Looking for superhero ttrpgs

[Noje]

I've heard people on these forums bring up superhero rpgs a few times and it has peaked my interest. What games would fit into this genre and where would be a good place to start?

[Mutazoia]

There are quite a few options and I'm not about to list them all. The ones I have experience with are (in no particular order)

Mutants & Masterminds - The most recent of the list, easy to find and find support for.
A couple different versions of Marvel Superheroes (Still prefer the TSR original myself) Mostly out of print. Will take some scrounging to find.
DC Heroes - (my personal fav) Also out of print, but IMHO worth the time to find. (look for the 3rd ed)
Champions - A lot of math involved, but lots of options for character creation
GURPS Supers - Typical GURPS system with typical GURPS advantages and drawbacks.

[Arbane]

Truth and Justice: A relatively 'light' game, more story-based than physics-based.
Aberrant: White Wolf does a superpower game!
Prowlers and Paragons: Fairly recent superhero game, is trying to be the next Champions. From my limited playing, it definitely has the 'huge buckets of d6s' part down.

[Noje]

Wow, thanks for the quick responses and recommendations! Now I got a lot of reading and scrounging to do to check out all these systems.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Masks: A New Generation

[KillingAScarab]

A couple different versions of Marvel Superheroes (Still prefer the TSR original myself) Mostly out of print. Will take some scrounging to find.

I was in a play-by-post game here which used the Marvel Super Heroes advanced set. Classic Marvel Forever hosts pdfs. The thing I liked most about the design of that one was, while it was very heavy on charts and graphs, the Universal Table tried to pull things together. You have a rating in something, roll percentile dice, and compare your roll's number to the color on the chart to determine success. Having listened quite a bit to the X-Plain the X-Men podcast, it was also nice to see another source which was so very much of the 1980s; illustrations used in the Advanced Player's Book would have the Fantastic Four with She-Hulk on the team for example. Character generation in the game assumes you are either modelling a hero off of something seen in comics or you are fully randomizing it by rolling on tables, but in our game we had a Judge who set a point-buy system in place.

The X-Plain the X-Men podcast has also used the second Marvel RPG TSR put out: Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game. Instead of rolling dice, cards are drawn which have a color which matches one of the four attributes or is a Doom card. Players can play additional cards from their hand which have a value lower than their characters' Edge and drawn cards which match the color of the attribute used results in additional draws. Logan Bonner (who has worked on supplements to Marevel Heroic Roleplaying for Cortex Plus) has run two sessions using this system, but only the first one had a PDF of the module he ran based on the premise of, "What if there had been a sixth season of the X-Men animated series?"

[Beleriphon]

There are quite a few options and I'm not about to list them all. The ones I have experience with are (in no particular order)

Mutants & Masterminds - The most recent of the list, easy to find and find support for.
A couple different versions of Marvel Superheroes (Still prefer the TSR original myself) Mostly out of print. Will take some scrounging to find.
DC Heroes - (my personal fav) Also out of print, but IMHO worth the time to find. (look for the 3rd ed)
Champions - A lot of math involved, but lots of options for character creation
GURPS Supers - Typical GURPS system with typical GURPS advantages and drawbacks.

To explain a bit further. M&M 2nd and 3rd Editions are points based games, they look very similar to other d20 games since it they dereived from the OGL. You need a single D20 per player and you're set. Minor math, mostly addition, subtraction and multiplication. Quick note DC Adventures is M&M 3rd Edition with DC branding, they are the exact same game otherwise.

Champions is the superhero subset of the HERO RPG. It uses the bucket of d6s for most stuff, you can for example end up rolling 15d6 for damage. Character creation math is more complicated than M&M, but not excessively so. If you're comfortable with using fractions you're good to go.

GURPS is GURPS with extra stuff to make it more superheroish.

DC Heroes and the Marvel games I've never played.

[daniel_ream]

There are tons, but they do tend to break down into two families: the ones based on Champions (the great granddaddy) and the ones that aren't. (for the nonce, I'm going to ignore games that are out of print or unavailable)

Champions and its derivatives - GURPS/Supers, Mayfair's DC Heroes/Blood of Heroes, M&M 2nd and 3rd edition, Godlike/Wild Talents, Savage Worlds with the Superhero Toolkit - these are all pretty straightforward zero-to-hero, physics simulation engine RPGs with an effects-based point-buy powers creation system and a logarithmic scale. The dice mechanic and base lethality changes, but they're all pretty similar in execution. Some are explicitly hex wargames like Champions, others are more abstract, but they all tend to focus on combat effectiveness to the exclusion of everything else.

Everything Else: There's the stuff based on D&D (Villains & Vigilantes, Heroes Unlimited), the old stuff (TSR's Marvel Superheroes), the new stuff (ICONS, which is TSR's Marvel plus a bit of Fate mechanics, and BASH, which is about as rules-lite as you can get) and a crap ton of indie games that are probably technically available but good luck tracking them down (Capes, World vs. Hero, Truth & Justice, several Powered by the Apocalypse games). There are games that cover very specific superhero niches, like Mutant City Blues and Cold Steel Wardens, but they aren't as generic and often don't work at all outside their niche.

In my experience, the only TTRPG that actually feels like a four-colour superhero comic book was MWP's Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, which was erased from history by Disney so you'll have a beggar of a time finding a print copy. It's well worth it if you find one at a con, though.

[GungHo]

To explain a bit further. M&M 2nd and 3rd Editions are points based games, they look very similar to other d20 games since it they dereived from the OGL. You need a single D20 per player and you're set. Minor math, mostly addition, subtraction and multiplication. Quick note DC Adventures is M&M 3rd Edition with DC branding, they are the exact same game otherwise.

Can't stress that enough. You're paying a franchising tax with that. Just get M&M and go to a DC Comics wiki.

[Knaight]

On those indie games - if you're good with PDFs, they tend to be much easier to get ahold of (if only because sticking a .pdf file on DriveThruRPG or RPGNow is a bit easier than running a print run and shipping it).

Back to the system side, there's a few significant options that have been missed. Namely:

Wild Talents - An ORE superhero game developed by a third party company. The rules are a bit janky, but it's generally a decent game.
Godlike - The more official ORE superhero game, about relatively low powered superheroes in WWII. It's dark, it's gloomy, and the system side can be stripped out of the setting pretty easily and used to cover a lot of more conventional games.

The big selling point for both of them is that the underlying One Roll Engine (ORE) is a really solid piece of design.

[Beleriphon]

Can't stress that enough. You're paying a franchising tax with that. Just get M&M and go to a DC Comics wiki.

The core rules for sure. I own the book because it came out before M&M 3E rule book. The setting books, and the double volume big book for characters? Priceless beyond measure for somebody looking for a way to build a power or character based on an existing DC character. It also has dozens of on PL characters, including a bunch at PL10 you can literally pull from the book and start playing.

[JoeJ]

of the out of print (but still sometimes findable) games, Marvel Heroic falls down on character creation. It's pretty good if you want to adapt an existing character from the comics, but it doesn't have much guidance for inventing your own original character (Like a lot of Margaret Weis games, it assumes you're going to play in an existing fictional world rather than create your own.) Smallville does better in this regard, and has the distinction of being the only supers game I know that really works if you mix supers and normal humans in the same group.

Villains and Vigilantes was one of the earliest super RPGs, and it's loosely based on OD&D. The game system has little to recommend it (although I had a blast playing it back in the early 80s), but the supplements are still a gold mine of ideas for characters and capers.

Blood of Heroes is just DC Heroes without the trademarked characters. This was another one of my favorites, in part because of how fast the fights play out. Also, creating NPCs is super quick. Once I had a concept, I could generate their stats literally as quickly as I could write them down. (PCs take longer, though, because you have to add up points.)

[Arbane]

The 1980s Marvel game might be worth looking at: fairly straightforward system, a karma mechanic used to enforce 'comics-code morality' (albeit not very consistently), and a ton of powers and characters already written up.
It's been out of print for ages, but there's a clone of it called 'FASERIP' (after the stats). And it's free.

[daniel_ream]

of the out of print (but still sometimes findable) games, Marvel Heroic falls down on character creation. It's pretty good if you want to adapt an existing character from the comics, but it doesn't have much guidance for inventing your own original character

Oh, not this canard again.

MHR doesn't have a "character creation system" because it doesn't need one. Write down whatever stats you want. The system is self-balancing in play (if you think a character with all D10s and D12s is more powerful in play than a character with all D8s, you don't understand how the system works).

Smallville does better in this regard, and has the distinction of being the only supers game I know that really works if you mix supers and normal humans in the same group.

Smallville isn't a superhero game, though. It's a soap opera drama game that happens to have rules for supernatural powers in it; if you try to run a conventional four-colour superhero game in it, ti;s not g

Villains and Vigilantes was one of the earliest super RPGs [...] the supplements are still a gold mine of ideas for characters and capers.

This. Most of them really can't run as written - either they're dreadful railroads (Ken Cliffe, I'm looking at you) or they're thinly disguised linear dungeon crawls, but the bones of the adventures are pure Silver Age goodness. I think I've run a conversion of Death Duel with the Destroyers/The Island of Doctor Apocalypse in every superhero system I've ever run.

Blood of Heroes is just DC Heroes without the trademarked characters.

The biggest problem with BOH is that it's mired in IP rights hell. You can still find new copies on Amazon easily enough, but it will never be reprinted.

[JoeJ]

Oh, not this canard again.

MHR doesn't have a "character creation system" because it doesn't need one. Write down whatever stats you want. The system is self-balancing in play (if you think a character with all D10s and D12s is more powerful in play than a character with all D8s, you don't understand how the system works).

"Write down whatever stats you want" doesn't sound like very much guidance, which is all that I claimed.

[digiman619]

There's The Phoenix Project, an add an to d20 Modern that's a fan project and therefore free. It's all mechanical; what if you have Str 80, or could run thousands of feet per round, but it's an interesting take on a scaled up D&D without the imbalance spells brought (they only exist as an optional power).

[JoeJ]

This. Most of them really can't run as written - either they're dreadful railroads (Ken Cliffe, I'm looking at you) or they're thinly disguised linear dungeon crawls, but the bones of the adventures are pure Silver Age goodness. I think I've run a conversion of Death Duel with the Destroyers/The Island of Doctor Apocalypse in every superhero system I've ever run.

I love that pair of adventures too. And I always have Manta Man and the Floop Brothers Powered Mercenaries as NPCs in my world as well.

[daniel_ream]

I always have Manta Man and the Floop Brothers Powered Mercenaries as NPCs in my world as well.

Manta-Man was the Batman clone in the last MHR game I ran. As for the Floop Brothers...there's Silver Age, and then there's Hostess Fruit Pie levels of silly. Unfortunately, most of Stefan Jones' work is the latter. The Most Wanted books hit the right tone, I feel.

[CovertCobalt]

Masks: A New Generation

I will second this recommendation. It's awesome for telling stories in its specific niche: teenage superheroes trying to find their place in the world. The setting, Halcyon City, is vibrant and really helps you understand the tone and feel of the game. Moreover, the PbtA system is great for low-prep, high-improv games with lots of player buy-in.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Mutants and Masterminds 3e is not just a great superhero systems, but (in my opinion) one of the finest RPGs out there, period. It offers staggering flexibility without relying on either giant lists of pre-made abilities (as, say, GURPS or D&D does) or vague self-defined categories (as, say, Fate does). It plays very quickly and robustly, and captures its genre better than any other game I've seen. It's also very setting-neutral; as long as you're looking to run cartoon-style action*, you can plug-and-play any setting you want, even things like fantasy or sci-fi.



*It plays exactly like, oh, an episode of Justice League Unlimited or Young Justice

[daniel_ream]

It plays very quickly and robustly, and captures its genre better than any other game I've seen.

Try building Soultaker. Or Deadman.

[Bohandas]

There's a superhero setting for Toon: The Cartoon Roleplaying Game (in part of the "Tooniversal Tour Guide" supplement IIRC)

[Grod_The_Giant]

Try building Soultaker. Or Deadman.

Soultaker: A magic sword (Strength-Based Damage, Incurable) that stores the souls of those you kill with it (largely fluff), letting you commune with them (Enhanced Intelligence, Limited/Quirk: only for knowledge possessed by the souls in the blade, with an Alternate Effect of Mind Reading, Reduced Duration, Linked to the sword's damage effect.), and possibly summon them to your service (Summon Ghost, with the power tweaked to your taste).

Deadman: A ghost (no Stamina, Permanent-duration Concealment 10 (all senses) and Intangibility 4) who can possess people that do not remember the possession (Affliction (fascinated and dazed, compelled and vulnerable, controlled and mentally transformed) with the Feedback flaw; possibly Immunity (Physical effects), double or triple limited: only while possessing subject, and cannot take actions yourself; the Mental Power Profile suggests a flat Extra 1: Merge with subject, which seems too cheap, but I guess also means that you're not doing anything, so...), using their skills (mind control, duh) while retaining your own (buy selected skills and advantages as Enhanced Trait, Also affects others, limited to possessed subjects).

While wearing the white lantern ring, he could fly (Flight), survive in hostile environments (Immunity 10: Life support), teleport (Teleport, Extended; Movement (Dimension Travel)), heal people (Healing, Persistent, Restorative, probably Resurrection), conceal his presence (Concealment 10 (all senses)), shoot power blasts (Ranged Damage/Ranged Area Damage/etc), make constructs (Create), and so on and so forth; all or most with the Uncontrollable flaw. Or better yet, stat the ring out as a separate entity (possibly purchased with the Sidekick advantage) with a bunch of absent Abilities (probably Strength, Stamina, Dexterity, Agility, Fighting, and Presence), with the powers Brand could control gaining the Affects Others modifier.

Come on, give me something harder.

[daniel_ream]

[...] letting you commune with them (Enhanced Intelligence, Limited/Quirk: only for knowledge possessed by the souls in the blade

So your thesis is that the ability to reliably command the knowledge of specific dead people is...a couple of points? That's also very much not what the Intelligence stat does.

and possibly summon them to your service (Summon Ghost, with the power tweaked to your taste).

You explicitly can't summon specific people. (You also can't trap the souls of dead people, because M&M has no concept of souls or the afterlife).

This is the problem with pretty much all the Champions derivatives - their effects-based point buy system can't handle anything that isn't materialistic. The notable exception is Mayfair's DC Heroes, simply because the DC Universe has always had a huge mystical component so they wrote in specific rules for it.

Deadman: A ghost (no Stamina

That's...not actually a thing you can do in M&M.

Permanent-duration Concealment 10 (all senses) and Intangibility 4)

Here comes Hydra, with a high-tech phase-shift blaster (Damage, Range, Affects Insubstantial). Or perhaps a SATAN-field generator (Nullify insubstantial, Area). Except those don't work on Deadman. Ever.

Like all Champions derivatives, M&M can't do absolutes (it was an explicit stated design pattern for Champions, and the other games have aped it without ever addressing the genre problems it creates).

Come on, give me something harder.

Okay. Mjolnir.

Look, you can handwave away the problem (I've seen writeups for Katana that reduce everything Soultaker can do down to a couple of quirks, which is just a tacit admission the system can't handle it) or you can make up completely new rules for it, like how to handle Deadman possessing a mouse or a bird without Shrinking, or how to interact with dead people. But at that point, it isn't the system that's modelling the character.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Okay, first question: are you coming at this from 2e or 3e? A few of your responses make me wonder.

So your thesis is that the ability to reliably command the knowledge of specific dead people is...a couple of points? That's also very much not what the Intelligence stat does.

Yes and yes. What's the practical upshoot of "can draw on the knowledge of dead people?" Enhanced Knowledge skills. The easiest way to represent that is boosted Intelligence, which adds to all of your Expertise stats. If you want to get fancier, you could go Variable 1 (Skills and Advantages).

You explicitly can't summon specific people. (You also can't trap the souls of dead people, because M&M has no concept of souls or the afterlife).

Funny, I don't see anything about that in the rules. The closest is the statement that "You always have the same minion unless you apply the Variable Type modifier," which suggests that you are summoning a specific spirit/robot/whatever. But fine; take Variable Type. Because "trapping the souls" is an entirely fluffy thing in the system, you don't need a specific "trap the soul" power; you just have to model the effect.

This is the problem with pretty much all the Champions derivatives - their effects-based point buy system can't handle anything that isn't materialistic. The notable exception is Mayfair's DC Heroes, simply because the DC Universe has always had a huge mystical component so they wrote in specific rules for it.

Only if you repeatedly reject the functional alternatives.

That's...not actually a thing you can do in M&M.

It's not just a thing you can do in M&M, it's something the book repeatedly talks about doing. See page 57-58 and 179-181

Here comes Hydra, with a high-tech phase-shift blaster (Damage, Range, Affects Insubstantial). Or perhaps a SATAN-field generator (Nullify insubstantial, Area). Except those don't work on Deadman. Ever.

He's a ghost. If you've got some sort of fancy ghost-busting technology, it should affect a ghost. If you want more than that, pay for more Immunities. Or not, because "can't be harmed at all" is bad for the game.

Like all Champions derivatives, M&M can't do absolutes (it was an explicit stated design pattern for Champions, and the other games have aped it without ever addressing the genre problems it creates).

Immunities are pretty damn absolutely. I'll admit it's hard to have absolute attacks, but the game's probably healthier for it.

Okay. Mjolnir.

<sigh> The classic version is all of Thor's powers (Strength, flight, Ranged Damage blasts of a few descriptions, Environment for the weather control) with the Easily Removable flaw, perhaps with a Feature (lasts for X rounds before shutting off), with another Feature that others can't pick up the hammer. Don't need many points for that, since "can't easily use other people's gear" is sort of the default assumption.

[JoeJ]

Try building Soultaker. Or Deadman.

These are very poorly chosen examples. Both are included in Heroes & Villains:Vol. 1.

Because of the license agreement for DC Adventures, any DC character that isn't fairly obscure probably already has official M&M stats.

[Arbane]

You explicitly can't summon specific people. (You also can't trap the souls of dead people, because M&M has no concept of souls or the afterlife).

This is the problem with pretty much all the Champions derivatives - their effects-based point buy system can't handle anything that isn't materialistic. The notable exception is Mayfair's DC Heroes, simply because the DC Universe has always had a huge mystical component so they wrote in specific rules for it.

Look, you can handwave away the problem (I've seen writeups for Katana that reduce everything Soultaker can do down to a couple of quirks, which is just a tacit admission the system can't handle it) or you can make up completely new rules for it, like how to handle Deadman possessing a mouse or a bird without Shrinking, or how to interact with dead people. But at that point, it isn't the system that's modelling the character.

It's a good thing this system was designed for use by human beings with functioning brains who can paper over the unavoidable gaps in a game-system with their own minds rather than a computer, then.

Semi-seriously, there's probably a corollary to Godel's Incompleteness Theorem that guarantees there's always a few things that can't be modeled, no matter how hard you try to make a rules system all-encompassing. Trying to is doomed to failure and just results in 500-page rulebooks.

[daniel_ream]

What's the practical upshoot of "can draw on the knowledge of dead people?" .

I can make them tell me anything they know. That's more than just skills or abstract knowledge, it includes secrets, passcodes, conversations they've had with other people, places they've been. You're essentially giving free retrocognition with the power.

Variable 1 (Skills and Advantages) (Limited, only for things this dead guy knows) lets me know everything this dead guy knows, can I just remove the Limit and know everything everyone knows for 2 points? That seems like a pretty cheap mind reading power.

Funny, I don't see anything about that in the rules.

Summon (Variable Type, Controlled) lets me summon anyone I want and have them completely under my control? Because Summon (Variable Type (any member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), Controlled) seems....overpowered.

He's a ghost. If you've got some sort of fancy ghost-busting technology, it should affect a ghost. If you want more than that, pay for more Immunities. Or not, because "can't be harmed at all" is bad for the game.

My point is that the RAW doesn't distinguish between technological Insubstantiality and supernatural Insubstantiality, but the genre absolutely does. (Deadman is not affected by technological gimcrackery, ever, because that's not how that works in the DC Universe) So now we have to add Immunity to technological Affects Insubstantial Powers to his sheet, too. See how the corner cases keep piling up?

[...]with another Feature that others can't pick up the hammer. Don't need many points for that, since "can't easily use other people's gear" is sort of the default assumption.

So the ability to immobilize opponents - up to and including gods that can shatter planets - by laying the hammer on their chest, a trick Thor uses quite a lot, is now a one point Feature. Like speaking with the dead and commanding all their knowledge is a one point Feature.

Riiiiiight.

[...] no matter how hard you try to make a rules system all-encompassing. Trying to is doomed to failure and just results in 500-page rulebooks.

The core M&M book is 236 pages, and the 36 Power Profiles constitute an additional 180 pages, so...well, 400+ pages anyway.

[Beleriphon]

I can make them tell me anything they know. That's more than just skills or abstract knowledge, it includes secrets, passcodes, conversations they've had with other people, places they've been. You're essentially giving free retrocognition with the power.

Post-cognition isn't htat expensiuve.

Variable 1 (Skills and Advantages) (Limited, only for things this dead guy knows) lets me know everything this dead guy knows, can I just remove the Limit and know everything everyone knows for 2 points? That seems like a pretty cheap mind reading power.

Yep. And its not mind reading, it is gaining access to skills and advantages. Remember it an effects based system you pay for what you can do.

Summon (Variable Type, Controlled) lets me summon anyone I want and have them completely under my control? Because Summon (Variable Type (any member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), Controlled) seems....overpowered.

Not really, especially since that's not how Summon works. Unless your GM determines that yes that bog standard PL3 creature you summoned is one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. If you specifically wanted to have the one of the joint chiefs of staff appear the best be is a teleport as an attack with appropriate limits to get what you want.

My point is that the RAW doesn't distinguish between technological Insubstantiality and supernatural Insubstantiality, but the genre absolutely does. (Deadman is not affected by technological gimcrackery, ever, because that's not how that works in the DC Universe) So now we have to add Immunity to technological Affects Insubstantial Powers to his sheet, too. See how the corner cases keep piling up?

So you throw a flaw on insubstantial, or understand most things don't have effects insubstantial to start with.

So the ability to immobilize opponents - up to and including gods that can shatter planets - by laying the hammer on their chest, a trick Thor uses quite a lot, is now a one point Feature. Like speaking with the dead and commanding all their knowledge is a one point Feature.

Riiiiiight.

Yeah, speaking with the dead is a one point ability, because utility is quite frankly pretty limited in the way the game is balanced. Gaining the skills and abilities is a Variable effect, and depending on how broad you want to be could be quite expensive. Mjolnir being immovable is probably best done as a power stunting an Affliction off of the its base effects.

The core M&M book is 236 pages, and the 36 Power Profiles constitute an additional 180 pages, so...well, 400+ pages anyway.

Power Profiles are just a bunch of theme effects setups for folks that want to get some pregenerated stuff. It for the most part uses the default rules for everything. There's a lot of different iterations of Ranged Damage in those pages.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I can make them tell me anything they know. That's more than just skills or abstract knowledge, it includes secrets, passcodes, conversations they've had with other people, places they've been. You're essentially giving free retrocognition with the power.

Okay, fair; Senses 4 (Postcognition) with the same limit works better.

Variable 1 (Skills and Advantages) (Limited, only for things this dead guy knows) lets me know everything this dead guy knows, can I just remove the Limit and know everything everyone knows for 2 points? That seems like a pretty cheap mind reading power.

No, but it lets you draw on a huge range of expertise. Which is fun.

Summon (Variable Type, Controlled) lets me summon anyone I want and have them completely under my control? Because Summon (Variable Type (any member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), Controlled) seems....overpowered.

Summon doesn't teleport an existing person to you, no. But you could Summon a doppelganger with the same stats. Probably not knowledge, which is admittedly getting into murky "ask your GM to price out this feature" business. But that's a) a rare edge case you're pushing as hard as you can against, and b) still within the bounds of the system if you use features.

My point is that the RAW doesn't distinguish between technological Insubstantiality and supernatural Insubstantiality, but the genre absolutely does. (Deadman is not affected by technological gimcrackery, ever, because that's not how that works in the DC Universe) So now we have to add Immunity to technological Affects Insubstantial Powers to his sheet, too. See how the corner cases keep piling up?

You're demanding to have your cake and eat it too. Yes, if you want added immunities you have to pay for them separately; THAT'S HOW POINT BUY GAMES WORK. (The GM can houserule that things with a tech descriptor can't affect magic, but that WOULD be a houserule that significantly powers up magic. Because, again, the default is a kitchen sink setting where you don't get what you don't pay for)

So the ability to immobilize opponents - up to and including gods that can shatter planets - by laying the hammer on their chest, a trick Thor uses quite a lot, is now a one point Feature. Like speaking with the dead and commanding all their knowledge is a one point Feature.

If you're using it on a defeated enemy? Sure! They're defeated! It's not like you're going to do that permanently-- or that they couldn't blow up the ground under them and escape when the time comes, if the plot demands. If you try it mid-fight, as Beleriphon suggested, that would probably be a Dodge-based Affliction to keep from being caught.

The core M&M book is 236 pages, and the 36 Power Profiles constitute an additional 180 pages, so...well, 400+ pages anyway.

The Power Profiles are purely examples, containing no new official rules. The actual powers chapter is just a few dozen pages.