What system will work for this?

[Aleolus]

I recently learned that a character I would like to play at some point in the near future is impossible to build in M&M, which was my first choice to try. I am wondering what system I could build him in, though, as I do still want to play him. He is based off of Issei Hyodo from Highschool DxD, and the powers I am specifucally looking for are:

1) Boost: Doubles his power, usable once every 10 seconds (probably 1/Round in system). No limit on how many times he can use it, but his body can only withstand so much power at a time, or else it starts eating away at his body and requires immense amounts of concentration to maintain. 2) Explosion: Take all the power accumulated through Boosting and unleash it all in a single destructive magical attack, resetting Boost level to 0. 3) Transfer: Take some or all accumulated Boost power and give it to another person/object, increasing its power an equivilent amount. Reduces his own Boost count by the amount he gives 4) Balance Breaker: Becomes armored in (basically) Dragonscale Plate Mail, raises base power level and maximum number of endurable Boosts. 5) Juggernaut Mode: Basically an"I win" button with a large "I might die" clause attached. Transform into a dragon, power level put to its normal max, and continued boosts from there with no chance of loosing them. But, the longer I'm in it, the more damage it does to me, so if I stay in it too long I will die. In addition, entering Juggernaut has a chance of making me berserk, and if that happens, I will not stop until either dead, or a force stronger than me forces me to snap out of it..

[ImNotTrevor]

I recently learned that a character I would like to play at some point in the near future is impossible to build in M&M, which was my first choice to try. I am wondering what system I could build him in, though, as I do still want to play him. He is based off of Issei Hyodo from Highschool DxD, and the powers I am specifucally looking for are:

1) Boost: Doubles his power, usable once every 10 seconds (probably 1/Round in system). No limit on how many times he can use it, but his body can only withstand so much power at a time, or else it starts eating away at his body and requires immense amounts of concentration to maintain. 2) Explosion: Take all the power accumulated through Boosting and unleash it all in a single destructive magical attack, resetting Boost level to 0. 3) Transfer: Take some or all accumulated Boost power and give it to another person/object, increasing its power an equivilent amount. Reduces his own Boost count by the amount he gives 4) Balance Breaker: Becomes armored in (basically) Dragonscale Plate Mail, raises base power level and maximum number of endurable Boosts. 5) Juggernaut Mode: Basically an"I win" button with a large "I might die" clause attached. Transform into a dragon, power level put to its normal max, and continued boosts from there with no chance of loosing them. But, the longer I'm in it, the more damage it does to me, so if I stay in it too long I will die. In addition, entering Juggernaut has a chance of making me berserk, and if that happens, I will not stop until either dead, or a force stronger than me forces me to snap out of it..

Freeform rp. Or maybe Exalted.

In the vast majority of systems this character is blatantly overpowered.

What does Doubling His Power mean? Boosting strength? Boosting all stats? Is it supposed to stack? (If it stacks, then you have serious balance issues here. Using it 3 times gives you a x8 increase. 4 times a x16, 5 times a x32. Under no circumstances as a GM would I let just one character bump his stats up to 32 times their starting level after 5 rounds. Nope. You might get to use it once per combat. And any time after that reduces your HP by half.

But hey, I hear there's a Dragon Ball Z rpg. This sounds right up that alley. Look into it, I guess?

[Aleolus]

I suppose that's fair, given that the source material is an anime as well. It never really specifies what it means by "doubling his power," either, so I can't say on that

[kyoryu]

Fate could handle it relatively easily. "Boosting power" being defined as a Create Advantage, and then invoking that for the extra power burst, etc.

It wouldn't necessarily 'double power', but as has been pointed out, that's kinda vaguely defined anyway.

[Mutazoia]

It's been a while since I touched the M&M books, but I think you could stat up a basic Issei power type with existing powers.

This is going to be a bit vague due to the above, so bear with me....

There's the power that lets you absorb energy and you can trick it out to channel that energy into a power or your stats (to a point limited by your absorption power level).

combine that with a power that with a power that damages yourself (only) when activated (actually I think that's a weakness in MM, something to mimic Kryptonite's effect on Superman, but in this case it will be your own magic energy). So, basically you are hurting yourself every time you activate your ability. Any damage over and above what your absorption ability can handle gets through, so eventually you'll be taking damage if you keep using the ability, so if you keep trying to boost your power, you'll start killing yourself.

After that you just set it up to transfer that absorbed power into your different powers that only have power ranks when you put the absorbed energy into it (only one at a time)...so you could channel it into an invulnerability type power and fluff it into you sprouting armor, or a ranged energy attack, or a reverse power-leech type power....

If you are looking for a whole new system to play with, I would recommend "DC Heroes" by Mayfair. You'll have to hunt around for it, but IMHO it's one of the best super hero games made. You can do al the above with that system fairly easily.

[Knaight]

You're pretty much guaranteed to need to do some homebrew, so picking a system that is easy to do that in is recommended.

With that said, you might be able to pull this off in Champions.

[Aleolus]

Interesting suggestions. I'm not familiar with the Champions system, what can you tell me about it?

[icefractal]

This would definitely be possible in HERO system (Champions is a superhero setting for HERO). And probably in other generic systems like GURPS too, I'm just not as familiar with those.

In HERO terms, I would probably build it like such:

Base Form:
* Boost - Just additional stats / skill levels, bought with a limitation - "takes an action to turn on" for the first increment, "takes two actions to turn on" for the second increment, and so forth. Also Side Effects (takes damage) once you hit the point that it's dangerous.
* Explosion - Blast, with a limitation of "resets boost level". Also, additional dice for this should be one of the things included in Boost.
* Transfer - Naked Advantage: Usable by Other, applied to the stuff gained from Boost.
* Balance Breaker / Juggernaught - Multiform.

Balance Breaker:
Just like Base Form, but with a higher starting power and more levels of Boost. And probably without the Base Form's non-combat skills / perks / etc.

Juggernaught:
Like Balance Breaker, but more so, and with a major Physical Complication (takes increasing damage over time) and a major Psychological Complication (can go berserk).

This is going to be rather high points, compared to the unboosted power level. But if the unboosted level is "normal guy", and this is a superhero-scale campaign, then that's no problem.

Also, note that HERO is pretty crunchy. Since you were considering M&M already, it's in the same range as that, but if you want something rule-light look elsewhere.

[Chambers]

Anyone familiar enough with GURPS to give this a shot? Though if M&M can't handle a character I'm not sure GURPS could either.

[Elderand]

In mutants and masterminds just put a "limited, one more rank available per round" on all your powers. It's really not that hard.

[Delwugor]

You might want to check out and ask at http://www.roninarmy.com/ some of the people there put together fantastic builds.

For 1 & 2, I might consider maybe a Multiattack (+1 per rank) or better yet allowing Power Attack as an Extra at +1 per Rank. Neither would double the damage but increase it with tradeoffs. It would only be on attack though.
3 There might be an Extra for that, though it would not stack with the receiver's powers.
4 & 5 sound like complete game breakers in M&M

As kyoryu said this would be easy in Fate, it could be done as a Create Advantage, Stunt or as a Power Aspect. Check out Venture City for more, the SRD is at http://fate-srd.com/venture-city

[Knaight]

Also, note that HERO is pretty crunchy. Since you were considering M&M already, it's in the same range as that, but if you want something rule-light look elsewhere.

I'd put it at somewhere about 5 times the M&M crunch. It's one of the crunchiest systems that ever saw heavy use. It's also very focused on powers that characters have, and as that's what's being focused on here, is an obvious suggestion.

[GrayDeath]

If you and your group are ok with a rather metagmy approach of "Fluff over Detail" I`d suggest Fate.
Its Aspects and vague Power descriptions should work well for an Issei-Ripoff (and most other Big Characters of said Anime^^).


If youw ant more crunch I`d say go for exalted and use a Mix of Infernal Excellencies (Perversion) and homebrewed Shapechanges.
Should be rather easy to do, really.

[JustIgnoreMe]

I'd put it at somewhere about 5 times the M&M crunch. It's one of the crunchiest systems that ever saw heavy use. It's also very focused on powers that characters have, and as that's what's being focused on here, is an obvious suggestion.

I have to disagree. Champions character creation had a lot of crunch, not as much as GURPS, Rolemaster or Ars Magica, a bit more than OWoD and Traveller, but lots more than most versions of D&D (assuming starting at Level 1).

Playing the game, there could very little crunch involved. Hitting is a single 3D6 roll, damage is multiple D6... At absolute max, on a par with 3E D&D. There's a one-page HERO system summary out there. Combat is only a bit more complex than M&M: tracking End, Stun and Body in Champions and dealing with Speed is only slightly tougher than dealing with Initiative and the stacking Toughness roll penalties in M&M.

[Grod_The_Giant]

The only reason this could really be problematic is that M&M doesn't let you break PL caps. I've often houseruled that Flaws like Side Effect and Tiring can increase your effective PL instead of giving you a discount on the power's cost, but even without that you can do a decent simulation. (Continually increasing power with no real upper bound is... not something you're likely to see in any RPG without serious cheese).

1) Boost: Doubles his power, usable once every 10 seconds (probably 1/Round in system). No limit on how many times he can use it, but his body can only withstand so much power at a time, or else it starts eating away at his body and requires immense amounts of concentration to maintain.

Enhanced... Strength and Stamina, most likely, along with some ranks of Speed and maybe Leaping. As Elderand mentioned, Limited: rank increases by 1 every round would give you the slow increase; slap Distracting and/or Side Effect on the highest rank. Plan your build around the non-Flawed cap-- ie, if you have 8 ranks without Distracting, figure that you'll normally fight with 8 ranks of Boost active and buy your Dodge, Parry, and Close Combat accordingly. The higher ranks will lower your Dodge/Parry and Close Combat bonuses-- you'll be "more powerful" but less controlled as you "have to concentrate more" on not exploding.

2) Explosion: Take all the power accumulated through Boosting and unleash it all in a single destructive magical attack, resetting Boost level to 0.

Damage (with any boosting Modifiers you so desire), Limited to current Boost rank, Side Effect: Resets Boost to zero.

3) Transfer: Take some or all accumulated Boost power and give it to another person/object, increasing its power an equivilent amount. Reduces his own Boost count by the amount he gives

Dynamic Alternate Effect of Boost with the Affects Only Others modifier.

4) Balance Breaker: Becomes armored in (basically) Dragonscale Plate Mail, raises base power level and maximum number of endurable Boosts.

Activation flaw on some (Impervious?) Protection and the points to buy off the limitations on some of the upper ranks of Boost.

5) Juggernaut Mode: Basically an"I win" button with a large "I might die" clause attached. Transform into a dragon, power level put to its normal max, and continued boosts from there with no chance of loosing them. But, the longer I'm in it, the more damage it does to me, so if I stay in it too long I will die. In addition, entering Juggernaut has a chance of making me berserk, and if that happens, I will not stop until either dead, or a force stronger than me forces me to snap out of it..

Morph 1 (Metamorph), Side Effect. Add Luck Control 1 (Force rerolls), Limited to saves for your best shot at bonus combat power.

[kyoryu]

I have to disagree. Champions character creation had a lot of crunch, not as much as GURPS,

Eh, I'll disagree with that one. Character creation is almost identical between the two systems, and I'd argue Champions is moderately more complex in play than GURPS (phases, everything else).

If anything, with all the power pools, etc., in Champions I'd put it as slightly more complex than GURPS as well in character creation (but not significantly).

[Arbane]

I have to disagree. Champions character creation had a lot of crunch, not as much as GURPS, Rolemaster or Ars Magica, a bit more than OWoD and Traveller, but lots more than most versions of D&D (assuming starting at Level 1).

Playing the game, there could very little crunch involved. Hitting is a single 3D6 roll, damage is multiple D6... At absolute max, on a par with 3E D&D. There's a one-page HERO system summary out there. Combat is only a bit more complex than M&M: tracking End, Stun and Body in Champions and dealing with Speed is only slightly tougher than dealing with Initiative and the stacking Toughness roll penalties in M&M.

I've had a lot of fun with Champions back in the day, but I won't suggest for a second that it's not fairly math-heavy. Besides Speed, you have to track Body and Stun damage, Endurance usage, Recovery every round, Multipower allocations, Variable Power Pools.... it's a very bean-counting-intensive system.

As Elderand said, giving the character the limitation 'can only use one more power rank per every X seconds of fighting' is probably the simplest way of handling this power.

(It occurred to me a while back that this guy has the most genre-appropriate Shonen Hero Power ever: he can win any fight, if he can just drag it out long enough.)