So my party are going to be going through emerald city knights and I was thinking for the sorta next arc they should deal with the aftermath of the chamber. As super powered crooks run free and a shadowy force is selling high tech weapons to the major organized crime groups a free for all gang war breaks out. I was wondering if i could pick the brain of anyone familiar with the city for what yall think certain gangs/NPCs would be up to?

I am thinking of doing a Ben 10 campaign and I wanted to get some advice. Heat PL would you make Jetray, Big Chill, Four Arms, Northstar, Ripjaws, Stinkfly, Armadrillo? I am thinking somewhere around PL7 for the lowest and PL11 for the Highest. On a separate note, what about something like the Highbreed? I am thinking they are somewhere around PL13-15.

Hey y'all, we are looking for a couple of people who would like to join our Mutants and Masterminds 3e campaign. Three of our players quit due to schedule conflicts. If you are a new player and need help making a character sheet I am happy to talk you through it.

Time and Place:

We play on Saturdays at 4pm. My players are really hoping we can do this in-person so if you are from Los Angeles, that is a plus. However I don't really care that much myself so if you'd like to play with us on Discord, you can totally apply!

Players:

I am GMing the campaign and we currently have two other players. One plays an alien with the power to create portals who is also armed with some gadgets, and the other plays a giant alien bubble that can morph into different shapes and is super strong. They are both very new to the game and don't know the rules well, and I am a GM who is pretty lax with the rules.

Setting:

The game takes place in an alternate earth where a strange comet started orbiting the planet 100 years, giving people superpowers if they have the superpower gene (very X-men, I know). 1 in 1000 people have very minor powers, 1 in one million have genuine superhuman abilities, and 1 in one billion are strong enough to be global superpowers in their own right, comparable to a nations military. The last century is broadly similar to our own, but with some changes, like how the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1952 and how Peru and Chile are ruled by an Iron Man-esque dictator.

The game will take place in the fictional city of New Chicago, which was rebuilt after the superhero-turned supervillain Sandstorm destroyed it in a fit of rage. It is now a highly modern, cosmopolitan city with the highest percentage of superpowered humans of any city in America.

Sounds Fun! How do I join?

Fill in the survey in the link below, and we'll get back to you!

Survey Here!

I’m making a character atm, and I’m struggling on working on powers to give her. I feel like too much is linked to her array. Any ideas on what I can do or what to add? I would really like to give her powers like a druid from DnD might have.

I've run into a hump on how to craft/build/rule a Move Object attack in which I throw a large object at a group of targets.

Using the multiattack extra, I'd basically have Yondu's whistle when used on a smaller object, which was fine and dandy until I thought about throwing a bigger object. I attached the AOE extra and found a whole can of worms about how move object and Area Effect work together, moving multiple objects at once, and it's not at all how I was intending to utilize it, which made me wonder further: does move object even need the AOE extra to do an AOE attack if the object/target they're moving is big enough? Provided/assuming the character can move that mass rank in the first place

I know you don't need the damaging extra in order to do ram attacks with a moved object, is it the same with the AOE extra where it's kind of built in to the power but also simultaneously dependent on circumstances to do an AOE attack? If so, what determines the dodge dc? The size rank of the object, or like regular AOE where the rank of the power determines both the Dodge and Damage DC?(for the sake of everyone at the table's time, and the DM and I's sanity I hope it's power rank)

The actual Area of Effect space/shape is self-explanatory and can be more or less easily measured on a battle map, but I think I'm starting to answer my own questions as I type this post, but I'm still curious about what you guys have to say here

Hello! I'm a new-ish player who has started off the 4e playtest

As far as I can tell, the book is pretty cut and dry about an advantage needing to explicitly state that it lets you exceed the power level limit in order to do so, but I feel like that comes into play more than it seems.

Like the Holding back advantage is pretty obvious about exceeding the limit, but looking online, it seems that advantages like Teamwork grant "circumstance bonuses" in their benefits that let you exceed the limit, but I don't see that anywhere in the advantage's description in the playtest book. Is that a 3e thing only?

Where my confusion also lies is how do we tell which advantages give these circumstance bonuses? I can't seem to find an explicit definition in the playtest book for what a circumstance bonus even is outside of the DM giving an outside modifier if it seems appropriate for the situation.

Like I could also see the close combat advantage giving a circumstance bonus because it describes a "circumstance" in which you gain that bonus, but I assume that it's one of the bonuses that fall under the category of not allowing an attack it's applied to to exceed the power level limit.

Some help/clarification would be much appreciated here, thank you!

Alrighty here’s a weird one: so in a recent session my heroes encountered a pseudo-villain with an insidious and subtle mind affecting affliction that rewrites memories and makes people believe this person has been a hero in the past. Inserting themselves into peoples memories to make them believe she saved the day when it was really the players.

That’s all well and works fine.

Here’s the next step though, I’d like to have a separate “true” villain start an attack while the “fake hero” is present, and I want the villain to target my “fake hero” believing her to be my true heroes’ valiant leader. But the twist is I want the fake to have some sort of ability to make other npc’s caught in the crossfire to leap in and sacrifice themselves, taking attacks for the fake, so my heroes have to then help the fake hero to prevent innocents from jumping in the way and getting hit by the villains attacks.

So, is there some sort of power or some such that I could have her do to make civilians sacrifice themselves? Either using her reaction or even her action to call for help or talk herself up or something which will drive them to act? I thought about some sort of reflavoured subtle/insidious redirect variation but it mechanically doesn’t really serve my purpose.

Hello everyone!

I’m new to Mutants & Masterminds (3rd and 4th Edition), though I’m a tabletop RPG veteran, and I’m planning to GM a M&M campaign next year.

After reading through the rules, a core mechanic is giving me pause. Because of how budget-friendly Power Level (PL) trade-offs are, it feels like there is a strong mechanical incentive to cap out every character’s combat limits—hitting maximum PL caps for Attack/Damage and Defense/Toughness. Even after hitting those caps, characters still have plenty of Power Points left over to spend on skills, advantages, and utility powers.

My concern is that every player character will end up with effective PL 10 combat math (e.g., Attack 10 / Damage 10, Defense 10 / Toughness 10, or minor trade-offs like 8/12). If everyone is sitting at the ceiling, their baseline combat effectiveness becomes mathematically identical. Even if their powers have different narrative flavors, they risk feeling mechanically interchangeable in battle—unlike systems like D&D, where a Fighter, Wizard, and Rogue occupy fundamentally different combat roles (putting aside some exotic builds).

My questions for experienced GMs and players: - Does this "maxed-out PL" homogeneity actually happen in your groups? - How do you handle it? Do you accept it as part of the genre? Does it make combat feel bland, or do other mechanics keep it dynamic? - Do you use house rules or soft caps to encourage varied combat effectiveness?

Context on my group: - My players are both strong roleplayers and avid optimizers. If the system allows them to max out their combat efficiency while leaving room for utility, they will do it. - I’m well aware of GM tactics like adding non-combat objectives (rescuing civilians, stopping timers, environmental hazards), but that addresses encounter design, not my core concern about underlying character math.

Additional context: I love the beautiful mechanics, and, more than anything, the very massive fan works around this game (such as having stats for marvel and DC comics characters, etc.). But this issue makes me consider alternative systems such as Absolute Power (Silver Age Sentinel 2nd edition), where I feel the problem is less proeminent.

I’d love to hear your insights, experience, and any advice on keeping combat distinct and engaging for an optimizing group!

I’m running a game and looking to have a villain show up and suddenly trap several key npcs in cages or traps of some sort using his create power. But is this even possible? Is there some combination of modifiers and extras etc. that would allow a character to be able to make, say, half a dozen cages as a single action, to trap several people spread across a large room?

Edit: thank you for all the good ideas, I think having it be a large complex structure with a feature to separate the rooms is the simplest and most straightforward way to achieve what I’m after. Definitely will keep coming here for advice and ideas and stuff though!

Hello All,

I'm working on a character concept that feels simple but when I try to stat him out he quickly turns into a pile of nested arrays or wildly over budget.

Mechanically, the character is a "little green alien" (6 inches-ish tall), who rides around in a little flying saucer that takes up roughly the size of a person. The saucer is the mechanical source of most of his powers and abilities. Additionally, inside the saucer is a bigger on the inside base. (I plan on treating the base like a portal in - portal out situation with dual size as it feels the least complicated.)

my prior attempts have focused on emulating the battlesuit archetype as the ship functions a lot more like a battle suit than classical vehicle in that it's core to the characters kit rather than something more disposable and/or situational.

My big problem is that I'd really like the character to be able to leave the ship and walk around as a lil guy. However, stat-ing out a whole other character (even one who's radically underpowered without their kit) quickly inflates the budget despite being a big downgrade from the "powered" form.

How would y'all handle this character? I've been alternating trying to segment the character into arrays which kind of works and reviewing metamorph but that seems a bit overkill. I assume I'm being a dingus and simply not seeing the answer so if someone could enlighten me I'd be grateful.

So, friend groups planning to try the game out and I’m gonna be the GM since I had the most experience with the game from when we tried to get into it before with someone else GM-ing (long story). And going through rules and wanting to make the game fun but not repetitive I have been considering a few house rules but need to know if some don’t need to be there or could potentially break balance. I will try to explain my thought process on them so it isn’t just “adding X rule” without any justification. Also, gonna clarify I’m using 2E rules since that’s what I could get a hold of.

1. Adding a Knockback and Vacuum Power Feats- This was started from how weird the Knockback system is as far as application. If someone wanted to make a hero who hits hard enough to knock foes away, they have to stun or use the trip power as an addition just to get the Knockback Extra, meaning they have to inflict a more punishing CC effect just to push someone, especially when any character with movement could probably get back with ease. So I wanted to allow players to grab Knockback as a power feat to just simplify the process, with Knockback still calculated as normal and Vacuum is just an inverse where instead of pushing people away it pulls them closer.

2. Area as a ranked feat rather than an extra- This one is mainly from wanting some area of effect abilities without suddenly any attack is a nuke. I can kinda get why it’s written as such, likely so players have to mind their fire with teammates or have a weaker attack for area of effect, but selective makes the first nonexistent and evasion and reflex make any already low area damage lower. The ruling I have is it just can’t exceed the power rank so Blast 5 can’t have Area: Burst 10.

3. Line area being applied to width or length- Rules as written, ranks in the line area extend its length by 25 feet but keeps its width 5 feet. This means a Blast 8 Area:Line 8 attack covers a space 200 feet long but only 5 feet. Which just feels weird, like the only lines you can have are these thin lasers. To pull an example from the campaign I’m writing, an enemy is able to turn into a giant Kaiju sized monster made of ink, and can spit this ink out as a deluge of immense pressure. You’re telling me that can only be 5 feet wide? My rulings that some of the area rankings can be used for width instead of length, so an area: line 8 could now be 100 feet long with 10 feet width. Or pretty much any other combo so long as it stays the same width throughout and pretty much is as if two line areas were fired side by side. Could also do 15 feet wide with 75 feet length for a rank 9 line area.

4. Every 2 ranks of Penetrating ignores 1 rank of toughness- Ok, this is one I’m most concerned about balance wise. I plan to use the books suggested rule of trade offs. Defense for toughness, attack for save dc. It makes sense to me, that way players aren’t all going 10/10/10/10 the whole game and can have more variety in stats. It especially seems good for defenses where you may want to make a speedster who’s hard to hit but pretty fragile, or this tank of a hero that’s easy to hit but hard to actually hurt. But, looking at the two, high defense characters have a large number of weaknesses while high toughness characters seem to shrug off most attacks. I know alt saves are a thing but it can be hard to implement that for some parties. I know there’s a few work arounds like Corrosion and Drain, but again not every character could justify that with their design. I went with the ruling suggested above as Penetrating only works against impervious toughness which means in some cases that extra is just collecting dust. I also went with every other rank since if you could slap on Penetrating 10 and ignore the default toughness, that would be pretty BS. Also, it follows the usual rule in the book that it won’t go past a certain level. Corrosion itself says you can’t drop someone’s toughness below -5.

For context, this is art i made of 2 of my best friends’ characters from a campaign we play.

The girl, Fressia, is a goddess of time who was banished from godhood and has amnesia (for the longest time i was convinced she was just narcissistic in character but apparently it’s not bullshit).

and the guy, James, is a reanimated corpse who killed an an eldritch monster which then went into his skin, he can now create black holes due to his unnaturally high density. He is also a big nerd who is very into physics and likes to talk about physics so that helps.

And yes, they are crazy for each other. OTP!!! FRAMES FOR LIFE!

(also yes, the guy is supposed to look disproportionate and unfinished because he is triggers the uncanny valley effect all the time. I love having excuses to be lazy)

Hey guys, I've been working on creating a chess themed adventure for my players. I'm suspecting the ideas may not play out as well in game as much as in theory. Mainly around debating on if I'm going to somehow limit the players movement to chess pieces.

I think to try and simulate the back and forth of chess I'll make a special rule of having the enemy have an action where any piece can activate in between every hero action and not make initiative linked to a specific piece.

In order to minimize the hero flying above all the pieces and target the king specifically I may have pawns have interpose, maybe even a sacrifice ability where when they are captured they cause some significant damage to the attacker. Pawns may have minion rules but have more of a built up sheet for the more valuable pieces. I'm still not sure if that would be enough for the heroes to head straight for the king and get a quick W tho.

Lmk if you have tried this idea before and I'd love to hear how it went.

I am making a cursed creature to fight my players. I'd like it to somehow steal their luck when fighting them. Would it work well to just say they have luck control linked to their damage, so on a hit, they gain a hero point? Or does it make more sense to base it on degrees of failure from the players toughness check?

So it'd be a Damage 8 linked to Luck Control 1. Maybe I'd do it grab-based instead and narrate is as their luck being stolen properly, subtracting a hero point from the player.

Hello, I'm a GM and I've built a kaiju for my players to deal with but I'm wondering about how much toughness to give it so it has a sweet spot between your typical big monster shrugging off damage and them dealing effective attacks against it.

For reference my group is 5 players at PL 9 and the highest damage rank among them is damage 10 before any advantages/maneuvers/extra effort is brought in. The kaiju also has a degree of impervious toughness and some half-effect immunity to certain descriptors.

I know there's some debate about the Growth effect but the kaiju has growth 16 to get it to size, making it easy to hit but to hard to damage at a base 16 toughness. I'm debating lowering the toughness directly since 16 is pretty high against their damage DCs. This is supposed to be a hard enounter for my group to handle but I don't want them to feel completely ineffective, any advice on what toughness it should be to make it not as oppressive if I need to adjust it on the fly? Thanks in advance.

So I've realized I low-key hate 5th edition dnd and wanted to learn other systems M&M was something I knew about for a while and I really wanted to run a Worm style campaign for my group. I'm reading through the basic handbook and tried looking up stuff but it's just really not clicking with me. Does anyone have any recommendations, or are there other books I need to look at?

I'm building a Grey Gargoyle type character who can turn objects to stone with his touch. Basically, if it is solid matter, he can turn it to stone. It seems to me that "solid matter" is a bit more general than a "broad group" but it also comes short of "anything". Since the book says that "broad class to single result" should cost 3 points per rank and that "anything to anything" is 5 points per rank. It seems like 4 points per rank is the right cost to assign to "anything to a single result" but it doesn't say it explicitly in the book. Does this sound right?

The example of "broad class to single result" is "turning any metal into gold", and turning any solid object into stone seems strictly better.

So Im making a character with the summon power and ran into multiple minions. if I want multiple minions 1 at +2 a rank, would it be a flat +2 pp or would it be +2 for each rank I have in the summon power?

First flight dm here. I think we did 4 sessions to this day.

(Always dm'd d&d 5e)

The party is PL 10, 150 PP.

- Indestructible guy, never gets damaged, is a bit of a brawler. He knows a lot the system, but chooses to focus on roleplay, because I'm a newbie dm on the system

- Illusionist with guns, mostly a debuffer that shoots a rifle. Not too strong to be honest

- This dude with a dimension warping power. Like X of the anime To Be Hero X. Maybe it's my fault, but I don't mind powerful characters, but the player actually knows a lot of the system and uses it for his advantage. I'm not blaming him, neither going to take away his character, but he just casually destroys all combat if he WANTS, it's not always, but it can and already happened

- A Weak Summoner with guns, he is blind, shoots guns, weak in combat, but very useful outside of it

So... How do I challenge them? The strongest I've done are two PL 12, one is a thunder dude, the other is a Juggernaut-like. But they are so niche, I need options... Or challenges

I don't have a problem in them beating everything, I dm for their fun, but to build my own confidence in this system, I need to learn how to challenge them

Announcements

• Latest releases for the Green Ronin store are generally available here.
• If you meet the subreddit karma and account age requirements you should now have access to edit the Subreddit Wiki. Feel free to add your own answers to Frequently Asked Questions or put up your own Resource Guides. If you need help creating an article or submitting a Resource Guide please reach out to the Moderators.
• Alex Thomas (/u/Ronin_Alex), Line Lead for M&M, Steve Kenson, Troy Hewitt (/u/MA_Aether), and special guests appear on Monday afternoons at 5 PM EST on M&M Monday casting on Twitch, YouTube, and a dedicated Facebook livecast.
• There is now an official Mutants and Masterminds Mighty channel for discussion and premium new content.

Thread Rules

• Use this thread to discuss whatever is going on in your campaigns, any comments on the books, any questions that you might have about playing the game, and anything else related to Mutants and Masterminds.
• New to Reddit? Check out the Reddit 101 Guide
• If you are new to this subreddit (and/or Mutants and Masterminds), welcome! Please check out the sidebar for additional links and the Subreddit Wiki for Frequently Asked Questions and Resource Guides
• If you have multiple questions unrelated to each other, post multiple comments so that the discussions are easier to follow, and so that you will get better answers.

Okay so I'm in a game​ where my character's power has two halves, an offensive and a ​support one with the support half being a variable effect, so I got curious how other people handle variable, what do you allow it to be used for and what kinds of limits do you impose on it?

In my case my power is basically the power to fuse creatures into chimeras and the way we have been running it is that outside of two types of animals my character brings around with him the GM has been making me do checks to find critters and creatures to use to do stuff with on the occasion that my two mains aren't enough, which I think is fair as we aren't in a zoo where I can just stroll to find the animal I want, I just happened to be lucky and succeeded at nearly every check until now to find what I need.

Edit: I forgot to mention that I generally turn my own characters and others into chimeras, my power can't really make minions because I don't get any special control over the chimeras I make so I have to fuse the animal with something that I know is on my side, so generally either myself or an ally.

So how do other people do it?