Character 5: Mutants and Masterminds

Mutants and Masterminds battles with Godlike (which i will eventually do a character for) for the spot of my favourite superhero RPG of all time. M&M 2E gets point-based D20 right for a supers game with fast, fun cinematic combat and a great amount of flexibility.

The toughness save mechanic as a substitution for hit points and damage is part of what makes the game so appealing to me. It makes combat quick, which fits the supers genre perfectly. The tradeable limits and such also make for great Justice League style games where Batman-esque costumed adventurers can still be useful alongisde Superman paragons.

One problem you can get with M&M though is that you're pretty much expected to buy up your powers to meet the limits set by your character's power level. This means there's not a lot of varaition in characters when it comes to things like defense or damage. This can of course encourage you to buy up more interesting powers that do things other than damage such as snares or transmutation effects, which make things a little more interesting.

Unfortunately since M&M is entirely points based I didn't have much oppurtunity for randomness in creating a character. I did court the idea of rolling for abilities and then using that for my ability purchases, but that made things complicated later on. I'm kinda dreading what it will be like when I get to more complex point-but systems like Hero 5th ed. It can actually be a little draining making characters for those systems if you have no emotional or creative investment.

Since there's practically an infinite amount of archetypes I could build a superhero from, I decided to go the easy route and use a random number generator to pick an archetype from the Ultimate Power sourcebook. I'll be making some sort of Psionic superhero it seems.

I thought I'd mix things up a little. So here we have it, Special Agent Joeseph Winters, Codename Brainfreeze is ready to take on metahumans for whatever organisation he works for!

Joeseph "Brainfreeze" Winters
PL: 10

Abilities (16 points)
Str 12 Dex 12 Con 14 Int 14 Wis 10 Cha 16

Combat (42 points)
Init +5 Atk +11 Def 20
Damage +1 (unarmed), +3(light pistol)

Saves (24 points)
Fort +6 Ref +6 Will +10 Toughness +5

Skills (19 points)
Bluff +13, Computers +12, Diplomacy +15, Disable Device +12, Disguise +13, Drive +5, Gather infromation +13, Stealth +11

Feats (13 points)
Chokehold, Connected, Defensive roll 3, Eidectic memory, Improved grapple, Improved initiative, Jack of all trades, Power attack, Sneak attack 2, Well-informed

Powers (19 points)
Cold control 6 (psionic descriptor, alternate powers: snare 4 (w/ suffoccating extra), fatigue 4, Weakness 6)

Ice Armour 5 (+5 to toughness saves, ablative flaw))



Though Brainfreeze has a couple of nifty psionic powers, they're certainly not the only tricks up his sleeve. He has a decent attack bonus and if he can get the drop on a foe, even his unarmed attacks can do some nasty damage thanks to his feat selection. He's got a nice array for social skils as well, making him a great skill-monkey and inflitrator.

Well, that's it for my mainstream D20 games! I'll be moving onto the few Polyhedron mini-games I've got (an explanation on those coming soon) and then White Wolf. So far, so good!