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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 1821114" data-attributes="member: 5171">How is this different from the comics? Most comics I can think of offhand have enormous bricks, uh, not firing much, unless it's an area attack.You mean as an improvised weapon?  Which breaks if the damage it delivers (equal to the Strength bonus) is greater than the hardness?  So it's essentially good for one shot, at drastically reduced ranges (see page 112)?  And can be limited by the GM's descriptions of the environment?I don't see that as unbalanced, really.Actually, I think this is handled just fine by having only normal Strength add to attack rolls.  You can make Juggernaut or the Hulk perfectly well by taking a relatively average normal strength (12 or 13) and then putting a big ol' boatload of Super-Strength on top of it.  That means that he does a ton of damage when he hits, but gets very little in the way of bonuses to attack.  An ogre in the classic sense (swings hard but inaccurately) has a low-ish BAB, an enormous Super-Str, and an average Strength.Same with Super-Dex.  Doesn't add to attacks.Your problem isn't the stats.  Your problem is folks who never get Super-X without maxing out "X" first.  Which isn't good.  Spidey shouldn't have Super-Strength 10(or whatever) and Strength 20, because Peter Parker ain't got Strength 20 normally.  Peter Parker has Strength 12 or 13 tops -- at this point, he'd be in decent shape if he lost all his powers, but not an olympic athlete by any stretch.Usually, if I don't want to go into something, I don't go into it.  That said, I use 1:2 in my game, and it's fine -- but then, I'm running a swashbuckling musketeers game with M&M doing the system work in the background.  If I were doing a normal superhero game, I think 1:1 would do fine, provided that you used Super-Abilities flawed to "Skill Bonuses" for characters meant to emulate Batman -- like "Raven" does in the corebook.A-heh-heh-heh.This would be your GM being far too kind.Please drop by my campaign with your "It's a Device but really there's no way it would ever fail" devices any time you like.  That suit of techno-armor does have a tendency to short out from time to time, or lock up when it gets too much of an electric jolt, or... gosh, there's just a whole range of things that can go wrong with it.  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":]" title="Devious    :]" data-shortname=":]" />In order to make it really really easy for me as a GM to decide for something to go wrong, I just tell my players "Any time you roll a 1, a device related to what you were doing has just run of out ammo, jammed, overloaded, or warped into an alternate dimension.  That's the rule.  We'll flavor-text it appropriately."  That makes it a whole lot faster than trying to remember that I should steal Tony Stark's armor every now and then.My players have never asked for a sidekick.  If they do, I'll let you know how it goes.  We've got a lot of players, though, so they're already in streamlining mode.  Nobody wants to complicate things more.  In a small game, with fewer players, I think adding a sidekick is a good idea.Yeah, you can do it to break the game -- provided that you have a GM who's dumb enough to let you.  "Uh, no skills, no powers, no BAB, no BDB, and 75 sidekicks?  Sure, why not?"If your method for determining a game's value is "Can it be broken, and if so, how easily?", then M&M is not the game for you.  M&M is a game designed to be run by a GM who a) Says "No" and b) Tailors encounters to let the party show off its strengths and pay for its weaknesses or flaws.(Or, in other words, if you play in my campaign, and you play Green Lantern, there will be at least one thing per adventure that uses the color yellow.  Might not be a killer each time, and it'll never be an entire armada of yellow ships, but there'll be something every time, somewhere.  Just like there'll always be something that you can handle best -- you might not be the only one who can do something, but there'll be something that you can do better than anyone else.)Partially agree.  I like rapid-attack for its simplicity, and I like Two-Weapon fighting for allowing people to use two weapons, but combining the two leads to oogyness.  I suspect that if M&M sees another version, this'll be cleaned up.(And "Improved Two-Weapon Fighting" is, I think, tacitly admitted to be a mistake -- although I'm not sure.)Why does Cyclops have to have a +14?  I mean, you make Cyclops at PL10, you max out the blast, give it a few extras and stunts, and then you buy a whole lotta skills, saves, and feats -- and judging by his build in that costume, you also make his basic ability scores pretty high -- 18-20 for Strength, Dex, and Con.You can always come up with uses for those extra points.  Bunches of skills and feats, namely.  Including that feat that gives you more Hero Points to play with, so you can do fancy tricks with your optic blast or not die the moment Sabretooth comes around the corner and takes a swipe at your non-armored normal-human body.My players are big on "Oh, dude, extra points!  Up go my saves, and then I'll buy more Hero Points!"Add in the Penetrating Attack feat (in its errata'd form) for the Optic Blast, and you've got a guy who can do some nasty stuff to just about anyone, even if their force field is strong.(Re: the optic blast: Making it do more damage is not always the best way to make it cooler.  Adding in something like a Stun and/or Dazzle effect is going to make it uglier.  As a GM, I get leery when someone comes to me with Energy Blast with Stun, Dazzle, Knockback, Knockdown, and Drain(Intelligence) to simulate an energy blast that whacks people around so hard that they fall down, get stunned, fly across the room, and can't think straight.  However, that's closer to what ol' Cyke has than "Energy Blast +14" all by itself.)Reading this, I'm not sure if you understand how to build a power.  Maybe you do, but your post didn't indicate that terribly well.  A power costs "X" as its base cost.  It costs "X-1" if purchased as an extra of another power, with the caveat that a power can't be reduced to costing 0, so 1-point powers still cost 1 point per rank.So Telekinesis and Flight both cost me 2pp/rank (before we apply any flaws), so if I have Telekinesis from years of mental training and flight because I was bitten by a radioactive superhero (two separate powers), then they each cost 2 pp/rank.If I have Flight because of my TK (I'm lifting myself through the air), then Flight is an extra of TK, so it costs 2-1=1 per rank -- but if something ever happens that messes up my TK, it also messes up my Flight (Drain, Neutralize, etc).As long as your GM approves, any power can be applied to any other power as an extra -- although it's good manners to make the most expensive power the base power, just so you don't benefit from shaky math.(Shaky math: If you take Flight (2pp) with Amazing Save (1pp) as an extra, it still costs 3, because Amazing Save can't drop below 1pp/rank.  So some quick-thinkers will say "Okay, I'll take Amazing Save with FLIGHT as an Extra -- so Amazing Save costs 1, and Flight Costs 2-1=1. Total cost of only 2pp/rank!  Haha, I've outsmarted the system!"  And then the GM hits you with those four-siders he's not using in this system and kicks your butt to the curb. Or your GM stops this entirely by saying "No 1-point powers as base powers" or "Most expensive power as the base power" or something.)Now, as to the question of whether this is broken: It can be, if the GM lets it be.  If your GM never Drains, Neutralizes, or otherwise nerfs some of your powers, then it's far cheaper to load them all into one basket.  Does "cheaper" mean broken?  Eh.  It can, depending on the campaign.  Sorcery, Cosmic Power, and Super-Speed are pretty much powers built from mashing other powers together.  The only reason that those are basic powers instead of "totally broken combinations of powers and extras" is that the designers saw that enough comic-book people used a power sort of like that that it made sense to put them all together.  If you have a valid concept, and can put it together in a way that makes sense, it's no more broken than Super-Speed or Sorcery is.Where it gets broken is if some players build characters with stuff wrapped up into one power, and some players don't.  That's no good -- unless the GM slaps down the Drains on a regular basis, in which case it becomes a viable option.If you have good players, they'll do what makes sense.  Sometimes it makes sense for all the powers to be grouped together.  Sometimes it makes sense for some powers to group with other powers (as in, you got some powers from combat training and some powers from being gifted with magic by a genie, so group Strike, Combat Sense, Amazing Save<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />amage and Reflex, and Running under "combat training" and group Telekinesis, Flight, and Incorporeality under "Genie's Gifted Powers").It's actually pretty elegant once you get used to it.  It can be broken, yeah, but I'm kinda past the point in my life where I go looking for games with people who try to break the game system.</blockquote>

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