N/A

Toughness save (DC24): 20. Muscles takes another Bruise. Initiative: Foreshadow: 26 (3HP) Newt: 11 (3HP, not here yet) Muscles: 8 (Bruised x2) White Knight: 7 Thugs (10): 2

Kingsnake somersaulted up over the frenzied audience members, almost dancing along the crowd. He pushed off of a shoulder here, a back there, slid between a pair of legs, flipping and weaving until he was face-to-face with the troubled teen with the terrible tresses. He gripped one of the batons his custom double-weapon, "The Fangs of The Serpent,", gripping the middle of the chain with his other hand. He gave the chain a couple of spins and then released it, heaving the baton at the other end of the chain toward the theatre wall behind the kid. The baton struck the wall, then ricocheted down to the safety railing on the balcony wall, before flying again back toward Kingsnake. He yanked on the chain at just the right moment, sending it spinning around the kid until he was wrapped from shoulder to ankle. Kingsnake was just about to drag the kid down to the ground when the hair caught under the chain flexed outward and upward, slipping the chain up and off the kid in an instant. Damn. Kingsnake had overcommitted to that strike, and now he stood wide open to the kid's inevitable counterattack.

The kid with the hair had the same frenzied look in his eye as the theatre patrons who were trying to eat their seatmates, but he was consumed only with fight-or-flight, not with hunger. His tresses formed spider-legs beneath him, lifting him up out of arms reach. A hundred feet of hair lashed out from his scalp into the crowd before him. Entire rows of people were knocked up out of their seats or the aisles between. Some went flying off the balcony onto the crowd below, while others smashed into the walls. Others will were merely clotheslined off their feet to be trampled or gnawed upon by others.

Kingsnake: Free Action: Flip the Kusarigamajutsu array to the Snare AP. Move Action: Acrobatic Bluff to Feint RapunzeLad. Take 10 with Skill Mastery for 25. RapunzeLad's Acrobatics/Sense Motive check (+10 either way): 19. He's flat-footed against Kingsnake's next attack. Standard Action: Charge (+2 Atk / -2 Def) at RapunzeLad. Power Attack for -2 Atk / +2 Dmg. Extended Reach to close the gap, Skill Mastery with Acrobatics for 25 to move through occupied spaces. Attack him with the Snare. Attack check (DC13): 24. Reflex save (DC20): 28. Natural 20. Kingsnake's Defense is +10 (DC20) until his next turn.

RapunzeLad: Standard Action: Use his Targeted Selective Cone Area attack to whip his hair, whip it good, at all the "zombies" in his field of vision, including Kingsnake. Attack check: 14. He misses Kingsnake, but hits plenty of bystanders with impossible DC25 Toughness saves, sending them flying off the balcony and against the walls with plenty of Knockback. It's rainin' men, hallelujah. Free Action: Activate "Flight." Move Action: Get above the crowd, out of their melee reach.

Initiative: RapunzeLad: 27 (Enraged). Kingsnake: 20 (2HP). Wail: 18 (4HP, Bruised) Fire-Girl: 15 (Enraged). Gee I Wonder Who: 11. Bystanders: 1.

Brian could feel the heat from the mousy teenager, now wreathed in flame. He could hear every growl and snarl and scream and stomp and slice as people were dragged to the ground and bitten and scraped and slammed against a floor covered in broken glass. He could smell blood and spilled beer pooling and seeping into the fresh new carpet. He felt the vibrations through the floor with every harried step taken by those fleeing for the exits. His echolocation showed him a stormy sea of human flesh rolling in waves that broke against the walls and each other. A terrified man ran from a handful of youths with dead eyes and hungry mouths. He slipped and fell over the balcony railing, tumbling head over feet. He managed to catch the secondary bar lining the outside of the balcony. As he hung on for dear life, Brian sprang from his seat. But the teens got to him first, surrounding him, pulling him to the ground. He twisted and rolled out from under them, pulling his limbs against the weak spots in their grips. Grabbing the inner railing with one hand, he heaved himself half over it, grabbed the man's hand, strained with every muscle he had and a few he didn't know existed, and pulled the man up and over. "*pant* ...Run...*pant* RUN!" The man glanced around frantically and gave Brian a quizzical look as if to silently as "Run WHERE?!" But Brian's sonar wasn't detailed enough to pick up subtle facial expressions. The man got no reaction, no validation, and just took off running in the least crowded direction. Brian, meanwhile, dropped a smoke pellet (just in case) and pulled on the hidden snaps and zippers of the custom clothes he wore over his Kingsnake costume, removing them in a matter of seconds.

The viewers are all PL0 Bystanders, pretty much just zeroes across the board for traits. All the hostile people have a free rank of Rage going, so they're Defense -2 (DC8), STR 14 (+2), Fort +2, and Will +2. Brian is going to try to save the guy who just went over the railing. Meanwhile as many people as can fit around him will mob him. He's up against the railing, so I'll say that's 5 people who can get around him. So 4 people Aiding a fifth in a grapple attempt. Aid checks (DC10): 4, 11, 19, 10. 3 make it, one doesn't. That's +6 to the "lead" "zombie"'s attack. Attack check (DC22): 23. They got him. Grapple checks: "Zombies": 9. Kingsnake: 25. The can't keep their grip on him. It occurs to me that Kingsnake has no Concentration skill ranks, and he needs to be punished for that. It's a DC20 Concentration check to perform an action while being grappled. He has to make it on raw Wisdom. Concentration check (DC20): 23. Hot damn, natural 20. He manages to keep his grip and pull the guy up.

She's only Defense Class 18, so that easily hits, and her Grapple is only +9. She resists with 25. He's got her Pinned. I'm arbitrarily increasing the listed rank of her Damage aura from 4 to 10 to make things more interesting. Wail gets a Hero Point for GM dickery, and needs to make a DC25 Toughness save.

Toughness save for Muscles (DC25): 21. He takes a Bruise. The bike also takes an Injury. Foreshadow gets a Hero Point for the awesome. Initiative time for Foreshadow and the bad guys. Initiative: Foreshadow: ? (3HP) Newt: 11 (3HP, not here yet) Muscles: 8 White Knight: 7 Thugs (10): 2 EDIT: I changed my mind. Foreshadow gets 2 Hero Points. One for being awesome, and another for the setback, because since the crash didn't do more than bruise Muscles, now he has an improvised weapon in-hand.

VARIABLE DESCRIPTOR: You can change the descriptors of an effect with this power feat, varying them as a free action once per round. For one rank with this feat, you can apply any of a closely related group of descriptors, such as weather, electromagnetic, temperature, and so forth. For two ranks, you can apply any of a broad group of descriptors, such as any mental, magical, or technological descriptor. The GM decides if any given descriptor is appropriate for use with a particular effect and this feat. It's like turning a single power into an array. A wizard could just put Variable Descriptor 2 on a Blast spell, declaring with every use whether it's a "Fire spell" or an "Ice spell" or a "lightning spell," instead of buying all of those as Alternate Powers. Arrowhawk has Variable Descriptor 1 on his bow's Damage effect to represent that he can choose every time he fires whether it's a bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing arrow. The same shouuld work for a swordcane that can either be used as a club or as a sword, depending on whether or not you have it unsheathed. Like switching APs, switching descriptors is a free action.

To clarify: I also have no problem with him jumping off right before it hits so he's within melee range of at least one guy, if that's what you're aiming for.

I have no problem with him jumping off the grav-bike at full speed and letting it Slam into Muscles if you'd rather he make an entrance instead of being sneaky.

Right. You said he was standing in the back, so I assume he's at the outer edge of the first-floor crowd, directly under the balcony level, with his back more or less against the wall (or the door, rather, since the walls have seats up against them, with two footpaths running from the back doors up to the stage/screen, dividing the ground-level seating into three columns). Fire-Girl is definitely closer than Hair-Boy. She's more or less in the center of the ground-floor crowd. The balcony floor juts out over the back 1/3 or so of the room.

People usually use the +Subtle feat, and/or a Feature, on the outside of the container, for a device that can change into something else. If you want to be able to use it as either a sword or a bludgeon, the easiest way is to put the Variable Descriptor feat on the Damage effect, so that you can switch it up on each use between Bludgeoning, Piercing, or Slashing damage. The Incurable feat on Damage will prevent Regeneration or Healing from taking away the damage, forcing the monster to rest normally to recover. That's the first thing I'd give to a magic sword. Maybe another 1PP feat on the Damage effect to reflect that the blade is silver, just to make sure no one can argue with you when Vulnerabilities come up.

The latter will do nicely. Thank you. The Scarab floated up and out to the patio, then glided into the third floor, her cape never hanging limply from her shoulders but always like a sail or flag catching wind no one else in the room could feel. The suitcase hovered with her, never leaving her side. Her feet never quite touched the floor as she made her way down the hall, glancing back and forth for open doors, movement, or some other sign that she was headed in the right direction.

Definitely. I'm letting his precognition basically give him a surprise round before everyone else gets involved in earnest. He's got time to intercept the armored car or the thieves, but not both. Figure a move action to get within range of either one, then one standard actions worth of stuff to do with/to it before Init gets rolled.

I was more or less assuming she made at least the Civics check and whichever ones get bonuses for being around in the '70s, yeah.

Wail and Kingsnake both need to make a DC20 Will save. Because of Kingsnake's sensory powers, I'm increasing the power effect from rank 10 to rank 15, increasing the DC to 25, and giving him a Hero Point for the Complication. Will save for Kingsnake: 27. He makes it. If Wail fails, then the infrasound waves make him hallucinate too, and he rolls on the Confuse table, treating any result of "Attack the user of the Confuse effect" as if he had rolled "Attack the nearest person." The crowd of roughly 1,000 PL0 bystanders have Will +0, so they need a natural 20 to make the save. I'll assume that, statistically, that means 95% of them fail. They are under a rank 10 Confuse effect. I'll also go with statistics for the effect, so of the 1,000 people, roughly 200 of them are thinking clearly (relatively speaking), 400 of them are attacking the nearest person, 200 of them are running for the nearest exit and trampling anyone in the way, and 200 are going fetal right where they are. Each type of reaction is more or less equally intermixed, so there are plenty of each type of person crossing paths with all the rest. Then there are the two teenagers whose latent superpowers just got activated by the trauma. For the pyrokinetic, we'll use the Fire Elemental build from Instant Superheroes. For the one with prehensile hair, we'll use AA's "Rapunzel" build. Anyone who tries to subdue any theatre patrons without hurting them gets a Complication Hero Point for the -2 circumstance penalty they'll suffer to their Attack checks, and they have to restrict themselves to using no more than 5 ranks of any Damage effect (after any adjustments for tradeoff feats). Any effect forcing a Toughness save of DC21 or higher is going to be automatically treated as lethal damage.

What was most surprising to people who hadn't seen Dead Moon Rising in a long time, or at all, was how much the first half-hour was a slow build. There was some violence here and there, and even a couple of individual zombies, but it wasn't until the 30-minute mark when the cultists finished their ritual and every dead person in the city started getting up and walking around, whether they had just died or had to claw their way up out of their own graves. It wasn't until that iconic scene that Brian started suffering a massive headache, followed by nausea, and a ringing in his ears that just got worse and worse with every passing minute. The projected image on the screen flickered. Scattered bursts of static erupted from a couple of the speakers hidden throughout the theatre. A few of the roudier patrons openly jeered, thinking there was something wrong with the supposedly restored film reel. Brian heard someone arguing out in the lobby. He heard glasses start to break against walls and under shoes and into people's flesh. He couldn't see the movie, so he couldn't see the zombies crawling out of the screen and into the audience. He couldn't see people in the audience transforming into zombies, the flesh on their bones rapidly decaying and falling off. None of that was actually happening in real life, of course, but it was happening in the minds of the viewing audience. What was real? The shy, nerdy girl down in the fifth row who burst into flames, melting her seat and the carpet beneath. The grunge throwback kid up in the balcony level whose waist-length hair started stretching fifty feat out of his scalp and randomly grabbing people and throwing them up out of their seats. (Most people who looked at him saw a giant octopus grabbing people with tentacles the size of telephone poles and shoveling them into its drooling maw.) The hundreds of teens and twentysomethings screaming and panicking and trampling each other to get to the exits while their peers tried to literally eat them. No one was transforming into a rotting corpse, but plenty of people were suddenly so consumed with the desire to eat the flesh off the bones of their peers that it drowned out all conscious thought. Roughly half the audience started grabbing and clawing and biting at anyone within reach.

I'm assuming that The Scarab's Acute Radius Ranged Thought Awareness and Notice skill can pick up what information she stated in her IC post. Let me know if I need to adjust it.

Thank you. I would be happy to come along. But I will wait to reveal my presence until it is necessary or desirable. It is always prudent to keep something in reserve. "Never lead with your left," as the boxers say. The Scarab's head jerked to the side, then slowly moved back toward Paige. You have another acquaintance, or fan, however, in the near vicinity, who would no doubt be happy to accompany you in a more overt matter. Indeed, stealth would not be his preference even if it were possible for him. I cannot derive greater detail without actively invading his mind, for which I do not currently have cause, but whatever his specific thoughts at the moment, he is familiar with you, he has noticed you, and he bears you no ill will. I know him only by reputation, but by that reputation, he has extensive experience working with children, and a vested interest in helping the gifted among them to integrate with society as smoothly and productively as possible.

Kingsnake will hit the streets to try to find out if anyone knows who caused the earthquakes and why, and whether or not Namazu and their new pet superhero were involved. He'll pounce on people in dark alleys, beat up dive bars full of lowlifes, and generally put the squeeze on whoever looks like they might know something. He'll take an hour for a Gather Information check, taking 10 to hit DC25. If for whatever reason he needs to roll, then he gets...25. If he needs to make an Intimidation check to change someone's attitude, then he'll get...34. He's not messing around. Unless he finds out something that directs him away from Namazu, then that's the next item on his to-do list. He'll try to quietly break into their local HQ and see if he can find any evidence of their involvement. He'll take 20 on any Disable Device checks if possible (DC35), or he'll take 10 if he has to (DC25), and if he needs to roll, he gets...24. If a +2 from Extra Effort will make the difference between success and failure on that, he'll suck up the Fatigue.He'll take 10 on any Stealth checks if possible (DC25). If he has to roll, he gets...16 (Natural 1!). If that would get him caught, I'll gladly burn a Hero Point for a re-roll.He'll take 10 on any Search checks with Skill Mastery (DC30).If he needs to squeeze through any tight spaces (ducts, pipes, etc.), he'll either take 10 (DC20), or, if that won't do it, burn a HP for Ultimate Effort to hit DC30.If he needs to climb anything, he'll take 10 with Skill Mastery (DC25). If he has to roll, he'll get...28. Again, if +2 from Extra Effort to hit DC30 will make the difference between success and failure, he'll gladly accept the Fatigue.

You want Insubstantial 2 for this. It makes sense that area attacks like grenades would work against a flying swarm, but swinging around a baseball bat isn't going to do enough against the swarm as a whole to be reflected in game mechanics. The inability to squeeze through smaller openings can be a Power Loss drawback or a Complication, depending on whether you need Power Points or Hero Points more.

For examples of what KD's talking about with intentionally undercapping, feel free to take a look at my signature and the PCs linked in it. They're all intentionally, explicitly undercapped. Power Level and Power Points aren't automatically tied together by the rules. Technically, in a tabletop game of M&M, the GM would just set a power level cap for the entire group. Since that isn't really feasible here, the architects of the site went down the path of least resistance and tied Power Level (your caps for combat traits, Ability bonuses, Skill ranks, etc.) to Power Point total, automatically increasing the former when you accumulate enough of the latter. In my case, I've got PCs who have enough power points to be PL10, 12, and 15, but they're built to hit caps as a PL7 and two PL10s, and I advertise that in as many places as possible (sheet, sig, etc.) so that anyone recruiting me for a thread knows precisely what my character is capable of in game terms. I'm getting the impression that a primer on how M&M power levels work is in order. If you're actually trying to make a functionally PL10 character, and not a lower PL character who happens to be built with more than 15PP per power level, then you'll want your best possible (Attack + Damage) and (Defense + Toughness) to average out to 10. You're free to trade off within +/-5 on those two axes as you see fit, depending on whether your concept calls for someone who floats like a butterfly or stings like a freight train. So you could have Attack +10 and Damage 10, or Attack +15 and Damage 5, or Attack +5 and Damage 15, or anything in between. The thing to remember is that PL caps apply to your character in his best possible situation. M&M is built backwards from most RPG systems. Instead of starting with a foundation of basic traits and then building situational and synergistic bonuses, you start with a cap and build up to it. In other games, the guy with Attack Specialization (Swords) and Favored Enemy (Ninjas) is just as good at non-sword combat as everyone else, but is better at swordfighting than they are. In M&M, the guy who bought Attack Specialization (Swords) is worse at all-around combat then everyone else, and only measures up when he's got a sword and is stabbing a ninja with it. In exchange, he paid fewer points than the guy who just bought base Attack bonus that works equally well everywhere against everyone with everything. It's also worth noting that most traits aren't bound by PL caps unless they directly affect combat. If he's got enough points, you can have a PL0 character with Flight 20. As it is, this character is actually breaking his PL caps. Assuming you're building up to PL10 (you can't build any higher until he earns some points in-game), with a STR bonus of +12, he couldn't have a total attack bonus higher than +8 with any attack that would use that STR bonus (unarmed strikes, grapples, thrown objects, etc.). 12 + 8 = 20, 20 / 2 = 10. As far as the exotic saves go, most "conventional wisdom" leans toward one of two options: 1) Going for an average of (PL-2) among all 3, Fort, Ref, and Will. This lines up with most of the sample builds in the books (terrible though they are, this is one ofthe few areas where they're about right). So a PL10 hero would usually have something like +8 in all 3, or +6, +8, and +10, or +15, +5, and +4, something like that 2) Match Reflex to Defense, and average Fort and Will together to the PL like you'd do with Attack/Damage and Defense/Toughness. So Fort 10 / Will 10, Fort 5 / Will 15, etc. You don't need to adopt either of these design philosophies, but most people do. As it is, with a Will save that low, and neither Fort or Ref particularly high, he'd be considered significantly undercapped on exotic saves by most people's standards. (The 2E rules techically allow you to buy all 3 exotic saves up to PL+5, or +15 for a PL10 hero, but that would make for an extremely boring game for all involved, and there's no way the rednames would let it through. Rule #1 of M&M is that just because you can do something, that doesn't mean you should. They designed a system that could build anything, and knowingly exchanged "balance" for flexibility, under the assumption that GMs would know when to say "No.") The house rules allow anyone to use Accurate, All-Out, Defense, and/or Power Attack for up to +/-2 without having the feat. You only need to buy the feat to do +/-3, 4, or 5. So if you don't see yourself trading off by more than 1-2 in combat, you can ditch those feats and buy them later. Improved Block counts against PL caps. Block uses your Attack caps. So you can't take Improved Block unless you lower your Attack bonus by 2. So you'd only hit attack caps when blocking. It's the worst feat ever. Every time someone writes it on their sheet, the gods murder a puppy. And not something obnoxious, like a chihuahua. A cute one. The skills are still messed up. For example, I see "Computers 8 (+2)." If he's got INT 14 (+2) and 8 ranks in Computers, then you'd write "Computers 8 (+10)". When it comes to skills, relatively few of them involve contested rolls. Most of them have static difficulty classes. When you decide to invest any points at all into a skill, actually read the entry for it and look for the DCs associated with it. Look at what tasks you want to be able to reliably perform. Then buy your total skill bonus (whether with Ability ranks or skill ranks) to within 10 or 20 of those DCs you want to hit, depending on whether you can take 20 or just 10 with it. If you're buying Survival, then the DCs are really low, and you'll probably never need more than +5, +10 at the most, unless you're using it for tracking. If you're buying Computers and you want to be able to hack into the Pentagon surveillance cameras, then the sky is the limit, because Computers DCs are INSANE. Then ask if you ever, ever need to be able to use that skill in combat, or in anything else the GM would call a "stressful situation." If the answer is "Yes," then strongly consider picking up the Skill Mastery feat. If it's something that will involve contested rolls (Bluff, Intimidate, etc.) or rolls where you can't take 10, even with Skill Mastery (like anything involving Concentration), then strongly consider the Second Chance feat, which will give you a reroll on a failed check (which amounts to about a +5 bonus, statistically speaking). If it's a skill you'll probably only use once every Presidential term, but when you need it, you really need it (Escape, for example), then consider Ultimate Effort. That Strike array needs work if you want it to actually, well, work. I would either give the Paralyze and Stun APs a flaw to bring their cost down to match the Strike, or else give the Strike an extra to bring its cost up to match the others. This is something the book builds never do, and one of the big reasons why they're so awful. If you are going to bring a +8 attack bonus with a rank 5 Stun or Paralyze, then you're bringing a PL6.5 (8 + 5 = 13, 13 / 2 = 6.5) attack to a PL10 fight, and you will get frustrated watching it not work. Not all your attacks have to be the same rank, but they should all average out to your PL. It's common, for example, for people to build PL10 Superman clones with Attack +6, STR 38 (+14), and a Blast 10 with Accurate 2 (+4 Attack) for the eye beams. So both his punches and eye blasts are PL10 attacks, but one is +6/+14 and the other is +10/+10. The books are full of garbage builds where someone has Attack +10 and Blast 10 (AP: Disintegrate 4), and they make my eyes bleed, because no one is going to fail a save against such a low-rank attack unless they're so low PL that they'd also fail a save against a stiff breeze. I would also question how much you'll get out of having such similar attacks like Stun and Paralyze arrayed together. I'd consider dropping one, using that 1PP to buy a rank of Luck instead, and then power-stunting during play if you need to. Extra Effort, Hero Points, and particularly the "Heroic Feat" and "Power Stunt" mechanics are the most important rules in this game, and also the most overlooked. The game is specifically designed so that you don't have to buy everything your PC can do all at once in advance. You can use Extra Effort to gain a new, temporary Alternate Power (or any other power feat), and you can burn a HP to temporarily gain a power or non-power feat. If you want to get reliable use out of that Acrobatic Bluff, then your Acrobatics skill bonus needs to be higher. Keep in mind that feinting is a standard action by default, and you can do it as a move action at -5. So if you want to be able to feint someone and then attack them in the same round, you either need to use Extra Effort to get a second standard action, or you need to feint at -5. And you need to have a decent chance of beating their Acrobatics or Sense Motive bonus. I wouldn't bother with Acrobatic Bluff on a character with less than +15 Acrobatics, minimum. And if you're not going to really invest in that Acrobatics bonus, then I question how much you'll get out of those points you're putting into DEX. It costs 2PP per +1. Reflex Save costs 1PP per +1. Initiative and Skills cost 0.25PP per +1 (1PP per 4 ranks). So you only even break even on DEX if you care about Reflex save and Initiative AND at least 3 Dex-based skills. EDIT: Looks like KD posted at the same time I did, so there's probably some overlap between the post above and mine.