M&M Impervious Toughness Question

[Aeromyre]

OK so I haven't played Masterminds in a while, and the character in question is a time traveling powersuit hero who is now Demon possessed by a minor villian,
He was my character when I wasn't GMing.
So part of his concept is that he was born in 2189 where the world was controled by a evil Empire, started by the main villian of the campaign and he had come back to stop him. He's a super genius with like 30 int or something like that, but he only has 1 point in con giving him a -5 penalty. I gave him Protection 15 with the Impervious extra for a total of 30pp. This made my toughness save = 10 with the penalty, but my impervious toughness was 15, so if you could do 16 damage to me my save would be 10. I traded all 5 of my max for defense for my toughness max to be 10.
Is the imperviousness of 15 legal?

[Tengu_temp]

Technically it's legal, but I wouldn't allow it as a DM. Even trading 5 points of defense for toughness (this is a PL 5 campaign, right? That's what I got from the part about trade-offs) is too much if you ask me, making your character too tough to hurt by most enemies. And adding a high rank of Impervious on top of that is just overkill.

Also, a nitpick: Impervious 15 protects you with powers with a total damage of +14 or less. +15 works fine.

[Aeromyre]

Technically it's legal, but I wouldn't allow it as a DM. Even trading 5 points of defense for toughness (this is a PL 5 campaign, right? That's what I got from the part about trade-offs) is too much if you ask me, making your character too tough to hurt by most enemies. And adding a high rank of Impervious on top of that is just overkill.

Also, a nitpick: Impervious 15 protects you with powers with a total damage of +14 or less. +15 works fine.

Oh yes Been a while since i played, but then agin if that's true what does Impervious 1 get you?

[Tengu_temp]

Immunity to attacks with a damage bonus of +0 and lower. Which pretty much means punches by people of up to average strength.

[Aeromyre]

Immunity to attacks with a damage bonus of +0 and lower. Which pretty much means punches by people of up to average strength.

Yeah so no one lol

[The Glyphstone]

Yeah so no one lol

Correction: No PCs. You're basically mook-proof though....it's called 'average' for a reason.

[Tengu_temp]

Most mooks tend to either be stronger than that or carry weapons, though. At least you can rest assured that average bystanders are no longer any threat for you.

[Aeromyre]

Still it's kind of lame, no one in my experience has never done less than 1 damage ever
and even if they did they at least have a save of like 5 or 6 because they're superheroes and they're likely to save a DC 15 save, if not it's likely only a bruise

[Cubey]

Correction: No PCs. You're basically mook-proof though....it's called 'average' for a reason.

Run of the mill street thugs have an STR of 14. That's +2 already. Criminals stand at +0 with an STR of 11, but they carry guns. And I even didn't go above PL 2 yet.

Average is average because you have a lot of noncombatants in the world. Doesn't mean the average mook will have 10s across the board.

[Beleriphon]

OK so I haven't played Masterminds in a while, and the character in question is a time traveling powersuit hero who is now Demon possessed by a minor villian,
He was my character when I wasn't GMing.
So part of his concept is that he was born in 2189 where the world was controled by a evil Empire, started by the main villian of the campaign and he had come back to stop him. He's a super genius with like 30 int or something like that, but he only has 1 point in con giving him a -5 penalty. I gave him Protection 15 with the Impervious extra for a total of 30pp. This made my toughness save = 10 with the penalty, but my impervious toughness was 15, so if you could do 16 damage to me my save would be 10. I traded all 5 of my max for defense for my toughness max to be 10.
Is the imperviousness of 15 legal?

Imperious 15 on protection 15? Sure, that's fine. But Impervious doesn't work the way you think it works. You automatically save against anything less than the Impervious rank, so 15. So you can automatically save against things like Space Cruiser main battle guns. Congratulations, you took Star Destroyer turbolaser battery fire in the chest and survived.

[kpenguin]

Superman can still punch you in the face, though.

[Fouredged Sword]

Congradulations, you have made yourself unhurtable by just about any PL apropriate threat. Now you just got to stop all the other ten thousand ways to cause damage, like an altered save damage power telapathic attack that forces you to make a will save and is perception range. Oh, and he has mental senses that see through obsticals and has X10000000 range increments and detects anything with a mind. It's only two powers that would cost maybe 40 points total. Have fun.

M&M is easy to break. A good game if focused less on breaking it, but rather acting a character.

[Beleriphon]

Superman can still punch you in the face, though.

Unless his damage bonus is more than +15 it wont make that much difference. You still ignore it, you need to meet that Imperious rank, so you need something that does +16 damage. At PL5, think about that for a second. Even assuming a make trade off of +5/-5 in favour of damage that will still only net you a +10 damage bonus. You need to Power Attack for +5 giving you a whopping -5 to hit. Functionally, its broken only because of the power level, provided that it is in point of fact PL 5.

At PL10, who cares? You can power attack for that on a balanced Damage +10/ attack bonus +10.

[Eurus]

There's also a modifier that makes attacks pierce impenetrable toughness, isn't there?

[Beleriphon]

There's also a modifier that makes attacks pierce impenetrable toughness, isn't there?

Its Penetrating, and all it does it lower the Impervious rank to Impervious less Penetrating. So you'd still need a fair number of ranks on it to really get anywhere, like 8. Which still means that you need something like an AP missile to do anything, to a PL5 character. This issue isn't so much that you can't hurt somebody with high Impervious, its actually trivially easy, but at PL5 that's still quite an investment and requires a pretty damage bonus to achieve, which leaves a relatively low attack bonus, made worse because you might still need power attack.

Congratulations, you have made yourself unhurtable by just about any PL appropriate threat. Now you just got to stop all the other ten thousand ways to cause damage, like an altered save damage power telepathic attack that forces you to make a will save and is perception range. Oh, and he has mental senses that see through obstacles and has X10000000 range increments and detects anything with a mind. It's only two powers that would cost maybe 40 points total. Have fun.

M&M is easy to break. A good game if focused less on breaking it, but rather acting a character.

For a measly 80 points you make yourself immune to all damage. All of it, every single damage source. Immune. I-M-M-U-N-E: Immune. At the suggested PL5 power point totals its just doable with some drawbacks. That's neither here nor there though.

[The Rose Dragon]

By the way, you cannot have more ranks of Impervious than your Toughness save.

So, you can only take 10 ranks of Impervious due to your Constitution penalty.

[Aeromyre]

Imperious 15 on protection 15? Sure, that's fine. But Impervious doesn't work the way you think it works. You automatically save against anything less than the Impervious rank, so 15. So you can automatically save against things like Space Cruiser main battle guns. Congratulations, you took Star Destroyer turbolaser battery fire in the chest and survived.

So how does it work? Because what you said works just how i think it does,

Superman can still punch you in the face, though.

Lol yeah, he could, damn dude is almost 3x my PL

There's also a modifier that makes attacks pierce impenetrable toughness, isn't there?

Yes, and I as the GM threw it at myself and the other players quite often
but the hero in question is technically a villian now.

The thing about this hero is that his fortitude was sorry
i think it was -3 or something, so any effect at all would have a DC of 13 + the rank of the power and he would pretty much always fail it.
This was sort of an inexpensive way to get immunity to damage, but not immunity to other save effects

By the way, you cannot have more ranks of Impervious than your Toughness save.

So, you can only take 10 ranks of Impervious due to your Constitution penalty.

Yes that is what we were discussing,
Where does it say it in the rulebook? I Cntrl-F'd my PDF and it never said anything about that

[Beleriphon]

So how does it work? Because what you said works just how i think it does,

My error, I misread your initial post. You are quite correct, although its anything 14 damage or less, but why quibble right?

I don't recall seeing the reference to maxing out on toughness bonus. Although, that's the usual thing, although you could apply it to Protection. Which would allow 15 Impervious.

[kpenguin]

Unless his damage bonus is more than +15 it wont make that much difference. You still ignore it, you need to meet that Imperious rank, so you need something that does +16 damage. At PL5, think about that for a second. Even assuming a make trade off of +5/-5 in favour of damage that will still only net you a +10 damage bonus. You need to Power Attack for +5 giving you a whopping -5 to hit. Functionally, its broken only because of the power level, provided that it is in point of fact PL 5.

Assuming that Superman is comparable to the Centurion of Freedom City, his damage bonus is around +20, not counting anything he gets for power attacking or using slam attacks.

[Tengu_temp]

According to the official statblock in DC Adventures, Superman is PL 15 and his damage bonus is +19 unarmed, +15 heat vision.

[Sindri]

Well, it really depends on who's writing Superman at the time. Depending on writer and era, he ranges from "leaping tall buildings in a single bound" to "flying through time and creating black holes by squeezing a coffee cup."

[Tengu_temp]

I assume that's the latest incarnation of Superman, seeing that he doesn't have Super-Weaving as a power.

[Beleriphon]

According to the official statblock in DC Adventures, Superman is PL 15 and his damage bonus is +19 unarmed, +15 heat vision.

DC Adventures also has Impervious working differently, by only offering half the ranks as effective. In essence Superman's own Impervious 18 only lets Superman ignore rank 9 or lower damage effects. In 2e M&M it would be able to ignore rank 17 damage effects.