I Might Have KINDA Rewritten M&M...

[Volthawk]

...holy crap Quel. This sure is impressive. I'm not quite in the best state to really pick apart rules, so I'll save any proper feedback for when I'm more capable, but still so far it's looking good. Those Teammate rules look really interesting, not quite sure how it would work out, but interesting nonetheless. Asides from that, Brutal jumped out at me as being something that could be a bit iffy, since shifting degree intervals seems like something that'd have a real risk of breaking the balance in combat.

[DeAnno]

I haven't looked all of this over yet in detail, but what you have is really impressive, it's a huge improvement in detail over M&M. A lot of the time when I try to do something difficult in M&M it doesn't quite work right, but a lot of the gears you have working here seem to have more degrees of freedom to them.

One minor thing I don't like is that Defensive Stats have the same price as Offensive Stats, even though there are four Defensive Stats and two Offensive Stats. This means if you want to make a tradeoff to be default offensively biased you gain points (or vice versa.) It basically encourages you to be generally offensively biased and lean into stances whenever you want defense, which seems like it isn't the intent.

To fix it, I would probably upcost offensive stats to 1 instead of 1/2. Since you're going to generally be buying 2/PL anyway, this is only effectively costing characters an extra 1/PL in character creation (if you wanted, you could compensate this by bumping up to 16/PL total points.)

Or a weirder idea, maybe don't have combat stats cost anything, and have them controlled purely by your tradeoffs instead? I guess that would mess up Uncanny, and Immunities, but it's sort of an interesting thing to consider.

A different, more detail oriented question: if I wanted to pay through the nose for a sort of "greater multiattack", could I buy Reduced Action x3 on the Attack Effect to make it a reaction instead of a standard action, and then trigger it whenever I move adjacent to an enemy? I was looking to do something similar to a move-through in Hero when I came up with it, and it's weird, but I think maybe it's reasonable since you can still only hit each enemy 1/round (not to mention the Reaction Attack is default costed at 3/rank.)

[Llyarden]

When it comes to Luck Control, how would you go about making a 'Spend on Other' effect like default M&M has? Or is that just not possible any more?

[Quellian-dyrae]

Asides from that, Brutal jumped out at me as being something that could be a bit iffy, since shifting degree intervals seems like something that'd have a real risk of breaking the balance in combat.

Brutal is...definitely one of my more experimental ones, yeah. Based on the math I've done it should be balanced with the other options, but like I said, system hasn't been playtested so who knows?

I haven't looked all of this over yet in detail, but what you have is really impressive, it's a huge improvement in detail over M&M. A lot of the time when I try to do something difficult in M&M it doesn't quite work right, but a lot of the gears you have working here seem to have more degrees of freedom to them.

Thanks! That's the hope.

One minor thing I don't like is that Defensive Stats have the same price as Offensive Stats, even though there are four Defensive Stats and two Offensive Stats. This means if you want to make a tradeoff to be default offensively biased you gain points (or vice versa.) It basically encourages you to be generally offensively biased and lean into stances whenever you want defense, which seems like it isn't the intent.

To fix it, I would probably upcost offensive stats to 1 instead of 1/2. Since you're going to generally be buying 2/PL anyway, this is only effectively costing characters an extra 1/PL in character creation (if you wanted, you could compensate this by bumping up to 16/PL total points.)

Or a weirder idea, maybe don't have combat stats cost anything, and have them controlled purely by your tradeoffs instead? I guess that would mess up Uncanny, and Immunities, but it's sort of an interesting thing to consider.

That's a good point. Relying on Stances does have some limitation to it (since you can only be in one stance at a time now), but yeah, it's still precisely the sort of "get the same benefit for a different cost" matter I wanted to avoid. I'll put some thought into it; just raising the offensive stats to 1 PP each like you said would solve it. I don't think I want to add more PP/PL (since these rules actually already give an effective bump to that by making the combat stats cost less). I feel like making the combat stats free would also free up more PP than is necessary. Cutting the defensive stats to 1 PP/4 ranks is possible but a bit ungainly. I could just drop Attack Modes entirely, change the defensive stats to Defense and Resistance, and use immunities/complications or maybe create a new advantage for getting bonuses against certain attack forms instead, which frankly would be more balanced than being able to pick and choose what defenses you can attack at all. Or maybe something else. I'll put some thought into it, but any feedback anyone might have on this point is welcome!

A different, more detail oriented question: if I wanted to pay through the nose for a sort of "greater multiattack", could I buy Reduced Action x3 on the Attack Effect to make it a reaction instead of a standard action, and then trigger it whenever I move adjacent to an enemy? I was looking to do something similar to a move-through in Hero when I came up with it, and it's weird, but I think maybe it's reasonable since you can still only hit each enemy 1/round (not to mention the Reaction Attack is default costed at 3/rank.)

That's actually something you can theoretically do in normal M&M, and I don't think there's any reason you couldn't here. That being said, Reaction triggers are always very much an "at GM discretion" sort of thing. That one's...a tricksy one, because with the way movement speed can scale, it winds up being strictly better than Area. So, theoretically possible, but probably not something a GM should allow in actual play.

(Although come to think of it, maybe I should add a restriction on Reactions that says that the situation they're reacting to has to be something outside your control; if you can control it it's a free action.)

When it comes to Luck Control, how would you go about making a 'Spend on Other' effect like default M&M has? Or is that just not possible any more?

Share Luck and maybe Spread Luck were more-or-less intended to fill that niche, although they don't really do it the same way, and it's a mechanic that I can't see any reason shouldn't exist (although the way Area interacted with it was...a bit much, for the cost, so I want to curtail that). Maybe I'll expand Leadership to be usable with more than just Recover, or add something to Share Luck allowing it to be used that way as well, or something. I'll think on it some.

[Amechra]

As someone unfamiliar with M&M, what's the best way to approach this?

Should I have the SRD open while I read it, or is it a standalone thing?

[Quellian-dyrae]

It's...mostly standalone. If you're entirely unfamiliar with M&M, you'll probably want to refer to the SRD for at least the basics of how the game is played, although honestly, if you're familiar with other d20 systems, even that probably isn't strictly necessary (off the top of my head, the only area I can think of that might really require referring to the SRD are Complications and the Rank and Value Measures table, and maybe Descriptors, although I could be forgetting some stuff). The "The More Things Change" section gives an overview of what is largely left alone.

But for the most part, this is meant to outright replace the nuts and bolts of the mechanics, so you don't have to be like, "Okay, so in the SRD attacking works like this, but these rules change it this way to the end result is this." The rules for attacking are just rewritten outright in here with any changes already built in.

[Quellian-dyrae]

[PARAPHRASE="DeAnno"]Hey QD, I notice there's a bit of a math glitch in the combat stats. Maybe do a simple cost tweak to fix it?[/PARAPHRASE]

Clearly this requires a substantial rules update!!!!!

So, yeah, I went with consolidating the defenses, and then to make up for the loss of granularity in native defenses, I basically completely overhauled the immunities system. While I was at it I tweaked the numbers on skills, streamlined Teammates a bit, added some new Extras, created a new action parameter, and made a few other adjustments. The major changelog is as follows. There's also various minor changes of the consistency variety, although I'm not 100% sure I caught all of those; in particular, I'll state here just to make sure RAI is clear, but anywhere where like a power vs. a skill would use twice the power rank or half the skill rank or stuff like that, should no longer be the case. I think I got most of those, but if I missed a few, they're errors.

Post 2: Changed Skills PL Limit to equal PL (there's some new Advantages to cover the higher end of skills for certain purposes, but I've been wanting to get all the numbers on the same playing field for consistency, particularly with regards to opposing skill rolls). Consolidated defensive stats into only Defense and Resistance. Changed combat stats cost to 1 PP/rank. Adjusted tradeoffs a bit. Changed Attack Modes entirely. Added a new immunities and weaknesses system that has been largely divorced from powers and in conjunction with the new Attack Modes now covers all manner of situations where characters might be more or less resistant to certain types of attack. Reduced PP:VPP tradeoff to 2:5 and capped VPP at double its starting total.

Post 4: Added a new section for effect Targeting, to be able to clearly specify things like what effects require broad physical movement and such. This should help smooth out the rough edges caused by consolidated defensive stats and the lack of Perception range.

Post 5: Updated the Attack and Defend action to reflect new Attack Modes/combat stats rules. Updated Influence, Manhandle, and Manipulate to reflect new Attack Modes rules and new skill limits. Added Targeting for all combat actions. Made high attack rolls have an effect (+1 potential Bruise per additional degree of success).

Post 6: Added a new Restraining Tree. I'm kinda light on example Complex Conditions now but whatever, maybe I'll come up with more later.

Post 10: Added Skill Supremacy and adjusted Skill Mastery to better dovetail with it. Adjusted Leadership to just let you give your Hero Points to allies.

Posts 11-12: Refined how Attack and Defend interact with Powers tradeoffs. Added Targeting and Attack Modes to all powers. Removed the Immunity Effect. Simplified Metamorph some (flat VPP cost rather than having to compare with base sheet).

Posts 13-14: Removed the Impervious and Uncanny Extras. Edited the Penetrating Extra to fit with the new Immunities rules. Dropped the multiple resistance checks thing from Additional. Added new Extras: Absorb, Aggravated, Battering, Consume, Counter, Increased Targeting, Reciprocate, and Withstand (and modified Redirect for broader use).

Post 15: Added new Reduced Targeting Flaw.

Post 16: Simplified Teammates some (flat VPP cost rather than compare) and buffed them a touch (now tradeoff based rather than a flat PL reduction, which each tradeoff clearly tied to one of the "big benefits" of additional characters).

The archetypes have also been updated to reflect the new rules.

[DeAnno]

I've been messing around with character building again, and I love the changes! Immunities are treated as versatility and not power! The Tactical Attack Mode supports Combat Thinkers! Tradeoffs that make more sense!

Some weird things I'm still noticing:

• The Fluid Extra has some bizarre incentives. Is it intended that you can build a power with a bunch of +cost/rank extras, a bunch of -cost/rank flaws, and a handful of Fluid ranks? You can end up paying a reasonable/low amount of PP and 0 VPP for something pretty versatile, almost like a Dynamic Array based on one effect (but with Flaw shuffling too!). I love the idea of Fluid in concept but making stuff with it can feel cheesy at times.
  
• Stances still seem a little cheesy. Why take a +5 tradeoff to Accuracy/Force/Attack Powers and pay up the extra cost of the 15 rank Attack Power (with Stat cost changes canceling themselves out) when I could just use the All Out Attack Stance for 3 points? If you have a lot of Extras on your Attack Power paying up the cost of 5 more ranks could cost 15+ points (or in the case of some weird characters, radically more.) Maybe Stances should be smaller in effect, but they shouldn't be tradeoff bonuses, and the tradeoff cap should be smaller? (Like, you could limit all stances to +2/-2 and cap tradeoffs at +3/-3 or +4/-4)
  
• Improved Critical feels strong mathematically for its cost, though that might just be because the settings I think about tend towards Modern/Gritty.
  
• Improved Initiative is kind of a weird unrestricted bidding war. Going first can be a huge deal (it's effectively a standard and move action half-free once per combat), and 5 character points for a +20 bonus isn't a huge cost. I think game theory wise making that Advantage so effective might incentivize huge investments, though Automatic Initiative might curtail that slightly? When I was spitballing a speedster-type I wasn't blinking at dumping 10 points on it to get +40, and even thought I might be underbidding.
  
• With regards to immunities, the Dazing Tree might tend to be "common" by default? Not sure if that's the sort of thing you want to even bother calling out, but it seems sort of true.

Disclaimer: I don't have a lot of real experience with M&M specifically, this is just theory-crafting.

[Quellian-dyrae]

I've been messing around with character building again, and I love the changes! Immunities are treated as versatility and not power! The Tactical Attack Mode supports Combat Thinkers! Tradeoffs that make more sense!

The Fluid Extra has some bizarre incentives. Is it intended that you can build a power with a bunch of +cost/rank extras, a bunch of -cost/rank flaws, and a handful of Fluid ranks? You can end up paying a reasonable/low amount of PP and 0 VPP for something pretty versatile, almost like a Dynamic Array based on one effect (but with Flaw shuffling too!). I love the idea of Fluid in concept but making stuff with it can feel cheesy at times.

Yeah that does sound like it needs to be curtailed some. Seems to be the interactions with Flaws that are the problem? I'll see what can be done to restrict it some.

Stances still seem a little cheesy. Why take a +5 tradeoff to Accuracy/Force/Attack Powers and pay up the extra cost of the 15 rank Attack Power (with Stat cost changes canceling themselves out) when I could just use the All Out Attack Stance for 3 points? If you have a lot of Extras on your Attack Power paying up the cost of 5 more ranks could cost 15+ points (or in the case of some weird characters, radically more.) Maybe Stances should be smaller in effect, but they shouldn't be tradeoff bonuses, and the tradeoff cap should be smaller? (Like, you could limit all stances to +2/-2 and cap tradeoffs at +3/-3 or +4/-4)

I do want to keep the stance numbers where they are. I'm leaning to making All Out Attack and Total Defense or instead of and, which should separate them more from the full tradeoff, but then they'd be notably more versatile than the other stances. I suppose I could split them into more stances though and then consolidate them into advantages, so you'd have twelve actual stances which are all folded into an "aggressive" advantage (trade either defense for either offense), a "defensive" advantage (trade either offense for either defense), and a "tactical" advantage (trade either defense or offense for the other). I'll think on that some.

Improved Critical feels strong mathematically for its cost, though that might just be because the settings I think about tend towards Modern/Gritty.

Improved Critical has always struck me as solid, and definitely great when it works, but not game-breakingly so. Its lack of reliability is a pretty significant limiting factor. Could be that it's on the strong end, but not enough that I feel the need to mess with it at the moment (although yes, it could be more potent in a high-lethality game).

Improved Initiative is kind of a weird unrestricted bidding war. Going first can be a huge deal (it's effectively a standard and move action half-free once per combat), and 5 character points for a +20 bonus isn't a huge cost. I think game theory wise making that Advantage so effective might incentivize huge investments, though Automatic Initiative might curtail that slightly? When I was spitballing a speedster-type I wasn't blinking at dumping 10 points on it to get +40, and even thought I might be underbidding.

Improved Initiative to me has always been a perfect middle-of-the-road advantage. It's the sort of thing where if you have some spare points and you don't know where to put them, it's a solid choice. Likewise, if you desperately need to drop a point or two, it's not going to hurt to take them from Improved Initiative. I'd just as soon leave it unrestricted. If a speedster wants to be a full RNG or two above everyone else for going first, hey, more power to them.

With regards to immunities, the Dazing Tree might tend to be "common" by default? Not sure if that's the sort of thing you want to even bother calling out, but it seems sort of true.

Probably yeah, since Dazing Tree is another part of the default Attack action.

[DeAnno]

Yeah that does sound like it needs to be curtailed some. Seems to be the interactions with Flaws that are the problem? I'll see what can be done to restrict it some.

Like I said, it could probably stand to cost VPP too. Maybe (1/N)*(Power Ranks)*(Fluid Ranks), where N is some integer you would want to balance. Thinking more on this, it might be cleaner if Arrays, Fluid, and similar didn't cost real PP at all, only VPP.

I do want to keep the stance numbers where they are. I'm leaning to making All Out Attack and Total Defense or instead of and, which should separate them more from the full tradeoff, but then they'd be notably more versatile than the other stances. I suppose I could split them into more stances though and then consolidate them into advantages, so you'd have twelve actual stances which are all folded into an "aggressive" advantage (trade either defense for either offense), a "defensive" advantage (trade either offense for either defense), and a "tactical" advantage (trade either defense or offense for the other). I'll think on that some.

I think that might help a lot. The most perverse thing was that as I was building I found that doing anything but 10/10 Accuracy/Force didn't make sense, since if you're going to shift to All Out Attack that becomes 15/15 which is the gold standard. I think this new way will probably encourage a bigger variety of tradeoff splits, especially since Stances would let you slide a bit more freely and there would be less chance of getting into wasteful catch-22s.

Improved Critical has always struck me as solid, and definitely great when it works, but not game-breakingly so. Its lack of reliability is a pretty significant limiting factor. Could be that it's on the strong end, but not enough that I feel the need to mess with it at the moment (although yes, it could be more potent in a high-lethality game).

A 1/20 chance per rank of +5 on the toughness DC is still sort of like +0.25 post-tradeoff Force per rank though, (+0.5 if you would outright miss on 50% of your attacks) and that's before you get into exploding Lethal damage, so it's definitely a big deal. Even if you expect your accuracy to hit 75% of the time then 4 ranks of Improved Critical is like 1.33 bonus Force. I suppose in most circumstances 10 PP of Improved will give +1 Acc/+1 Force, but again the post-tradeoff nature of Improved Critical is going to attract most offensive builds, especially with how vanilla its flavor is.

On the other hand, there isn't any elegant nerf, and relying on high variance stuff is dangerous and often produces result spillage due to overkill, so a lot of the above math might be too kind to Improved Critical. All and all, probably ok, just wanted to draw attention to it.

Improved Initiative to me has always been a perfect middle-of-the-road advantage. It's the sort of thing where if you have some spare points and you don't know where to put them, it's a solid choice. Likewise, if you desperately need to drop a point or two, it's not going to hurt to take them from Improved Initiative. I'd just as soon leave it unrestricted. If a speedster wants to be a full RNG or two above everyone else for going first, hey, more power to them.

You tell yourself that, and then you lose initiative after a Seize-Off and you're a splat on the ground. Or maybe I play glass cannons too much. I guess it's better for it to be strong than weak though, since if it was weak nobody would ever bother with buying it and with it strong people will always still find excuses to buy other things instead. I think it's possibly some of the best bang-for-your-buck available but it is distinctly unsexy. So probably ok, just something to keep an eye on.

[Llyarden]

Just noticed that Illusion still mentions Presence.

Would an Enhanced Immunity be eligible for the Removeable (natural trait as a power) flaw?

Also, if you have a schtick that benefits either Defence or Resistance, does that mean that the Defend power won't work at full effectiveness for you? (Since the average of your defensive stats in the absence of tradeoffs would then be your PL + 1).

[Quellian-dyrae]

Okay, took another swing at the Attack (and Defend, to a somewhat lesser degree) issues that have cropped up due to my making powers a trade-offable thing.

What I went with is that Attack and Defend powers don't have a rank in and of themselves. They cost 1 PP to purchase on their own, or if they have Extras, they just use the cost of those Extras. For purposes of calculating costs for cost/rank Extras, their effective rank is treated as your full PL. This can be lowered to correspondingly lower your stats when using the power. So tradeoffs and stances don't interact with Attack and Defend powers at all, they're just constructs based around your combat stats.

As a result, things that used to refer to an attack's rank are no longer really valid. For things that are more about the sheer power of the attack (such as the new Absorb and Consume Extras), they now use the attack's Force. However, anything involving recovery from the attack now uses its Accuracy. This should further help ensure Accuracy and Force have a parity - high Force might let you inflict conditions more easily, but low Accuracy means opponents also recover faster (although, not without powers or assistance, if you knock them to Tier 3-4).

I also removed Flaw buy-off from Fluid. Instead, you can get dedicated ranks of Fluid tied to specific Flaws that you can add in to raise applications of existing Extras. So you can still use Fluid to get like a power that is more costly or tiring or distracting or whatever if you use it at higher levels, but you can't use those Flaws to actually offset the cost and so pump in more Extras to expand the power's versatility.

I also fixed Illusion and removed Schticks from Teammates (except Primaries) as a little extra cost to them. I did wind up leaving stances as they are, since actually things like All Out Attack affecting both stats mitigates (though doesn't entirely negate) the whole tactic where you Defend for an ally and that ally All Out Attacks for max because your Defend is picking up the slack (it can still risk it, but if it does get hit that Resistance penalty is going to be felt).

Immunities can indeed be Removable (natural trait as a power) even if they aren't enhanced traits, since they allow for Extras. I think I actually did that on the Battlesuit archetype.

[DeAnno]

Going over things more, I'd like to have a rather convoluted word about Move-By Action dysfunction and possible Linking cheese, if I may

Let's say I have an Attack Power, and an Advantage.

Cool Attack: Attack: Multiattack {10}
Advantages: Move-By Action {1}

I'd like to be able to use the "Multiple Targets" function of Multiattack with Move-By Action to move around the field and Attack various enemies as I pass by, then retreat back away from them. Unfortunately, Move-By Action lets you move both before and after your Standard Action, but not during it, so this doesn't work unless my enemies are all clumped up.

I refused to be dissuaded however, and searched for a way to make my idea work. Enter the Instant Movement Effect. Lets say I took the following power:

Cool Move: Instant Movement 10 (Increased Action [Standard], Linked [Cool Attack]) {10}

Since Linked specifies you can use both powers "in the same action", the roving melee multiattacker can work now! But the more I look at such a power, the more I'm suspicious of it. Imagine I made it into the following array:

Cool Moves: 10 Point Array {10+1}
-Cool Strafe: Instant Movement 10 (Increased Action [Standard], Linked [Cool Attack])
-Cool Dash: Instant Movement 10

For just one additional point from buying the move in the first place, I'm allowed to use it either normally or at the same time as my attack action. We could also use a Flawed Extra to do something similar, but for more PP, less VPP, and with rather better flexibility:

Cool Move: Instant Movement 10 (Linked [Cool Attack] [Increased Action <Standard>]) {15}

So after digging up this rabbit hole (and being pleased with the rabbit I found, to be fair), I'm wondering just how much of this is intended and how silly it is. Maybe Linked is underpriced in general? Or Increased Action is overvalued? Or maybe I'm too used to less versatile systems than M&M, and this behavior is just fine. Maybe I'm even being too pendantic about Move-By Action, and I never had this problem in the first place.

I'd be interested in your (or anyone else's) opinion, and I hope this was thought provoking at least

[Quellian-dyrae]

It's something of a GM call, but in my games I'd actually allow that sort of Move-by Multiattack as a Feature on top of Move-by Action. So I figure using Linked Movement to accomplish the same goal is plenty fair.

[Quellian-dyrae]

For those keeping score at home, I did a bit of tweaking to some of the conditions. Nerfed Vulnerability, Restraining, and Suppression a bit, buffed Weakening some, and just in general tried to make some of them a bit more..."interesting". Like, Vulnerable now only gives +2 to hit, but if it would have hit anyway causes another Bruise, and it prevents the target from making Reactions in response to attacks against it. Mainly, I wanted to get all the Tier 1 conditions only generally giving penalties on the order of -2.

I also removed the cumulating costs for multiple applications of Linked, and lowered Variable to a move action (since VPP is restricting it some now, and dynamic arrays are more flexible in comparison).

[Llyarden]

Okay so I don't know if I'm misunderstanding Restricted but...why would anyone ever take it? It seems far more restrictive than its price suggests.

Using the example you gave, Exert 10, in the absence of other extras or flaws, costs 10 PP. Exert 10 Restricted to Manhandle Actions costs 9 PP. (8 ranks at 1PP/rank and 2 ranks at 1PP/2 ranks). For exactly the same cost you could get Exert 10, Quirk (does not affect Lifting Rank), and would still be able to use the various Maneuvers that allow you to use Exert as well as Manhandle actions.

Similarly, if you had a Ranged Exert, you could take Ranged Exert 10, Quirk 2 (does not affect lifting rank and cannot be used to stand allies up) and it would still be able to Reset or Escape for allies or Interfere with opponents.

On a different note, if you buy an Enhanced Extra that costs more than +1/rank, is the power itself considered to have the cost/rank of the Extra or is the whole thing considered a really high-ranked 1/rank? (As an example, if I had Enhanced Immediate 10, that would cost 30 points. If I applied Limited to it would it cost 15 points or 20?)

Also if you buy an Immunity as a power, what's it's rank? (If you want a Reflect Immunity or something.)

Also #2, when you mention that powers can have multiple attack modes at once, a) does this cost anything and b) how does it interact with Weaknesses and Immunities?

[DeAnno]

What I went with is that Attack and Defend powers don't have a rank in and of themselves. They cost 1 PP to purchase on their own, or if they have Extras, they just use the cost of those Extras. For purposes of calculating costs for cost/rank Extras, their effective rank is treated as your full PL. This can be lowered to correspondingly lower your stats when using the power. So tradeoffs and stances don't interact with Attack and Defend powers at all, they're just constructs based around your combat stats.

Two questions came to mind about this.

1) What happens when you need to make a Rank check with your Attack or Defend power, for example in the course of contesting a Counter or Nullify. Do you just treat your rank as your PL?
2) If you take a tradeoff that lowers your max rank for all Powers, that wouldn't affect Attack or Defend anymore right? Would it affect any Rank checks you make with Attack and Defend?

[Quellian-dyrae]

Okay so I don't know if I'm misunderstanding Restricted but...why would anyone ever take it? It seems far more restrictive than its price suggests.

Using the example you gave, Exert 10, in the absence of other extras or flaws, costs 10 PP. Exert 10 Restricted to Manhandle Actions costs 9 PP. (8 ranks at 1PP/rank and 2 ranks at 1PP/2 ranks). For exactly the same cost you could get Exert 10, Quirk (does not affect Lifting Rank), and would still be able to use the various Maneuvers that allow you to use Exert as well as Manhandle actions.

This may be an issue with how I'm doing the math for fractional costs per rank at one rank. I'll fiddle with that. Restricted Exert should cost like...7 points maybe.

Similarly, if you had a Ranged Exert, you could take Ranged Exert 10, Quirk 2 (does not affect lifting rank and cannot be used to stand allies up) and it would still be able to Reset or Escape for allies or Interfere with opponents.

On the other hand, it should work correctly here. Restricted Ranged Exert 10 would could 15 points (1.5 PP/rank). There should probably also be diminishing returns on multiple Quirks that do similar stuff. I'll check on what I have written for all that and maybe add in a more detailed Limited/Restricted/Removable/Quirk "sidebar" or something to clarify them.

On a different note, if you buy an Enhanced Extra that costs more than +1/rank, is the power itself considered to have the cost/rank of the Extra or is the whole thing considered a really high-ranked 1/rank? (As an example, if I had Enhanced Immediate 10, that would cost 30 points. If I applied Limited to it would it cost 15 points or 20?)

Yeah cost/rank of the Extra, so it would cost 20. I'll clarify.

Also if you buy an Immunity as a power, what's it's rank? (If you want a Reflect Immunity or something.)

Immunities don't have ranks; Extras and Flaws that would modify cost/rank simply increase or reduce the immunity's level. So like, Full Immunity to Mental, Reflect would be a Level 7 immunity rather than Level 6.

Also #2, when you mention that powers can have multiple attack modes at once, a) does this cost anything and b) how does it interact with Weaknesses and Immunities?

There's actually several ways to do it. I'll go back and make it clearer.

Neutral Option #1 (Free): You just assign different "portions" of the power different Attack Modes. For example, a poisoned blade could be Attack (10) (Impairment Tree; Physical Attack, Physiological Effect). So it counts as Physical for purposes of making your attack roll, Physiological for purposes of the resistance check.

Neutral Option #2 (Freeish): You can also use different Attack Modes for some Extras. For example, the poisoned blade could be Attack (10) (Impairment Tree; Physical; Secondary Effect [Physiological]) or Attack (10) (Impairment Tree; Physical; Additional [Weakening Tree; Physiological Effect]). In the former case, it resists the initial attack as Physical, and the Secondary Effect as Physiological. In the latter case, it still rolls one Resistance check against both condition trees, but it counts any Physical Immunities/Weaknesses vs. the Impairment, and any Physiological ones against the Weakness. This doesn't carry a cost in itself but of course you have to pay for the Extras.

Beneficial Option (Costs PP): You can use the Diverse Extra to offer additional Attack Modes. In this case, you choose what you want. So for example, our poisoned sword could be Attack (10) (Impairment Tree; Physical; Diverse [Physiological]). Although you'd probably make it Diverse (Physiological Effect) to be a bit more realistic since you're still making a physical attack to deliver the poison in the first place, but whatever.

Detrimental Option (Gives PP): You can use the Resistible Flaw to give the target multiple options to defend with (flat -2 PP) or allow them additional entire defensive rolls (-1 cost/rank). For example, Attack (10) (Impairment Tree; Physical; Resistible [Physiological Resistance Optional]) means you make a Physical attack, and the opponent can choose whether to treat it as Physical or Physiological to resist. Attack (10) (Impairment Tree; Physical; Resistible [Physiological Resistance Additional]) means you make a Physical attack, and the opponent makes two Resistance checks, one against Physical and one against Physiological, and takes the best.

A Mix of Options (Varies): Or you can mix and match. For example, none of the above quiiiite do what a poisoned blade realistically would - you have to make a physical attack which both hits and causes some damage (your poison doesn't help if you don't actually break the skin), and then the poison delivers a separate effect. So if you're a stickler for realism, you might go with something like Attack (10) (Impairment Tree; Physical; Additional [Weakening Tree; Physiological Effect], Quirk [Additional Extra doesn't apply if the main effect is resisted entirely, even if the target is more susceptible to Physiological]). Or perhaps Attack (10) (Impairment Tree; Physical; Secondary Effect [Physiological; Limited (Only if the initial attack hits and the initial resistance check fails)]).

Two questions came to mind about this.

1) What happens when you need to make a Rank check with your Attack or Defend power, for example in the course of contesting a Counter or Nullify. Do you just treat your rank as your PL?

Hah, good catch. Yeah, I'll add in that for other purposes dependent on ranks, it uses this "effective" rank.

2) If you take a tradeoff that lowers your max rank for all Powers, that wouldn't affect Attack or Defend anymore right? Would it affect any Rank checks you make with Attack and Defend?

It would not (although I'll note, last night I did add in a little extra wrinkle to the Powers tradeoff where if it goes beyond maxing your skills it gets some diminishing returns, and one of those is that it lowers the effective rank for Attack and Defend, so if you take it that far then it would).

[Llyarden]

On the other hand, it should work correctly here. Restricted Ranged Exert 10 would could 15 points (1.5 PP/rank). There should probably also be diminishing returns on multiple Quirks that do similar stuff. I'll check on what I have written for all that and maybe add in a more detailed Limited/Restricted/Removable/Quirk "sidebar" or something to clarify them.

I don't know how this calculation is achieved. According to the Restricted rules, Restricted applies -1/rank to two ranks, so you have two ranks at the base 1/rank and eight ranks at 2/rank. Which is a total of 18. Getting a total of fifteen sounds more like how I originally thought Restricted works, which isn't right.

[Quellian-dyrae]

Restricted is -1 to the cost per two ranks, not for two ranks. I don't see anywhere I contradicted that in Restricted itself. My weird math on fractional Extras may have done something odd on that end if I made an error with it, but that's been updated now so if it was the issue it shouldn't be any longer.

Other above clarifications and fixes are also up. I also added a fairly extensive description of what each Attack Mode means in terms of attack rolls, resistance checks, and recovery checks, as well as a sidebar for handling multiple Attack Modes.

[DeAnno]

Another couple thoughts:

Lower Powers (other than your Schtick) to raise Powers (for purposes of your Schtick).

With Attack, Defend, Senses, Communication, (and Features, I guess) unlimited by PL limits now, it's fairly practical for a wide variety of characters to take two Powers as +1 Schticks, max them to PL+5 with a +4, and drop the rest to PL-4 (many of them not using any such Powers at all, or perhaps having only a minor one or two unrestricted by this.) Looking through some of your example characters, its easy to imagine a lot of them doing this as PCs.

Is this an intended behavior? Powers at PL+5 don't really break things nearly as much as Stats do, so it's kind of a cool side effect that makes PCs end up different and specialized. I think I like it on the whole, but I thought with all the Tradeoff tinkering lately it merited bringing up.

Insubstantial: Action: Free. Range: Personal. Duration: Sustained. Cost: 5 PP/rank.

This is kind of a weird power now for a few reasons. First of all, you're basically buying Immunities, but you're doing so outside and in parallel to the normal VPP system for it. Second, the low number of ranks and high cost per rank means that tradeoffs don't really apply (though they don't to the Immunities system either...), and that Extras and Flaws on the power with changed cost/rank won't effect the price very much. That probably most often applies to Limitations and such, and since its cheap anyway that likely isn't a huge problem, but something like Broad Insubstantial 3 can give you a variable immunity to any energy descriptor for only 3 extra points.

I don't think any of this weird Insubstantial stuff is directly problematic, but it does feel a little like legacy code.

[Quellian-dyrae]

Yeah Insubstantial's something of a legacy. It probably could be built purely with the Immunities rules and a bit of Movement. I'll take a look at it and see whether or not it still merits its current usage.

The schtick tradeoff is a potential concern, I'll think on that too. Might just be that the tradeoff needs to divide among the two if you pick two schticks, but not sure.

--

In other news, I finally got sick of hitting the character limit when I make edits (because I wasn't smart enough to add some spare posts, to be fair, but whatever). I also kinda wanted to add some internal navigation to this thing for easier referencing anyway. So, I've moved it to an external site. I'm going to be editing it there in the future, so expect this version to gradually become more and more out of date as I change things.

[DeAnno]

I love the new site! The only sad part is the example characters aren't there yet

Another nitpick, the Initiative option in Prowess is a little borky now. You can spend 1 PP to get 2 skill points, put them in Prowess, and get +4 to your initiative (which means you got the same bonus of Improved Initiative, plus 2 ranks of Prowess.) Even worse, you could use 1 PP to buy 2 SP to buy 6 Physicality and get +6 Initiative!

A rules question related to this: if you have Enhanced Prowess in an array and take Initiative physicality, and then roll initiative with it on, do you lose the initiative bonus and drop in the turn order if you swap it out of your array? This would be ugly, but the alternative of people sitting around with their arrays all set to "Initiative" until battles start is a little ugly too. It's sort of like taking an Advantage in an array, which is banned for a reason.

[Quellian-dyrae]

Seriously, thank you all for catching this stuff. It's a big help!

Far as the initiative question, I'd say that's a GM call. Changing initiative is a bit more precisely balanced, but also might be annoying to keep track of, and I don't want to call it a rule and thus require keeping track of everyone's exact initiative results throughout the battle. But if a GM wants to do that, hey, more power to 'em!

--

And I've updated the rules on the new site a bit.

Specified that to get two Schticks you have to divide Schtick bonuses among them.

Did some more tweaking to Attack Modes. I was realizing a lot of the Attack Modes used kinda the same logic for attack rolls, so I set up five "Delivery Modes", which are tied to certain Attack Modes by default but can be changed. They're still purchased through Attack Modes themselves primarily. So, Delivery Modes basically determine the attack roll logic, Attack Modes determine the resistance check logic. Delivery Modes can be taken as immunities/weaknesses, and are twice as valuable as Attack Modes since there are half as many.

I also split the weird "Material also covers things like disintegration" off into a separate Attack Mode called Removal, and came up with better logic for what the resistance check means there. So now there's a nice round ten Attack Modes. The bell curve of Attack Mode costs has been adjusted to account for this.

As a result of now having cohesive Delivery Systems, I removed the new Targeting parameter. More complexity than it's worth at this stage.

I took Lifting Rank, Speed Rank, range, and Time Rank reduction from stuff like Quickness and made them into miscellaneous stats (Strength, Speed, Range, Efficiency). This doesn't really change how they work or are purchased at all, but it kinda clarifies what they are since multiple things can affect them and they have some mechanical impact on things. Made some tweaks regarding these, mostly wording-oriented. Did also improve Extended senses to two Distance Ranks per application though (also specified that the Distance Rank can't be increased beyond PL with Extended senses, which I had meant to do originally but apparently forgot).

Reduced Proficiencies, Specialties, and Physicality to 2 per skill point rather than 3 (I think I may have been thinking PP for those for some reason), and lowered Physicality base amount to just equal Prowess, to fix the Initiative issue. Also adjusted Growth/Shrinking with Manhandle/Maneuver to affect degrees of success rather than the checks themselves, in keeping with new skill paradigms.

I also added a new option to Prowess called Evade, letting you get hefty defensive bonuses against ranged attacks in any round that you do nothing but Maneuver. Because A) kiting is too easy in M&M and B) hitting a moving target should be harder.

Haven't updated the archetypes yet, but will probably do them at some point and then move them to the new site. But as of now the archetypes posted here are officially out of date.

Finally, added a new Independent Extra for powers that can act independently of you (also providing a limited way to represent summons without having to go full Teammate).

I'm gonna leave Insubstantial be, for the time being at least. It is a bit weird, but Insubstantial operates sufficiently differently from normal immunities (from restricting your ability to affect others, to ignoring Penetrating but being overcome by Affects Insubstantial, to altering how you move, etc) and would be so complex to put together a la carte (and even then, wouldn't really be quite the same) that I think I'd rather just leave it alone, even if it is a touch out of place. Maybe at some point I'll come up with a different way to do it that fits some of these paradigms a bit better, but I'm not gonna worry about it for now.

[DeAnno]

I'm probably going to edit in more stuff soon, but it strikes me that Manhandle should probably use Physical or Material rather than Physical or Tactical now, especially because the Focus delivery mode seems a bit ill-suited for Manhandle. On the other hand, the Impact delivery mode which is on both Physical and Material makes sense, and Material is often about restricting movement, which is a Manhandle thing too.

[Quellian-dyrae]

Whoops, yeah. Added Material, left Tactical, but specified that even when done as Tactical it uses Impact Delivery.

[DeAnno]

Ok, so the more I look at it (including looking at example characters), the notation and theory of Enhanced Extra is a bit strange, and sometimes this strangeness can make one unsure about costs. Let's look at one of Speedster's Enhanced Extras as an example (I'm aware he's depreciated, but this part should still be rules-legal):

Hyperspeed: Enhanced Extra 37 (Movement gains Additional, Improved, Reduced Action, Fluid 2, Stable, Leaping, Adapted [Walls/Ceilings]; Removable [Not while Hindered]).

So, if I'm understanding this correctly, the text claims that the Movement it's being applied to gains Extras worth +3 cost/rank and a flat +7, but that this is reduced by 20% by removable. Since 3x10+7=37 and 37*0.8=30, this fits in the 30 point array just fine. But since an Enhanced Extra can be applied to any Movement power, what happens if you try to apply it to a Movement 11 Power? Does it just not work, because you didn't pay enough?

More confusingly, imagine you had a Movement 12 Power (through a Schtick perhaps) that had Limited 1. It's base cost would be 6 at 1/2 PP/rank. Adding +3 cost/rank makes that 3 PP/rank, and 3*12+7=43, and (43-6)*0.8=30, so would applying the Enhanced Extra to the Limited Movement 12 Power work, because you paid 30, which would have been enough to add the Extras to the power directly?

Even more confusingly, if you just had a normal Movement 12 Power, could you apply part of the Enhanced Extra to it (like, everything but Improved) so that it still fit into the appropriate cost? The whole thing is kind of a weird quagmire, and I think most of it is probably because Enhanced Extra doesn't target specific power effects but just a type of Effect in general.

A more common example of this quandry would be Enhanced Extra (Skill gains Supreme). If you wanted to be able to apply this to rank 10 enhanced skills, would it cost 5 PP (the actual cost of the difference of the extra being applied) or 10 PP (the naive 1*10 ranks calculation)?

[Quellian-dyrae]

Okay, yeah, I'll need to clarify that a bit better. But off-the-cuff explanation is as follows:

So, if I'm understanding this correctly, the text claims that the Movement it's being applied to gains Extras worth +3 cost/rank and a flat +7, but that this is reduced by 20% by removable. Since 3x10+7=37 and 37*0.8=30, this fits in the 30 point array just fine. But since an Enhanced Extra can be applied to any Movement power, what happens if you try to apply it to a Movement 11 Power? Does it just not work, because you didn't pay enough?

It applies to 10 ranks of the power following normal rules for Extras that only apply to some ranks (if there's a logical way to effectively apply it to just those ranks do so, otherwise it only applies if you forego the additional ranks), since you paid for ten ranks of the Extras (the flat-cost Extras apply regardless of ranks of course).

More confusingly, imagine you had a Movement 12 Power (through a Schtick perhaps) that had Limited 1. It's base cost would be 6 at 1/2 PP/rank. Adding +3 cost/rank makes that 3 PP/rank, and 3*12+7=43, and (43-6)*0.8=30, so would applying the Enhanced Extra to the Limited Movement 12 Power work, because you paid 30, which would have been enough to add the Extras to the power directly?

It still only applies to 10 ranks of the power as above. If that is your only Movement power anyway, you can feel free to pay the lower cost for the Enhanced Extra for the Limit being applied. Otherwise, you'd pay the appropriate full cost, and you just lose a few effective points when applying it to that particular Movement power. Basically, you do have to pay enough for it to fit onto any given power you want it to apply to, but if the only powers you want it to apply to would result in a lower cost, it's fine to pay that.

Even more confusingly, if you just had a normal Movement 12 Power, could you apply part of the Enhanced Extra to it (like, everything but Improved) so that it still fit into the appropriate cost? The whole thing is kind of a weird quagmire, and I think most of it is probably because Enhanced Extra doesn't target specific power effects but just a type of Effect in general.

You could apply just part of it as always, because you can always forego Extras under these rules. Normally, you wouldn't recoup the extra points, because foregoing Extras doesn't actually give any points back, so once again you'd only receive the Extras on ten ranks of the power. However, in this particular example, the fact that you have Fluid does mean that foregoing Extras gives you more points to reinvest on other Extras that the power already has, so you could boost them up to the full rank.

A more common example of this quandry would be Enhanced Extra (Skill gains Supreme). If you wanted to be able to apply this to rank 10 enhanced skills, would it cost 5 PP (the actual cost of the difference of the extra being applied) or 10 PP (the naive 1*10 ranks calculation)?

5 PP yes. If you also had Enhanced Skills that had other Extras, you would have to pay 10 PP if you want to apply the full value to them as well. Although this makes me realize I have to take another look at Supreme. Skills in arrays and such is also something I don't really want to encourage and Supreme might allow too much of that. Flip side, things like the animal shapeshifter should be able to swap around stuff like Stealth, Perception, Prowess, etc. Maybe make it some sort of factor of base skills or something, will need to think about that.

[DeAnno]

Ok, so it seems that when you buy Enhanced Extra, you set the amount of ranks +cost/rank Extras will apply to when you buy the power, and pay whatever price will need paying when you apply it to the most expensive thing you wish to apply it to. If you try to apply it to something with more ranks, it only applies to some of the ranks, and if you want it to apply but the cost would be more for some reason (like in the Supreme Skill example) it doesn't work.

Skills in arrays and such is also something I don't really want to encourage and Supreme might allow too much of that.

I think the problem is less Supreme, and more that Skills are often exactly the kind of things you want in an array: it's predictable when you will and will not be using them, and they don't often need to be used in conjunction with other skills. Supreme can make it a bit worse, but mostly in the orthogonal way that (Enhanced Extra [Enhanced Trait gains Supreme]) is a really effective power.

It almost makes me want to say Skills in general could maybe be purchased with VPP instead of PP, but I'm not sure if you want to dive off that cliff.

EDIT: Separate thing. Battlesuit has this on quite a lot of things:

Removable [Natural trait as a power]

Is that because the Battlesuit is a device and might not always be worn, or lost to a manhandle? Or is it because the Battlesuit can lose power to Nullifies and such? If a Wizard had a free, sustained, Mage Armor spell which gave him +10 Resistance, and it was basically always on except when it got Nullified somehow, would that qualify for Removable? (Removable itself has some text that suggests it would, but the Battlesuit example is throwing me a bit.)

[Quellian-dyrae]

I think the problem is less Supreme, and more that Skills are often exactly the kind of things you want in an array: it's predictable when you will and will not be using them, and they don't often need to be used in conjunction with other skills. Supreme can make it a bit worse, but mostly in the orthogonal way that (Enhanced Extra [Enhanced Trait gains Supreme]) is a really effective power.

Yeah, pretty much, although Skill Supremacy is largely meant to be "skills, just beyond PL and a bit more restricted" in some ways. Like...D&D Epic Levels, only for M&M skills, sort of? So it's kinda a mix.

Is that because the Battlesuit is a device and might not always be worn, or lost to a manhandle? Or is it because the Battlesuit can lose power to Nullifies and such? If a Wizard had a free, sustained, Mage Armor spell which gave him +10 Resistance, and it was basically always on except when it got Nullified somehow, would that qualify for Removable? (Removable itself has some text that suggests it would, but the Battlesuit example is throwing me a bit.)

The second. The battlesuit being something that can be stolen/not worn at an inappropriate time/etc would be a Power Loss Complication on top of being tactically Removable. And yep, the Mage Armor would be a perfect example of the same thing. Basically, in the normal rules, there was virtually no benefit to taking something as an Enhanced Trait, at least not standalone (some benefits to having it in an array, but standalone the only advantage was like...you could use Extra Effort with it? In other words, burn a resource that could be spent to give you extra actions for +1 to the rank for one round? I mean, really?) And the costs were actually non-trivial (could be Nullified, turned off by Stun, etc). So, now if you want something that's not normally a power, to have all the weaknesses of being a power, you get Removable. It's effectively reversed Innate.

--

To further clarify and fix such matters, I've added a whole section on purchasing traits to the Stats chapter. This now covers all the "special" ways of purchasing traits, like adding Flaws or Extras to natural traits, buying Extras independent of specific powers, buying natural traits through arrays and Variable powers, etc. The Supreme advantage has been removed (though Dangerous remains), and areas where it was intended for are now baked into the rules. The Enhanced Trait Effect and Reduced Trait Flaw are also gone now, as the things you could do with it are now simply natural options for traits. The rule against purchasing advantages with VPP has been removed, but there are now some limits to purchasing either skills or advantages through arrays or Variable powers (basically, you can only do so for half as many ranks of that skill or specific advantage - down to choices made for the latter - as you have naturally). You still can't purchase Attack Modes/Delivery Modes via any means involving VPP.

I've also adjusted the Aid action (and power) to avoid situations where Aiding is entirely free. Now there's always going to be some sort of opportunity cost for Aiding, either a combat action (or a costly enough power to remove the combat action), or some sort of risk or foregone opportunity. I also slipped in there a sort of reversed version of Aid (see the "Consolidated Aid" option) for dealing with things like...the entire group is trying to sneak through the enemy lair and the simple law of randomness all but guarantees at least one will be spotted unless they all have high enough Stealth to Routine their way past everything.

Probably going to do another full read-through over the next few days to try and smooth out some more rough edges, especially as have likely been caused by these recent updates.