considering a broader rule like "add your PL to attack rolls, up to the normal limit," simply because buying ranks of the Close/Ranged Combat skills is such a boring, obligatory point drain. Not only that, but it's one that lies more heavily on fluffy minor powers (packing a pistol, say) than on serious PL-and-up ranked attacks.


Impervious
I've used 1 pt/2 ranks for a while, and it works decently well. 3-6 points to ignore weak minions seems generally fair, on par with "immunity to a particular damage effect." Which is... sort of what it is, if you think about it-- immunity to attacks with the "minor threat" descriptor. (Though the value of this will fluctuate a lot depending on how often you run into guys with guns and other low-level attacks.)


I was tempted to talk about alternate effects and arrays... but honestly the main book also does its job about warning GM's to look out for abuses of arrays so I don't need to beat that dead horse.
A loose-but-formal rule of, oh, "no more than 1/2 PL options in an array" isn't a bad thing to add.

[Draz74]

Morph, Metamorph is... just universally broken, honestly. Use Variable instead.

Meh, it's really no less expensive than just putting all your traits into a giant array. In fact, it's more expensive: you pay 5-20 ppt for the privilege of this shapeshifting (in the form of the base Morph effect).


I would add that a few of the condition options seem misplaced. Particularly around second-degree conditions-- Prone and Exhausted are in no way compatible to things like Compelled or Disabled, and Immobile is either crippling or useless, depending on the target. Not sure what to do about them, though, other than shift Prone to being a first-degree condition.

Putting together your complaints with QD's, it sounds like something like the following might be appropriate:

1st Degree: Dazed, Entranced (with the useless-in-combat interpretation), Immobile, Impaired, Prone, Vulnerable
2nd Degree: Defenseless, Disabled, Exhausted*, Stunned
3rd Degree: Asleep, Compelled, Incapacitated, Paralyzed, Transformed, Unaware
4th Degree (only available with an Extra): Controlled

*clearly worse than the others at this level, but too good for a 1st-degree condition

[Nintendogeek01]

@Grod_The_Giant I may or may not hit on the other things in your post, which is a well thought post; thumbs up and thank you for the contribution. However I do take issue with one thing; M&M's character creation is about "everything starts at zero, buy-up what you want from there," so I can't say that I can get behind the attack bonus proposal in that post.

I've finally enough time in my day, so I'm going to try to put in my two-cents on some things commonly brought up on both forums. There are a few of these that deserve more examination than I'm about to write down in this post, but sadly I've not THAT much time.

Create: Consensus seems to lean toward no rule changes are necessary. Perhaps an advisory should be made to GM's to change tactics if the endless loop problem I mentioned comes up, or even outright GM intervention in extreme cases, but after reading through all the responses I find myself agreeing that ultimately no changes are necessary.

Healing: Well we can all certainly agree that it's broken and needs fixing, and... it seems we have almost as many suggestions for fixes as there are people who've made a post about healing. The ideas I've liked most had suggestions regarding modifying the DC of the healing check, though to what degree probably deserves a lot more examination. We don't want to repeat what happened to impervious when the game went from 2nd ed. to 3rd ed. (READ: went from broken to worthless). If I'm not mistaken, it was also mentioned that healing should work from least threatening condition to worst, something I liked at first but then it hit me, if you wake someone up you might still be waking them up with injuries left over, so I believe it's best to leave healing as working from worst condition to... less worse condition. As a final note regarding its sister power regeneration, I've no plans to change regeneration. Your mileage may vary but I've personally not hit a problem with regeneration since I make it clear to PC's what is and what isn't an acceptable level of regeneration. No amount of changes we make will change that GM oversight during character creation is a necessity in M&M after all.

Growth/Shrinking: It seems I'm in the minority among posters in this discussion in believing that the powers can be salvaged. I'm not opposed to making the size changing aspect a feature with the rest being bought separately but I do feel there ought to be a counter-argument for one of the most common arguments against the powers as is. That the power somehow "messes" up power level limits; well no it doesn't. Now obviously these people aren't saying that these powers break Power Level limits, the effects explicitly are still restricted by power level limits. The mess being referred to is that whosoever has growth or shrinking must do some extra math to make sure that their strength/toughness/active defenses don't break PL limits whenever they change form, but that's all it is, a little extra math. For growth you just balance your capped strength vs. accuracy, your capped toughness vs. active defenses (and if I have my suggestion fortitude won't even be a thing to worry about). For shrinking balance your capped active defenses vs. toughness. Now the circumstance bonuses to skills are technically PL breaking, but neither one to game-breaking levels as I see it. Now that whole bit was just a rare instance of me playing devil's advocate (much as I love the theory of debates improving on ideas the sad truth is my personality isn't wired to be very confrontational), like I said earlier, I'm not adverse to the idea of making size-changing a feature; I'd like to see how my alterations hold up, but the feature is still a good idea.

Accurate: I can agree that a method of attack is worth half a point, but if my bolding, underlining, and italicizing didn't make it clear enough, I mean singular. A man who knows how to swing a sword doesn't automatically know how to fire a bow with the same proficiency, not unless they also trained to use the bow. Are a few half-points even that big a deal? M&M isn't about having everything on a single character, it's a team game; not everyone is the engineering specialist nor is everyone the magic specialist. Not everyone can lift buildings and not everyone can sneak quietly through the dark alleyways. Not everyone is skilled with the laser blaster nor is everyone skilled with nunchaku. My prior suggestions in previous topics are already reducing the point investment it would take to have more than one form of attack I don't think leaving the rest is a unfair tax. Whew... okay sorry if that came across as a rant, to be clear I'm not out and out against the accurate extra, some form of attacks would be easier to aim with than others and that I am absolutely fine with, the rest I've already said.

Affliction: This is more for the Giant in the Playground people since we actually haven't touched on afflictions that much in Ronin Army. Of the condition changes presented I agree with prone being more worthwhile as a first-degree condition, but otherwise I think the rest are where they belong. Now are some conditions better than others? Sure. But the goal of these topics is to look for ways to polish 3rd ed., re-balancing is part of that agenda but perfectly balancing everything would only be an exercise in frustration.

Weaken: More for Ronin Army since weaken hasn't really come up in Giant in the Playground. I'm all in favor of removing the built-in limit of "up to your ranks in weaken," but the individual stats being drained still need to stop somewhere. That said I suppose that's left up to GM interpretation of "draining power points from the target," so your mileage may vary.

That's all I've got for now, but I look forward to hearing back from everyone. I'd still like to give healing a more thorough examination, it clearly needs it. Also Squirrelly-Sama, rest-assured I have every plan to examine the movement powers in-depth as well.

[Quellian-dyrae]

Concealment has major potential problems if you're allowed to attack with it still up-- making Passive a default part of the package (for no price reduction) might help.

Or making it so that attacking reveals your position for a full round but you still get the defense bonus...maybe. (Although Passive default and that as an Extra might be better). One of the things with Concealment is that it follows a kinda common, and annoying, M&M paradigm that defensive powers are usually a bit too strong - when they work - but have a lot of ways to circumvent them. Concealment gets pretty much auto-neutralized by some fairly inexpensive traits. This is also part of the problem with Deflect, Regeneration, Immunity, etc. Naturally, sometimes the "balance" isn't perfect (Impervious came out too weak, Healing far too strong, etc) but it seems to be the pattern. It's problematic, but fixing it entirely would be pretty elaborate.

Concealment also reminds me of another notable issue with stealth/detection powers in general - they are so flipping binary. Concealment bypasses the Stealth/Perception system, and then Counters Concealment hard-nopes it. Flip side, Subtle 2 makes a power completely undetectable ever. A system with greater granularity would be preferable.


Extra Limbs can give you up to a +5 circumstance bonus to Grab checks. Given that you can get another +5 escape DC from Improved Hold, it's easy to crank Grab-based combatants up to dangerous levels of power.

Grab can get pretty powerful, yeah. Not really game-breakingly so I don't think, especially when Precise Teleport exists as a hard counter (although even that only goes so far if they get you Defenseless and have allies between their turn and yours), but pound-for-pound the "full suite" of Grab effects probably comes out better than an equally-priced Affliction. Also calling Grab-Based a Flaw is...generous, to say the least.


Morph, Metamorph is... just universally broken, honestly. Use Variable instead.


Meh, it's really no less expensive than just putting all your traits into a giant array. In fact, it's more expensive: you pay 5-20 ppt for the privilege of this shapeshifting (in the form of the base Morph effect).

I'm with Grod here. Thing is, yes, it's slightly more expensive than just putting all your traits in an array - but that is also broken. Especially when you start getting into things that really shouldn't be arrayed, like skills (unless they have a Limit on them so they're not stepping on toes of a dedicated skill user) and advantages (always). Metamorph isn't more broken than a major abuse of arrays, but it kinda codifies a major abuse of arrays as something specifically and intentionally included in the game rules.

That said, on the subject, I do tend to feel that regular old Morph is too expensive. I'd drop every step by one rank (with a single alt form being a Feature) personally.


Move Object is priced fine, but I feel like I've run into a lot of grey rules areas when it's in play-- especially the common Perception ranged version (which, honestly, should probably be the default, given how often it's taken).

Some actual rules for resolving knockback would be just dandy. :smallamused:


Remote Sensing is... weird. It's insanely cheap compared to Extended, and utterly broken if you make a bathroom mentalist, but it's also prohibitively expensive if you want to use it for its intended purposes. I suggest using the range table from Communication, instead of a specific "distance rank=power rank" option. Perhaps with less linear scaling-- 1 pt/rank/sense type for "100ft" range, 2 pts/rank/sense type for "1 mile range," 4 pts/rank/sense type for "long range," 8 for "worldwide" and 16 for "universal" (Or just ban universal range altogether).

Working on the assumption that's supposed to be insanely expensive compared to Extended? But yeah Perception range + sense extenders is just problematic. In my current house rules since any defense can be both active and passive, I removed Perception entirely. Mental blast just attacks and gets resisted by Will or whatever (actually way I've fluffed it it'd probably attack Fortitude and get resisted by Will, but meh).


I would add that a few of the condition options seem misplaced. Particularly around second-degree conditions-- Prone and Exhausted are in no way compatible to things like Compelled or Disabled, and Immobile is either crippling or useless, depending on the target. Not sure what to do about them, though, other than shift Prone to being a first-degree condition.


Putting together your complaints with QD's, it sounds like something like the following might be appropriate:

1st Degree: Dazed, Entranced (with the useless-in-combat interpretation), Immobile, Impaired, Prone, Vulnerable
2nd Degree: Defenseless, Disabled, Exhausted*, Stunned
3rd Degree: Asleep, Compelled, Incapacitated, Paralyzed, Transformed, Unaware
4th Degree (only available with an Extra): Controlled

*clearly worse than the others at this level, but too good for a 1st-degree condition

I was actually focusing on the T1s and 2s. If we're adding the 3s into the mix, I'd go with:

Tier 1: Dazed, Immobile, Impaired, Prone, Vulnerable.
Tier 2: Defenseless, Disabled, Stunned, Unaware.
Tier 3: Asleep, Compelled, Incapacitated, Transformed.

Hindered, Fatigued, and Exhausted could easily be replaced with Feature: A target who fails its resistance check takes -1 to its Speed rank or something. Entranced is Stunned with a Limit, no low-tier standard action denial. Paralyzed is Incapacitated with a Limit. Compelled is still probably stronger than the other T3s and might be worth nerfing separately; maybe add an Extra for better mind control. And it might not hurt to polish Transformed so nobody thinks it can be used as an utterly game-breaking Ultimate Variable (I've never actually seen anyone try to use it like that, but it just kinda offends my sensibilities that technically it could be :smalltongue:).


Of the condition changes presented I agree with prone being more worthwhile as a first-degree condition, but otherwise I think the rest are where they belong. Now are some conditions better than others? Sure. But the goal of these topics is to look for ways to polish 3rd ed., re-balancing is part of that agenda but perfectly balancing everything would only be an exercise in frustration.

Hindered and Fatigued can't come close to competing with Dazed; for purposes of reducing speed Dazed is functionally as good if not better, and does more besides (also Prone includes Hindered so including Hindered/Fatigued at the same tier would be weird). Immobilized is balanced with Dazed - stops movement better, but nothing else - but can't even vaguely pretend to come close to holding a candle to stunned (can't move vs. can't do literally anything? Please.) Unaware still lets you act, most T3s either don't, or don't let you have even the vaguest chance of doing so effectively. Compelled and Controlled are just too good - they not only remove the target from play, but add it to your side. Although for a granular but still reasonably balanced mind control, you could maybe do Tier 2 Compelled as limiting them to move actions only, and you can only give simple commands which they must follow but have freedom to interpret, and they may still use their standard action themselves as long as it does not violate their order, with Controlled being full mind control but they can still try to recover from it each round. They'd still be strong, but would...probably fit okay in the tier.


Communication is, in my opinion, the single most over-priced power in the game. About 90% of its uses can be replaced with a cell phone of other standard-issue modern communicator, which most groups won't even blink about including as a matter of course. Even with the advantages of Mental, i have a hard time justifying more than 1/rank, and even that feels high based on the gameplay I've seen.

I've often gotten some great utility out of Communication, but yeah it's overpriced. Not so much that it stops me from putting it into a utility array and usually being happy I did, but yeah.


I've actually been considering a broader rule like "add your PL to attack rolls, up to the normal limit," simply because buying ranks of the Close/Ranged Combat skills is such a boring, obligatory point drain. Not only that, but it's one that lies more heavily on fluffy minor powers (packing a pistol, say) than on serious PL-and-up ranked attacks.

In my house rules these days I just make them both equal to the attack rank, but can be traded off. I also buffed what high attack rolls do a bit though, since they no longer get their cost advantage.


A loose-but-formal rule of, oh, "no more than 1/2 PL options in an array" isn't a bad thing to add.

Yeah that's around how I tend to do it. I mean, technically I tend closer to "five purchases of alternate power, but higher PL has a bit more leeway which tends to roughly equate to +1 per 2 PL over 10". So, more leeway for low-levels and a bit higher throughout since I count AP purchases rather than total options, but I suppose that's to be expected when arrays are my favorite mechanic in the game.


If I'm not mistaken, it was also mentioned that healing should work from least threatening condition to worst, something I liked at first but then it hit me, if you wake someone up you might still be waking them up with injuries left over, so I believe it's best to leave healing as working from worst condition to... less worse condition.

I wouldn't necessarily say heal lowest conditions first (that works, but a gradual and granular downgrade is where I'm at currently) but I do advise having to heal all Bruises before any serious conditions. It really doesn't matter what you do to balance DCs, degrees required, etc if a single degree of success can wake up an unconscious ally and get them back in the fight. Healing Bruises first, as Regen already requires, would still allow a decent Healing roll to pull someone back in from a lucky one-shot, but means that if a character's been beaten down over several rounds one action can't undo the most significant result of that in an instant.


Accurate: I can agree that a method of attack is worth half a point, but if my bolding, underlining, and italicizing didn't make it clear enough, I mean singular. A man who knows how to swing a sword doesn't automatically know how to fire a bow with the same proficiency, not unless they also trained to use the bow. Are a few half-points even that big a deal? M&M isn't about having everything on a single character, it's a team game; not everyone is the engineering specialist nor is everyone the magic specialist. Not everyone can lift buildings and not everyone can sneak quietly through the dark alleyways. Not everyone is skilled with the laser blaster nor is everyone skilled with nunchaku. My prior suggestions in previous topics are already reducing the point investment it would take to have more than one form of attack I don't think leaving the rest is a unfair tax. Whew... okay sorry if that came across as a rant, to be clear I'm not out and out against the accurate extra, some form of attacks would be easier to aim with than others and that I am absolutely fine with, the rest I've already said.

I, likewise, could concede that there is a certain level of versatility and even occasional straight utility value in having multiple attack modes that could justify additional costs if that's where you want to go with it. But it shouldn't be the full cost. It's like...okay, being able to hit people with your fire powers is worth 1 PP/2 ranks of the attack roll. We can agree there, cool.

Now, what if I want to play a fire-controlling cop. I was an average cop before getting my fire powers; decent in a fight, but nothing spectacular. With my fire powers I'm PL 10, awesome. I've got a full array of 3/rank rank 10 combat powers that I can tactically use for a variety of combat options. But as a cop, I've also got decent hand to hand training and a selection of lower-PL weapons. Would it be fair to say that stuff should cost a little extra? Sure. I don't know that it really desperately has to; if I were actually building such a character, I'd do it like this:

Weapons Master: Enhanced Strength 6 (Limited [Combat Purposes], Accurate 3) {9}.

Ranged Weapons Master: Weapons Master gains Ranged (Quirk [Must be armed with a ranged weapon]) {5}.

Fire Control: 35-point Array, Reduced Weapons Master 9, Reduced Ranged Weapons Master 5 {21+5}.


Array of 6 cool 3/rank, rank 10, Accurate 5 where attack rolls are required fire attacks

That gets me the backup attacks "free". They just get overlapped by the powers, which largely makes sense to me because frankly they're more fluff than anything; if my Fire Control gets Nullified or something, I am not going to still be able to contribute effectively to a PL 10 combat. I won't be completely useless - I can toss a decent Aid, maybe get a lucky shot in now and then - but effective I ain't. Being good at regular weapons too is basically just fluff. It honestly may as well be part of the "I'm also a cop" descriptor.

However, it wouldn't be unfair to say that sort of backup option, and general expansion of versatility, is worth something. I'm not sure it needs to be, but it's not unfair to say it is. But it sure as anything ain't worth the full cost of getting the capabilities the first time. I'm not saying that being able to punch well and being able to shoot well is not better than just being able to shoot well. I'm saying that once you're already able to shoot well, you're going to be able to shoot enemies most of the time unless the GM's actively targeting your ability to shoot people, so being able to also punch well should not cost as much as it had cost to be able to shoot well. The difference between Ranged Combat (Guns) +10 and nothing is much higher than the difference between Ranged Combat (Guns) +10, Close Combat (Fists) +10 and just Ranged Combat (Guns) +10. In the first case, you're going from "useless in combat" to "level-appropriate in combat". In the second case you're going from "level-appropriate in combat" to "a slightly more versatile form of level-appropriate in combat".

And it gets even worse when you want more than two attack modes. My flame-throwing cop really needs to purchase Close Combat (Fire Control) +10, Ranged Combat (Fire Control) +10, Ranged Combat (Guns) +8, Close Combat (Clubs) +6, Close Combat (Fists) +6? That's a full PL worth of PP, five of them for doing the same thing twice just with a single Extra different, and the other ten on attacks I'll almost never use in a serious fight unless I'm forced to, and still won't be any good with even if I do.

Meanwhile, the dude that just punches people at PL 10 pays once, never loses his ability, and doesn't even care about range because speeds massively outclass it anyway. The fire-controlling cop gets only the most marginal advantage over the straight brawler (and even less if the brawler can elongate), but is burning 15 PP on it. I just...can't manage to see that as anything other than a glaring flaw in the system which should be ideally fixed, but failing that, worked around.


Weaken: More for Ronin Army since weaken hasn't really come up in Giant in the Playground. I'm all in favor of removing the built-in limit of "up to your ranks in weaken," but the individual stats being drained still need to stop somewhere. That said I suppose that's left up to GM interpretation of "draining power points from the target," so your mileage may vary.

I wouldn't mind Weaken affecting ranks rather than PP so that Weakening things other than defenses had a point. Although I admit that makes Weakening Abilities a bit too good, so some manner of refinement is needed (I use Weakening ranks in my house rules, but in my house rules I've removed Abilities entirely, so that problem doesn't exist).

--

Also, there's another power that I think is worth noting.

Nullify: The more experience I have with it, the more I think it's both kinda broken and completely unnecessary. Any power of the appropriate descriptor can Counter anyway. For turning powers off, Afflictions Limited to Powers will do the job (Impaired or Entranced if it's still there/Stunned or Disabled/Transformed is generally how I'd do it). The thing with Nullify is it is absolutely crippling to most characters, and also breaks all paradigms by applying on a single degree of success, and using a duration (which can push from Instant to Sustained) rather than normal recovery methods. And the DC is made as a check! That means you can (one time in four-hundred, granted, or as often as one time in eighty with Improved Critical 4!) crit the attack roll, and then crit the DC! You can get a lucky DC roll and have a hugely inflated DC that wrecks the target with a single degree of failure. You can reroll the DC with a Hero Point or even just a Luck Reroll! If you are Inspired, you get +5 to hit, and +5 to the DC. You can, technically, get Ultimate Effort (Nullify) and force a DC 20+rank save or lose your powers. Thing is, Nullify is extremely expensive to get to a usable state for removing powers, and in a superpower kitchen sink setting it only works against certain opponents. So again, we have a thing that is inconvenient to make work, but absolutely devastating when it does.

[Draz74]

Also calling Grab-Based a Flaw is...generous, to say the least.

Oh yeah, that one needs addressing.

[Lord of Gifts]

I, likewise, could concede that there is a certain level of versatility and even occasional straight utility value in having multiple attack modes that could justify additional costs if that's where you want to go with it. But it shouldn't be the full cost. It's like...okay, being able to hit people with your fire powers is worth 1 PP/2 ranks of the attack roll. We can agree there, cool.

Now, what if I want to play a fire-controlling cop. I was an average cop before getting my fire powers; decent in a fight, but nothing spectacular. With my fire powers I'm PL 10, awesome. I've got a full array of 3/rank rank 10 combat powers that I can tactically use for a variety of combat options. But as a cop, I've also got decent hand to hand training and a selection of lower-PL weapons. Would it be fair to say that stuff should cost a little extra? Sure. I don't know that it really desperately has to; if I were actually building such a character, I'd do it like this:

Weapons Master: Enhanced Strength 6 (Limited [Combat Purposes], Accurate 3) {9}.

Ranged Weapons Master: Weapons Master gains Ranged (Quirk [Must be armed with a ranged weapon]) {5}.

Fire Control: 35-point Array, Reduced Weapons Master 9, Reduced Ranged Weapons Master 5 {21+5}.


Array of 6 cool 3/rank, rank 10, Accurate 5 where attack rolls are required fire attacks

That gets me the backup attacks "free". They just get overlapped by the powers, which largely makes sense to me because frankly they're more fluff than anything; if my Fire Control gets Nullified or something, I am not going to still be able to contribute effectively to a PL 10 combat. I won't be completely useless - I can toss a decent Aid, maybe get a lucky shot in now and then - but effective I ain't. Being good at regular weapons too is basically just fluff. It honestly may as well be part of the "I'm also a cop" descriptor.

However, it wouldn't be unfair to say that sort of backup option, and general expansion of versatility, is worth something. I'm not sure it needs to be, but it's not unfair to say it is. But it sure as anything ain't worth the full cost of getting the capabilities the first time. I'm not saying that being able to punch well and being able to shoot well is not better than just being able to shoot well. I'm saying that once you're already able to shoot well, you're going to be able to shoot enemies most of the time unless the GM's actively targeting your ability to shoot people, so being able to also punch well should not cost as much as it had cost to be able to shoot well. The difference between Ranged Combat (Guns) +10 and nothing is much higher than the difference between Ranged Combat (Guns) +10, Close Combat (Fists) +10 and just Ranged Combat (Guns) +10. In the first case, you're going from "useless in combat" to "level-appropriate in combat". In the second case you're going from "level-appropriate in combat" to "a slightly more versatile form of level-appropriate in combat".

And it gets even worse when you want more than two attack modes. My flame-throwing cop really needs to purchase Close Combat (Fire Control) +10, Ranged Combat (Fire Control) +10, Ranged Combat (Guns) +8, Close Combat (Clubs) +6, Close Combat (Fists) +6? That's a full PL worth of PP, five of them for doing the same thing twice just with a single Extra different, and the other ten on attacks I'll almost never use in a serious fight unless I'm forced to, and still won't be any good with even if I do.

Meanwhile, the dude that just punches people at PL 10 pays once, never loses his ability, and doesn't even care about range because speeds massively outclass it anyway. The fire-controlling cop gets only the most marginal advantage over the straight brawler (and even less if the brawler can elongate), but is burning 15 PP on it. I just...can't manage to see that as anything other than a glaring flaw in the system which should be ideally fixed, but failing that, worked around.


Random thought here, but maybe part of the solution lies in arraying attack bonus. I dunno, I've not really explored that angle, it just came to me. But I guess 1pp per back-up attack sounds alright, if it's just straight damage, and isn't doing anything radically different to your normal stuff.

So for fire-cop, it could be built like this.

Weapons Master: Enhanced Strength 6 (Limited [Combat Purposes]) {6}.

Ranged Weapons Master: Weapons Master gains Ranged (Quirk [Must be armed with a ranged weapon]) {5}.

Fire Control: 35-point Array, Reduced Weapons Master 6, Reduced Ranged Weapons Master 5 {24+5}.

Combat Training: 9-point Array {5+4}
-Ranged Combat: Fire Control 10
-Close Combat: Fire Control 10
-Ranged Combat: Guns 8
-Close Combat: Batons 8
-Close Combat: Unarmed 8

Alternatively, you could have general ranged combat and close combat attack bonuses irrespective of the weapons used. Ultimately, setting matters. Ranged attacks are more valuable in a low-magic fantasy game where no-one is much faster than a horse than in a kitchen-sink supers game where even the slowest team-member can outpace a cutting-edge fighter jet.

[Nintendogeek01]

Random thought hear, but maybe part of the solution lies in arraying attack bonus.
No. That is EXACTLY what I have a problem with. QD's earlier take is... acceptable, not how I would prefer it done maybe, but QD's way at least implies that the fire cop's different means of attack were all built up. Arraying attack bonuses of different means of attack somehow implies that your competency can be turned on and off.

[Quellian-dyrae]

Random thought here, but maybe part of the solution lies in arraying attack bonus. I dunno, I've not really explored that angle, it just came to me. But I guess 1pp per back-up attack sounds alright, if it's just straight damage, and isn't doing anything radically different to your normal stuff.


No. That is EXACTLY what I have a problem with. QD's earlier take is... acceptable, not how I would prefer it done maybe, but QD's way at least implies that the fire cop's different means of attack were all built up. Arraying attack bonuses of different means of attack somehow implies that your competency can be turned on and off.

Myself, I still think the best way to do multiple attack bonuses is to just have a single attack bonus stat, and then use Complications to define nonproficiency, if you want to. Most characters...just aren't really defined by the sorts of weapons they can use competently. When I'm watching a TV show, I'm not generally all that surprised when a character with powers turns out able to wade in with punches, or a character who usually fights with a gun is able to dish it out with a sword, or something. But if you want to define your character that way - maybe you're a mage with powerful battle magic and no physical combat ability, or a brawler who sucks with guns, or whatever - you take a Complication, and if you're ever forced to fight with a weapon you're not good with, you take a penalty and get a Hero Point.

If you do want it to be from a "most characters are only actually good with one attack, being good with more is a versatility expansion" standpoint, NG's issue with arrayed attack bonus makes some sense, but using an array-like system could work. Where you first buy the attack bonus at its regular cost, and then can buy additional forms of attack for say a PP or even a skill rank each. Something like:

Attack Bonus: Attack bonus costs 1 PP per two ranks.

Proficiencies: By default, you are proficient with a single form of attack. This might mean your fists, your powers, combat maneuvers such as grabs and trips, or a specific class of weapon like guns, swords, or bows. You attack with that type of attack at your usual attack bonus; you have no attack bonus with other types of attack. At the cost of one skill rank, you can gain an additional proficiency. If you wish, you may gain lesser proficiency in more modes of attack for a single skill rank, taking -2 on the attack bonus with them per doubling of the number. So you could gain proficiency in two attacks by taking -2 on attack rolls with either of them, proficiency in four attacks by taking -4, etc.

Weapons Master (Advantage, Combat, Ranked [2]): You use half your attack bonus with attacks you are not proficient with. For two ranks, you instead use your full attack bonus, effectively giving you proficiency with all forms of attack for 2 PP.

(Naturally, a solution like this does carry implications for the Abilities).


Alternatively, you could have general ranged combat and close combat attack bonuses irrespective of the weapons used. Ultimately, setting matters. Ranged attacks are more valuable in a low-magic fantasy game where no-one is much faster than a horse than in a kitchen-sink supers game where even the slowest team-member can outpace a cutting-edge fighter jet.

This reminds me, we're getting into extras later still right? Because when we do, boy-howdie does flipping Increased Range need some discussion.

[Nintendogeek01]

Well extras are part and parcel to powers so by all means bring it up.

As a note, the Powers discussion is officially being extended. There's quite a bit yet to reach a resolution from where I'm sitting. Attack ratings, healing, and a few misc. items.

[Quellian-dyrae]

Fair enough. So, Ranged attacks. On top of exacerbating the attack bonus issue, range really struggles to be worth its point cost. LoG is correct that it varies by setting, but for a typical superhero game, speeds get so much higher that all that range tends to end up doing is saving you the occasional -2 for charging. It also comes with a few downsides of significance (weaker Aim actions, can't be Aided for some baffling reason). And then the whole thing is made worse by the fact that Linked effects have to have the same range, making it prohibitive to add to a vast swath of the game's design space.

The thing is, Elongation does what Ranged should do far better. Throwing Mastery also provides a better version. But both are a bit awkward to use outside of specific fluff (and there is precisely zero reason that Mr. Fantastic and Bullseye should be strictly better at engaging enemies from a distance than any other character with a dedicated ranged attacker concept).

Perception Range of course has its own potential abuses in conjunction with extreme senses.

My suggestion here is that Range should be something of a standalone thing. Changing a power from Close to Ranged costs 1 PP. You have a Range rank which determines your range for all ranged powers (although maybe let powers that default to Ranged substitute half rank or something). Your Ranged actions can target at a Distance rank of Range rank - 2. Attacks can raise this one Distance rank for -2 to the attack roll or two for -5.

Perception range should probably be removed as a thing. In my house rules I have the all defenses can be active or passive so it works fine to just attack Will rather than Reflex or whatever. For a normal game, you could keep a +1/rank Extra for having no attack roll involved, if you prefer. But that would get rid of the extreme range for extreme senses shenanigans (you can still get extreme ranges here, but they scale at the same rate as speed and they can't use Penetrates Concealment to beat Total Cover, which should help substantially).

For other settings...well, if you restrict Speed, you can just restrict Range to the same rank or whatever and you're good.

[Nintendogeek01]

Problem is ranged attacks (2 pts per rank) in theory add nothing to the damage, just make it so damage (or another effect) could do one thing it could not do on its own, hit something at a distance. That is worth the extra 1 point per rank in my book. Honestly it sounds like it's elongation that needs addressing on this front. Though I've got nothing off the top of my head; I'll need to consider. Also, I've no plans for perception range. Yes it's powerful and with the right combo of senses open to abuse, but that's where the GM needs to draw the line, not the rules.

EDIT
I've got two ideas for elongation.
Increase its price to two-points per rank. While the higher ranks will still "outreach" a ranged attack very few people's senses would extend to the same distance. Now that admittedly sounds like a pro and con at first read (which it is ultimately... your mileage may vary) but I'm also going with two points per rank because this is essentially ranged grab, it gives you an effect rank in grabbing and reach to go with it after all.
Scratch elongation entirely. Make it simply part of the flavor for a character. They could have a ranged damage attack flavored as a ranged punch. This might work with a few of the changes already brought up in earlier topics.

[Quellian-dyrae]

The ability to hit something at a distance could be worth 1 PP/rank in theory. The issue is really that the distance you can hit things at is way too small for the cost, scaling linearly with rank whereas most related things roughly double with rank, and that as a requirement for Linking it inflates the price hard while not providing much in the way of cumulative benefit the way, say, Multiattack or Secondary Effect would.

That said, rather than making it a standalone stat, you could also just make it so Increased Range provides a Distance rank equal to the power rank - 2 (or whatever), and removing Extended and Diminished. That way you could at least save a bit by making the powers only partially Ranged to let them use their full rank at a reduced range. ...Although come to think of it, normally I tend to assume you can't do that because that would let you just make one rank Ranged and then buy Extended range but I don't know that that's actually an invalid option. And given the problems regular range has it might be the simplest solution. Huh.