Mastermind’s Manual Design Journal: Characteristics

A Mutants & Masterminds character is more than just a collection of abilities, skills, feats, and powers, and Chapter 6 of the Mastermind’s Manual looks at qualities beyond those traits, particularly extra effort and hero points.

Concentrating on Extra Effort

Normally, extra effort requires no, well, effort to use. The player simply declares the character is using extra effort and the character automatically gains the bonus as well as suffering the fatigue (or spends a hero point to overcome the fatigue condition). Alternately, the Gamemaster may require players to make Concentration checks to allow their characters to use extra effort. The Difficulty Class of the Concentration check should be at least 15, with a successful check allowing a normal use of extra effort. A failed check means no extra effort but also no fatigue. The Concentration check itself is a reaction. This option not only encourages characters to develop Concentration but also reflects how important a hero’s concentration is in some comic book stories. This option makes extra effort a bit less dependable, so players may rely on it less. Characters cannot take 10 or take 20 on the Concentration check, since extra effort is by definition not a "routine" check.

Extraordinary Effort

Extra effort and hero points allow characters to accomplish a lot. However, there are those times when even extra effort isn’t enough and extraordinary effort is called for. In these cases, you may wish to use the following option.

Once per adventure (more or less at the GM’s discretion) a player can decide to use extraordinary effort. The player may spend any or all of the character’s remaining hero points as well as up to three fatigue results (which renders a normal character unconscious). These can apply to any of their normal uses, and the benefits stack. So a hero who uses extraordinary effort, expending three hero points and suffering two fatigue results, can apply five levels of extra effort to a task. The player cannot spend hero points (if there are any remaining) to offset the fatigue from extraordinary effort.

Hero Points & Drawbacks

One difficulty heroes have to overcome is their drawbacks. To reflect this, the GM may wish to adopt the following option. When taking a drawback for a character, the player may choose between either the drawback’s bonus power points, or an additional hero point every time the drawback enters play (above and beyond any other hero points the character might earn from circumstances). In effect, you’re handing the GM a weapon to use against your character in exchange for the understanding that you get hero points when the GM takes advantage of your character’s weakness.

Example: A hero is Vulnerable to Fire, and the player chooses not to give the hero any additional power points for that drawback. Any time the hero faces an opponent with fire powers, or has to overcome a challenge involving fire, the hero gets a hero point. If a villain uses a flame blast to defeat the hero and put him in a flaming death-trap, that’s four hero points (one for defeat, one for the death-trap, and one for each use of the fire Weakness).

Generally, multiple invocations of a drawback must occur over separate encounters for them to count for hero points: you don’t get a hero point for each attack an opponent makes using your Vulnerability, for example, just for it being in that particular encounter.

This option may encourage players to give their heroes drawbacks, although the GM should be careful in not allowing too many; a maximum limit of the campaign’s power level in drawbacks is reasonable.