Mutants and Masterminds 2e help

[The_Admiral]

I do not understand the alternate power system how does it work for powers like Kitnetic Control?

[kamikasei]

What don't you understand?

The basic idea:

Take a power costing X points, including its feats etc.

Spend a point on Alternate Power for it. This is just a power feat like any other except that it doesn't count towards the cost for calculating alternates (see below).

Now you can have a second power costing X points, which can be more or less anything you can justify as being essentially the same ability used differently. There are no hard rules for this; it's a matter of judgement.

If you have, say, Blast 10 with Improved Critical, that power costs 21 points. You can add two Alternate Power feats to that, which up the cost to 23. Each of those lets you create an alternate worth up to 21 points. You can switch between alternates with a free action once per round.

[The_Admiral]

thanks

[dsmiles]

Oooh, my turn:

The blurb (that follows just about everything) that states, "Blah, blah, bonus can't be higher than the power level of the camapign." Is that total bonus or bonus from one source? 'Cause bonuses rack up pretty fast in M&M.

[kamikasei]

Oooh, my turn:

The blurb (that follows just about everything) that states, "Blah, blah, bonus can't be higher than the power level of the camapign." Is that total bonus or bonus from one source? 'Cause bonuses rack up pretty fast in M&M.

Total bonus. There are particular things that are exceptions and call themselves out as such (for example, you can have Attack 10 in a PL 10 campaign and bump it up to 15 using All-out Attack; you can have 15 ranks in a skill at the same PL but still increase it by using Boost on the relevant ability score, etc.), but the whole idea of PL is to limit the totals, not individual components.

[dsmiles]

Total bonus. There are particular things that are exceptions and call themselves out as such (for example, you can have Attack 10 in a PL 10 campaign and bump it up to 15 using All-out Attack; you can have 15 ranks in a skill at the same PL but still increase it by using Boost on the relevant ability score, etc.), but the whole idea of PL is to limit the totals, not individual components.

Got it. I just need to be able to remember this explanation on Saturday when we sit down for my players to make their characters. Now that I understand it better, it seems to be one of the finer points of balance that DnD probably should have used to keep everyone relatively equal.