A Wide Array of Powers

Mutants & Masterminds 2e has over a hundred powers, from Absorption to Weather Control (Zebra Control had to be left out of the final draft). Here we present a just small sample of what you'll find in Chapter 5 of the new rulebook.

(Alternate) Form

Effect: Alteration
Action: Free
Range: Personal
Duration: Varies
Cost: 5 points per rank

You can exist in a form other than mere flesh and blood, giving you additional capabilities. It requires a free action to change into or out of your Alternate Form and you can do so once per round.

You have 5 power points per Alternate Form rank to apply to powers related to your form. Once you choose your Alternate Form’s capabilities, they are fixed and do not change. No Alternate Form power can have a rank greater than your Alternate Form rank. Your non-Instant Alternate Form powers must all have the same duration, which determines your Alternate Form’s duration.

• Energy: You are made up of energy, such as fire or electricity. Apply your points to Blast, Flight, Immunity, Insubstantial 3, Strike (Aura), and Teleport (Medium –1).
• Gaseous: You are a cloud of gas, like fog or mist. Apply your points to Flight, Immunity, Insubstantial 2, and Suffocate.
• Ghost: You are incorporeal and invisible, largely unaffected by the physical world. Apply your points to Concealment, Flight, Immunity, and Insubstantial 4.
• Liquid: You are made up of liquid (such as water) apply your points to Blast, Concealment (Limited to underwater –1), Elongation, Immunity, Insubstantial 1, Suffocate, and Swimming.
• Particulate: Your body is composed of a granular or particulate substance like sand, dust, salt, and so forth. Apply your points to Blast, Elongation, Immunity, Insubstantial 1, Strike, and Super-Movement (slithering).
• Shadow: You transform into a living shadow. Apply your points to Concealment (visual, Limited to areas of shadow –1), Fatigue (chilling touch), Immunity, Insubstantial 4, and Super-Movement (slithering, wall-crawling).
• Solid: You are made up of a hard substance like stone or metal. Apply your points to Density, Immunity, and Protection.
• Swarm: Your "body" is actually thousands of other tiny creatures: insects, worms, even little robots. Apply your points to Blast, Flight, Immunity, Insubstantial 2, Strike, and Super-Movement (slithering, wall-crawling).
• Two-Dimensional: You can flatten yourself to become almost infinitely thin. Apply your points to Concealment (visual, Limited to one side –1), Insubstantial 1 (for slipping through narrow spaces), Strike (Penetrating), and Super-Movement (slithering).

Example: Kate is playing Nereid, who has the power to transform into water. She has Alternate Form 6. Kate assigns the 30 power points from Nereid’s Alternate Form as follows: Insubstantial 1 (5 points), Concealment 4 (visual, Limited to underwater –1, 4 points), Immunity 9 (life support, Sustained +0, 9 points), Swimming 3 (3 points), and Suffocate 4 (8 points). She puts the remaining point into the Environmental Adaptation (underwater) feat with the GM’s permission. Since all her non-instant powers are sustained, her Alternate Form has a sustained duration as well.

Power Feats

• Alternate Power: Since you can only exist in one alternate form at a time, you can take any other alternate form with an equal or lesser cost as an Alternate Power feat of the first (switching between forms as a free action once per round).

Animate Objects

Type: General
Action: Standard
Range: Ranged
Duration: Sustained
Cost: 3 points per rank

You can imbue objects with animation and a semblance of life, making them constructs under your control. Create the object as a construct with (rank x 15) total power points, or see Chapter 11 for some sample constructs. Constructs are subject to the campaign’s power level limits. The object gains movement according to its form: statues can get up and walk, for example, rugs can crawl, balls roll, cars drive, etc.

Power Feats

• Progression: Each time you apply this feat, move the total number of objects you can animate at once one step up the Progression table (2, 5, 10, etc.). You can still only animate one object per standard action.

Extras

• Additional Type (+1/+2): You can animate things other than solid objects. Choose one of the following: gases (including air), images (pictures, including drawings, paintings, and photographs), liquids (including water), and shadows. For a +2 modifier you can animate all of these other types of things. You are still limited to animating things with a power level no greater than your power rank and power points no greater than your rank x 15. Alternately, you can substitute an additional type for solid objects for a +0 modifier, making your power into Animate Images or Animate Shadows, for example.
• Horde (+1): You can animate your maximum number of objects with one standard action. You must have the Progression power feat to take this extra.

Flaws

• Limited (–1): You can only animate one type of object, such as corpses (creating zombies), machines, natural earth and stone, and so forth.

Emotion Control

Effect: Mental
Action: Standard
Range: Perception
Duration: Sustained (lasting)
Saving Throw: Will
Cost: 2 points per rank

You can instill different emotions in your target, who makes a Will save to resist. You choose the object of the emotion. So you decide what the target loves, hates, fears, and so forth. You can produce the following emotional effects:

• Calm: The subject adopts an indifferent attitude and does not feel any strong emotion. Calm can counter any of the other emotion effects and they may counter it.
• Despair: The subject is shaken, suffering a –2 on attack rolls, defense, and checks. Failure by 10 or more means the target is overcome with hopelessness; helpless and unable to take any actions.
• Fear: The subject is shaken, suffering a –2 on attack rolls, defense, and checks. Failure by 5 or more means the subject is frightened and flees from the source of the fear (specified by the user) as quickly as possible. Failure by 10 or more means the subject is panicked, dropping any held items and fleeing blindly from the source of the fear. A panicked subject unable to flee cowers and does not attack.
• Hate: The subject immediately becomes unfriendly. If the save fails by 5 or more, the subject’s attitude becomes hostile. Hate counters and is countered by love.
• Hope: The subject feels no fear or despair. Hope counters those emotions and similar effects and is countered by them in return.
• Love: The subject’s attitude becomes friendly. If the save fails by 5 or more, the subject’s attitude becomes helpful. If it fails by 10 or more, the subject becomes fanatical. Love can counter despair, fear, and hate and they may counter it.

Power Feats

• Mind Blank: Targets don’t remember time under your Emotion Control; their memory of that time is blank.

Flaws

• Limited—one emotion (–1): You can only cause one of the listed emotional effects, not any of them.
• Sense-Dependent (–1): Your Emotion Control works through a target’s senses. Examples include eye contact (visual), music (auditory), or pheromones (olfactory).

Invisibility

Effect: Sensory
Action: Free
Range: Personal
Duration: Sustained
Cost: 4 or 8 points

You can become invisible at will. This gives you total concealment from normal vision. For double cost (8 points) you gain total concealment from all visual senses.

Nauseate

Effect: Attack
Action: Standard
Range: Touch
Duration: Instant (lasting)
Saving Throw: Fortitude
Cost: 2 points per rank

You can inflict weakness on a target. You may do so through nausea, momentary illness, pain, or even extreme pleasure. You must touch the target, who makes a Fortitude saving throw. If the save fails, the target is sickened, suffering a –2 penalty on all attack rolls and checks. If the save fails by 5 or more, or on a second successful use of the power, the target is nauseated, unable to do anything other than take a single move action each round. If the save fails by 10 or more, or on a third successful use of the power, the target is helpless. The victim gets a new saving throw each round to recover from the effects, with a +1 bonus for each previous save.

Flaws

• Sicken (–1): Your power cannot inflict more than a sickened result.

Quickness

Effect: General
Action: Free
Range: Personal
Duration: Continuous
Cost: 1 point per rank

You can perform routine tasks quickly. For purposes of this effect a "routine task" is one where you can take 20 on the check. At rank 1 you perform such tasks at twice normal speed (x2). Each additional rank moves your speed one step up the Progression table (x5, x10, x25, and so forth). At rank 20, you perform routine tasks at 5 million times normal speed! Tasks where you cannot take 20 (including combat actions) are unaffected by Quickness, nor is movement speed.

You can take 20 normally using Quickness and, if your power rank is high enough, you may be able to take 20 on a task in a single standard action (3 seconds) or less. If you can perform a task in less than a second, the GM may choose to treat that task as a free action for you (although the GM can still limit the number of free actions you can accomplish in a round as usual). Among other things, this allows you to do things like take 20 on a Disable Device check by trying all possible combinations of a lock at great speed, or take 20 on a Knowledge check by reading all available research materials in an instant.

Flaws

• One Type (–1): Your Quickness applies to only physical or mental tasks, not both.
• One Task (–2): Your Quickness applies to only one particular task, such as reading, mathematical calculations, and so forth.

Teleport

Effect: Movement
Action: Move
Range: Personal
Duration: Instant
Cost: 2 points per rank

You can move instantly from place to place without crossing the distance in between. You can teleport yourself and up to 100 lbs. of additional mass a distance of (power rank x 100) feet as a move action. Unwilling passengers get a Reflex save (DC 10 + power rank) to avoid being taken along.

At rank 3 and above, you can also take a full action and teleport the distance shown on the Extended Range Table instead, but you lose your dodge bonus for one round after you arrive at your destination due to disorientation. You can only teleport to places you can accurately sense or know especially well (in the GM’s judgment). You retain your facing and relative velocity when you teleport. So if you are falling, for example, when you teleport, you are still falling at the same speed when you arrive at your destination.

Power Feats

• Change Direction: You can change your direction or orientation after a teleport.
• Change Velocity: You can teleport "at rest" to your destination. Among other things, this means you can teleport out of a fall and suffer no damage.
• Easy: You are not disoriented when making full round teleports; you retain your dodge bonus after doing so.
• Progression: You increase the mass you can carry with you when you teleport. Each additional time you take this stunt, it moves your maximum "cargo" one step up the Progression Table (x 2, x 5, x 10, etc.).
• Turnabout: You can teleport, take a standard action, and teleport back to your starting point in a single round, so long as the total distance doesn’t exceed your Teleport range. This is Teleport’s version of the Move-by Action feat.

Extras

• Accurate (+1): You don’t need to be able to accurately sense your destination to teleport there, just be able to generally describe it, such as "inside the capitol building lobby" or "atop the Goodman Building’s roof."
• Portal (+2): You open a portal or gateway between two points as a free action. The portal is 5 ft. by 5. ft. in size. Anyone stepping through (a move action) is transported. The portal remains open as long as you concentrate. You can apply Progression feats to increase the size of your portal.

Flaws

• Long-Range (–1): You can only teleport your extended range distance as a full-round action. You can’t make ranged teleports as a move action.
• Medium (–1): You require a medium for your teleportation, such as electrical or telephone wires, root structures, waterways, shadows, flames, mirrors, and so forth. You can only teleport from and to locations where your medium exists.
• Short-Range (–1): You can’t make extended range teleports.

Next: The power preview continues with a look at power feats, including the Alternate Power power feat and the arrays of powers you can create with it!