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Post by Joseph Barros on Jul 4, 2012 18:05:44 GMT -8
Micah, the options truly are limitless. In DnD you pick a package and then customize that package to match your character as best you can within that package's limits. In MnM it is almost the reverse. Think up a character and then "bend" the pieces together to make whatever you want to your heart's desire. DnD tends to have specific rules for a large amount of things. This is the only way to ensure as much balance as possible. MnM instead gives you a lot of very generic options that leave a lot open to interpretation. The aforementioned "Move Object" power for example. Using that to do gravity control or telekinesis is obvious. Then if you take into account the linked extra you can take it to a whole other level. For example, say you take Protection and describe it as being from a force field. You can then link it to Move Object to allow you to use the force field to "grab" and move things. Link it to Deflect just for fun and Voila! You have Invisible Woman minus the invisibility!
I understand that might seem a little complex, but I'm just giving you an example of how building a character really is just about "connecting the dots" so to speak to literally create anything you can imagine. On one hand this is a power gamer's come true. On the other hand, at least the way I ran games, the powergaming never got too out of hand because MnM isn't as combat focused. Hell I think the first session I ran we had one combat in the 5-6 hours we played that lasted maybe an hour tops and we still had a lot of fun. So even if your character is "borked beyond belief" it will only occasionally annoy the GM rather than be the bane of his existence as it could be in say, DnD 3.5.
In short, forget what you know/learned from DnD and keep in mind that when building a character in MnM if you can think it, it can be done. No one who understands the rules can ever say "I wish I could build a character who does ___" because if you're creative enough you can.
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Post by Joseph Barros on Jul 4, 2012 18:47:08 GMT -8
Changed my mind. I'm playing a construct renegade fascist from the alternate Dimension Praetoria.
He was once human, but volunteered to be made into an immortal cyborg working for Praetoria's Police Department (PPD). Praetoria is a fascist totalitarian state run by Emperor Marcus Cole. My character is an intense patriot and loves his home nation with every fiber of his being. Praetoria is not only the name of the dimension, but of his country, because an alien force devastated the majority of the planet. Only under Emperor Cole's protection has Praetoria survived and thrived into a modern utopia. My character's mission is to defend the state at all costs. His name; National Justice!
In recent months however, National Justice uncovered a plot by Emperor Cole to open dimensional portals to invade and conquer neighboring realities. Upon studying the history of Cole's targets it is his firm belief that exposure to these alternate dimensions would only serve to taint and corrupt his homeland. His self-appointed mission is to enter the first target, Earth Prime, and rally a force to prevent the oncoming war and inevitable corruption of Praetorian society; even if it means deposing the current ruler Emperor Marcus Cole and replacing him with another!
Complications: Patriotism (Can't make breakfast without cracking a few eggs. Or sometimes tree hugging rebel baby killers) Honor (Don't go there. He has a big hammer and no sense of humor)
General concept: Living construct with a big effing warhammer. His left arm can, on command, fire up an energy shield that affords him further protection from harm.
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Post by Joseph Barros on Jul 4, 2012 18:48:28 GMT -8
National Justice Attachments:
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Post by frobones on Jul 4, 2012 19:31:31 GMT -8
Here are some Biotic Power examples: Lift:I took te Power Move Object and simply gave it the Flaw: Limited Direction Up. Using this power I can only move objects upward. Singularity:Once again I took the Power Move Object and gave it the area extra to grab multiple foes along with the Limited Flaw of only moving things towards the center of the area. Warp:This is a linked power, so both effects will happen simultaneously on a successful hit. For the first power, I took the Damage effect and gave it the Range Extra (Hero Lab makes this easy by providing a Blast power which is a throwback to 2e terminology). For the second power, I took the affliction effect and applied the Flaw: Limited Degree. I did this because I only wanted two adverse effects as opposed to 3, this saves me Power Points and makes the power fall more in line with my design as I didn't find any use for the 3rd effect. As for my 1st and 2nd degrees of afflictions, I chose Vulnerable and Defenseless. Vulnerable will halve your Parry and Dodge values and Defenseless will make them 0. Warp from ME is all about doing damage and ripping their armor off, so this seemed appropriate. Instead of linking with Affliction, I could have linked with the Weaken Effect and chosen to weaken the trait Stamina. This would in turn weaken the targets toughness. Lower toughness means when they get hit it hurts harder. This is just some of the many many things you can do in the MnM character building system. Furthermore, all these powers are in an array. What an array does is give you many options for relatively low expense, but at the cost of mutual exclusivity. The cost of an array is the cost of the most expensive power in the array (this is called the base power), then +1 PP for each additional power in addition to the Base Power. This is why the Warp power shows a cost 30pp and the other 2 show a cost of 1pp. The other two powers actually cost 30pp or less, but because it's in an array it is only costing me 1pp. With it being an array, I can use any one of these powers once per round. So with a Base Power of 30pp and two additional powers at 1pp each, the total cost of the array comes up to 32pp which I have labeled Biotics.
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Post by frobones on Jul 4, 2012 19:34:14 GMT -8
In recent months however, National Justice uncovered a plot by Emperor Cole to open dimensional portals to invade and conquer neighboring realities. Upon studying the history of Cole's targets it is his firm belief that exposure to these alternate dimensions would only serve to taint and corrupt his homeland. His self-appointed mission is to enter the first target, Earth Prime, and rally a force to prevent the oncoming war and inevitable corruption of Praetorian society; even if it means deposing the current ruler Emperor Marcus Cole and replacing him with another! I'm a little confused... you're coming to earth prime to rally able bodies to take back to your dimension to stop a brooding war?
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Post by reiphil on Jul 4, 2012 19:56:58 GMT -8
Lol, I didn't think of myself as green lantern, but that's cool. At least my power isn't actually imagination
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Post by kore on Jul 4, 2012 21:25:32 GMT -8
In recent months however, National Justice uncovered a plot by Emperor Cole to open dimensional portals to invade and conquer neighboring realities. Upon studying the history of Cole's targets it is his firm belief that exposure to these alternate dimensions would only serve to taint and corrupt his homeland. His self-appointed mission is to enter the first target, Earth Prime, and rally a force to prevent the oncoming war and inevitable corruption of Praetorian society; even if it means deposing the current ruler Emperor Marcus Cole and replacing him with another! I'm a little confused... you're coming to earth prime to rally able bodies to take back to your dimension to stop a brooding war? Yeah, National Justice is protecting his "country" from threats both foreign and domestic. @stephen: perfect, thank you for the examples.
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Post by kore on Jul 5, 2012 0:45:02 GMT -8
Is Move Object resistible?
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Post by frobones on Jul 5, 2012 5:37:29 GMT -8
Is Move Object resistible? Yes it is. First you have to land the attack on a person. Once the attack has landed, a Grab check will occur. This check is the opponent's Strength or Dodge vs your Power effect level. So before you can lift someone, the target has to fail his dodge check on the attack and then fail the grab check. Move Object automatically works on unattended inanimate objects though. Furthermore, when you attempt to move your grabbed target upwards, they get another grab check to break free. Just think of Move Object as having very long and very strong invisible arms.
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Post by frobones on Jul 5, 2012 5:40:28 GMT -8
Yeah, National Justice is protecting his "country" from threats both foreign and domestic. This still leaves me confused, so he's going to use foreign "threats" as recruits to stop Emperor Cole from bringing in Foreign influence? It's like the means he's using to prevent foreign influence to his dimension is bringing foreign influence to his dimension.
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Post by reiphil on Jul 5, 2012 6:22:08 GMT -8
put it in non transdimensional terms.
He found out america is about to invade China. He knows that if America invades china it would fuck up all of America's ideals. So even though he is super american, he goes to China to be like "Yo bros, Obama about to invade your shit. Help me stop him?" so that America doesn't invade china and lose its ideals as a country.
And yes, he probably realizes that it makes him an enemy of the state, but he has to do it because he just fucking loves America.
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Post by kore on Jul 5, 2012 9:35:15 GMT -8
Is Move Object resistible? Yes it is. First you have to land the attack on a person. Once the attack has landed, a Grab check will occur. This check is the opponent's Strength or Dodge vs your Power effect level. So before you can lift someone, the target has to fail his dodge check on the attack and then fail the grab check. Move Object automatically works on unattended inanimate objects though. Furthermore, when you attempt to move your grabbed target upwards, they get another grab check to break free. Just think of Move Object as having very long and very strong invisible arms. Okay, but now that I'm actually reading the f'ing book, I have another question...or more. You mention landing the attack, but I was reading that a Power that has an Area effect requires no attack check (p138). Does this mean the target only gets the opportunity to resist? In other words, it just hits. And then, even if the target resists, I notice that Area effects that are resisted simply have their rank reduced by half, against the target (p139). In the case of Move Object, this is measured in tons. Does this mean Move Object still affects the target? Next, looking at how someone might resist a Move Object Burst, wouldn't Toughness be a better defense? I'm curious about which defense(s) apply to resisting Move Object. Regarding Affliction: Defenseless, because it reduces defenses (all) to 0, an attack may be made against the target to score an auto-crit. Since the Move Object Area already auto-hits, does it also get the auto-crit? I'm glad you pointed out Affliction as it seems it does more to take out defense than the power I was looking to use, Weaken. Is there any reason to why Weaken might be better, though? Essentially, I want make resisting Move Object virtually impossible. Also, I have a different backstory for my character: Hans Bernoulli (aka Darkstar):A descendant of Daniel Bernoulli, Hans always wanted live up to the heritage of his family name, but didn't exactly have the intelligence...or drive...or focus to pursue an occupation in physics; it was more like a hobby. However, he did receive an opportunity as a janitor for CERN at the Large Hadron Collider. One late evening, while tending his duties near the LHCb, an accident occurred that infused Heinrich with anitmatter (dark matter). The accident was caused by a couple of postdoctoral researchers who were making out in a control room during a late night "experiment". No one noticed poor Heinrich, and after an investigation determined no damage was done, research operations resumed as normal. - Hans has what he considers a "healthy respect" for fascist governments, a political stance that his family has held for generations. - Hans is obsessive about order (not so much cleanliness) and symmetry. ...more to follow.
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Post by kore on Jul 5, 2012 11:12:22 GMT -8
Another question:
Regarding the Modifier, Indirect:
Would someone explain the nuances of the 4 ranks of Indirect? I understand that a power, without this modifier, originates from the hero and that Indirect changes that origin. But I'm having trouble understanding the differences; a couple of them seem to describe the same thing.
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Post by frobones on Jul 5, 2012 11:17:13 GMT -8
You mention landing the attack, but I was reading that a Power that has an Area effect requires no attack check (p138). Does this mean the target only gets the opportunity to resist? In other words, it just hits. And then, even if the target resists, I notice that Area effects that are resisted simply have their rank reduced by half, against the target (p139). In the case of Move Object, this is measured in tons. Does this mean Move Object still affects the target? Yes, the area attack will "just hit", but the target will still get his grab check. Furthermore, if they dodge the area attack (i.e. half effect), he will make a grab check at half the effect of your power. So if it was move object 10, it will be an effective Move Object 5. Next, looking at how someone might resist a Move Object Burst, wouldn't Toughness be a better defense? I'm curious about which defense(s) apply to resisting Move Object. When you say resist, do you mean resisting the attack or resisting the grab check? If you mean attack, your burst anti-grav matter is mechanically dodged just like an explosion from a grenade. It may not make the most RP sense, but that's how they deal with landing attacks. The target still gets a chance to "dodge" the area effect. If you're talking about the grab check, it will be Strength or Dodge because move object is essentially invisible hands as I said before. So they can overpower your anti-grav effect or simply wiggle lose (i.e. maintain their footing on the ground) Regarding Affliction: Defenseless, because it reduces defenses (all) to 0, an attack may be made against the target to score an auto-crit. Since the Move Object Area already auto-hits, does it also get the auto-crit? Defenseless reduces their active defenses to 0, so they will still have the base of 10 defense. As for the crits, I would have to read the rulebook more when I have time. I'm glad you pointed out Affliction as it seems it does more to take out defense than the power I was looking to use, Weaken. Is there any reason to why Weaken might be better, though? Essentially, I want make resisting Move Object virtually impossible. There is no "better", you can choose to weaken their defenses (i.e. easier to hit) or their stats (i.e. if they get hit it hurts harder). Perception moves "Auto Hit" with no save (yes you read that right). It's like Superman's eyebeams, how can he miss??? He's looking at his targets. That's what Perception range moves do. You simply use the Extra: Increase range on a power until it gets to Perception Range: Melee -> Range -> Perception. If you wanted to make Move Object virtually impossible to resist, you would have to make it a perception move. Then there's the grab check after you land the attack. To make this virtually impossible, you would have to use the Weaken effect to lower their Dodge and Strength to 0 values before attempting Move Object. So you could have a power like this: Move Object: perception range, area effect - linked with - Weaken Strength & Dodge: perception range, area effect Now, this power will be REALLY REALLY Expensive.
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Post by frobones on Jul 5, 2012 11:18:57 GMT -8
Another question: Regarding the Modifier, Indirect: Would someone explain the nuances of the 4 ranks of Indirect? I understand that a power, without this modifier, originates from the hero and that Indirect changes that origin. But I'm having trouble understanding the differences; a couple of them seem to describe the same thing. Even I'm not really sure, but take a read of this thread: www.atomicthinktank.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=37379&hilit=indirectEven after reading it I'm not sure.
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