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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 2216169" data-attributes="member: 5171">Ah. Well, the problem here I'd have is that you've built an unbalanced PL1 mook. While mooks can have equipment beyond their point totals, you've given him high Strength, which most mooks don't have -- if you check in the book, mooks usually have, what, 13 or so for their high stats?  And is the battle-axe a +6 Weapon? I don't have the book with me at the moment, so I don't know.Technically, if I wanted to, I could give a mook a Weapon +20 and Armor +20, because they aren't restricted by point values with their weapons -- but that wouldn't be balanced either.And technically, if I wanted to, I could build a mook with no skills and put 10 points into Strength, 10 points into Constitution, Power Attack and All-Out Attack, and then give him Disturbing as a 10-point weakness -- and I'd still be 1 point under my PL1 15. But that's not in the spirit of the game.That said, if the problem you have is that Superman isn't any better off in a fight by picking up a crowbar, there are a couple notes.1) Remember that M&M is all about flavor-text. A guy with Super-Strength +10 is probably swinging streetlights at people with every other attack, and only then after he's run out of cars to pick up by their axles and clap together like a pair of cymbals on the bad guy. That should just be assumed as part of the attack. If the players aren't happy because the Hulk doesn't benefit from brass knuckles, they might be missing the point of the game.2) The rule is in there for balance purposes. It's there so that a guy with Super-Strength 5 and a Weapon +5 stands toe-to-toe with a guy with Super-Strength 10. The weapon guy can't lift heavy stuff, and is in trouble if his weapon is knocked away (both of which should become important now and then, since Super-Str 10 guy paid more points for his stuff), but in an ordinary fight, they are meant to be equal, primarily because in the comic books, they ARE equal that way.3) Super-strength and weapons already gets a huge advantage -- the ability to throw improvised things and do Super-Strength damage with them. That stuff is nasty.4) The bonuses don't scale linearly in flavor in M&M. An increase of +1 to +2 isn't much -- it's going from a dagger to a shortsword -- but when you go from +13 to +14, that's more like the difference between (for example) a battleship's main gun and a high-powered (but probably not nuclear yet) missile -- you don't want to get hit by either, but if you look at two craters, you can easily tell which was caused by the main gun and which was caused by the missile. So yes, if you strapped a dagger onto the point of a nuclear warhead, it would do more damage than a nuclear warhead all by itself,  but it wouldn't be enough of an increase to merit a full +1.5) Weapons can serve other beneficial purposes rather than just doing more damage. They can disarm or strike an opponent protected by an energy shield, for example.Above all, though, the most important idea is the first one. It's flavor, and that's both why you should already have large improvised weapons in there as part of the flavor of the attacks, and why players shouldn't be asking why their max'd-out-strength guy doesn't get even more damage by using a dagger as well. Superman doesn't use a crowbar in the comics. The Thing doesn't go after people with broken bottles. The Hulk doesn't put on brass knuckles. If the character concept that the players had included using weapons, then they shouldn't max out their strength.(And I'm a firm believer in not maxing out unless absolutely appropriate. I'd much rather my players play PL10 people who have Super-Con 5 and Protection 5 instead of simple Protection 10, unless "Truly indestructible guy" is what they are after. I'd rather they go for Super-Strength 5 or 6 and a weapon, unless they want to be a powerhouse who doesn't use a longsword because he's picking up SUVs to use instead. I'd rather they take Energy Blast 6 and other stuff instead of Energy Blast 10 unless they want their role in the team to be "Guy with most powerful energy blast.")</blockquote>

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