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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 1822702" data-attributes="member: 5171">Yeah, that's still in there (although I'd argue that the difference between 12 and 14 is more than the difference between 2 and 4 -- there seems to be a "linear in tactical scale, exponentially in flavor-scale" thing going on with M&M).How direct was the "As tough as a battleship" reference?  Not to beat a dead horse, but just from a problem-solving perspective, I'd love to figure out how to make Cyke PL10 while still giving him that blast.  I mean, if you make it PL10 and added Penetrating Attack as a Stunt and Stunning, Dazzle, and Fatigue as Extras (in addition to the ever-difficult Area-Shapeable kind of thing you have to do to let Cyke either scythe his beam around in wide arc or make a long line of energy that hits everyone in its path), it'd still only be PL10 compared to the PL12 of the battleship -- but a bad guy with Protection +14 would never have to save against the battleship's gun (unless, uh, the battleship has Power Attack), and he'd always have to save against Cyke's effects -- all of 'em, every time he gets hit.  If Cyke adds in Power Attack and All-Out Attack, sacrificing Defense to really lay into the bad guy with a massive blast (+5 on both, to net out a -5 to Defense, no penalty to attack, and +5 to Damage), he's getting into serious damaging territory.  The average bad guy hit by a PL10 Power-Attacked Penetrating Energy Blast with Stun, Dazzle, and Fatigue on it might well say that he'd rather get hit by the Battleship's guns.(This is possibly one of my workarounds -- I almost always have Power Attack, All-Out Attack, Expertise, and Accurate Attack for my heroes, and I've House Ruled away the ability score requirements for them -- a blaster should be Power Attacking a lot, to make up for the damage deficit you noted.  He can either All-Out attack so that he still hits but is just hovering there, aiming and leaving himself open, or he can just Power Attack, so that he's firing heavy shots but ducking and weaving in order to not get hit.)Not sure.  I don't know Steve's mind, but the rules book fully supports powers as extras of other powers, and he did that with so many existing powers that it seems strange to rule that it doesn't work.I'm not saying that the game wouldn't be playable if all powers were separate -- just that, in the interests of fairness, I'd want to see existing "Package Powers" (everything above 2 pp/rank, I believe) broken down into sub-units, and then a section detailing how you'd put those together to get what you want.(The danger, of course, is that this gets into even more min-maxing in some ways, once the base packages are removed.  As a minmaxer, I almost always drop cosmic sense from cosmic power -- and also because it doesn't fit my character concept -- and that's with it in there, forcing me to create a flaw.  If I had to build it myself, I'd never bother putting it in there in the first place.)I think we have different ideas of what an 18 Strength is look, but the book fully supports you in this.  I always thought that a 12 was reasonable and not bad, a 14 was adept, a 16 was something you could use to get money, an 18 was national competition level, and a 20 was olympic level, easily.  But like you said, in the book, Protonik, who is clearly meant to be Supes, has an 18.  And Minotaur has a 20.  So... yeah.But, if Protonik is clearly meant to be Supes, I'd argue that Supes kinda supports my argument as well as yours.  Yes, with Super-Flight and Super-Strength and Ramming, Supes would, with an M&M build, have a fair better time with ramming people than he would with using his heat vision.  And in the comic, that's exactly true.  (Uh, guilty confession -- not much into the Supes comics these days.  So I'm really basing this on "Justice League" on Cartoon Network.  So, taking the honest route...)On Justice League, Supes holds off on his heat vision most of the time -- and when he does use it, he's almost always holding still and aiming carefully, or at least not making wild dips and dodges.  (In other words, he's using All-Out Attack to sacrifice Defense for To-Hit.)  If he does use it while weaving and dodging, I'd argue that it's either against something that he's pretty much gonna hit anyway (like a giant robot that is really really really easy to hit) or that it's in a climactic encounter where Supes would be spending Hero points.But it's clearly a backup weapon for Supes.  It's not meant to be his primary means of attack.  He uses it on living creatures very rarely, and only when he's getting trounced.  Ruleswise, I'd guess that it's something like an Energy Blast at his PL, with the Penetrating Feat, so that it can cut through almost anyone's armor, and with the duration extended from Instantaneous to Concentration, because there are multiple situations where he just steadily burns through somebody.  Which, now that I look at it, is pretty nasty.  And since it's Lethal damage, it makes sense from a personality perspective that he wouldn't unleash those bad boys very often.  So, if I were building Supes, that's what I'd add to his Heat Vision to make it attractive as a last resort -- the ability to keep it on somebody until they burn, the fact that its shown in the show as cutting through just about anything, and the fact that it's Lethal damage, when his Super-Strength clearly isn't (unless he really wants it to be).  Beyond that, as a gamer, the only time I'd use heat vision is:1) When I needed to use Extra Effort to make a reasonable one-time Extra or Power Stunt -- igniting an oil tanker to make an explosion, which wouldn't make sense with my unarmed attack, but which makes perfect sense with heat vision2) When tactically it's important that I not be moving that round, because I'm holding up a bridge from dumping the local orphan-filled schoolbus into the volcano or something.3) In the rare case when I'm fighting somebody that I can't hurt with my fists, because of some weird power on their part.So, as a gamer, my heat vision, although powerful, would be a backup weapon, and if I used it, I wouldn't really be concerned that it wasn't as powerful as my primary weapons -- my fists.I dunno, though.  It's possible that we've taken one example out of context.Well, I love it too.  And while I disagree with some of your points, it's always good to hash things back and forth.  S'the only way new thoughts happen. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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