Introduction to... Ultimate Power
Welcome to Ultimate Power! The sourcebook offers an expanded look at powers for the Mutants & Masterminds roleplaying game, including how to mix-and-match a variety of basic power effects to create virtually any power you might want to include in the game.
Superhuman powers are a cornerstone of comic book superheroes, and have been ever since the first true costumed hero debuted in Action Comics #1 in 1938. Since then, comic book heroes have possessed virtually every power under the sun, from the most obscure and insignificant to the most powerful and universe-shaking abilities imaginable.
Ultimate Power seeks to add to the basic system of super-powers available in Mutants & Masterminds to allow the game to truly capture any sort of comic book hero or villain. It also refines rules for handling powers, clarifies and expands existing ones, and offers tools for creating your own unique abilities.
Overview
Ultimate Power is divided into three main sections dealing with powers in Mutants & Masterminds:
Chapter 1: How Powers Work describes the basic components of powers and how powers work in the context of the game.
Chapter 2: Power Creation describes the basic building blocks of powers in the game: what they do and how much they cost, along with how to modify and combine them to create entirely new powers.
Chapter 3: Powers puts the principles from Chapter 2 into practice, providing numerous pre-fabricated powers using a variety of effects, modifiers, and power feats. You can use the powers from this chapter as they are or further modify them to suit a particular character or concept.
How to Use This Book
The primary purpose of Ultimate Power is inspiration: this book contains hundreds of super-powers with different modifiers, power stunts, and variants, along with giving you the tools for creating your own unique powers.
Descriptions of power effects and modifiers have expanded, hopefully clarifying how they work and what you can do with them. Likewise, the number of sample powers has increased, giving you more examples of how to create your own powers as well as ready-to-use traits you can simply pick and choose for your Mutants & Masterminds characters.
Ultimate Power also introduces power structures formally into the game: ways of organizing effects into different powers. These already exist in the core rules (as Arrays, Variables, and so forth); but this book gives them a formal category of their own and looks at them in more detail, making it even easier to handle different power structures in play.
There's a lot of material in this book, but don't let it overwhelm you. The easiest approach is to go through step-by-step: review the effects in Chapter 2, followed by the various power feats, modifiers, and drawbacks. Take a look at how they're all put together into powers at the end of the chapter. Then look through the various powers in Chapter 3. You'll find many of them familiar from the core Mutants & Masterminds rules, simply expanded with more detail. Others are completely new; look them over to get a feel for what they do.
In Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, you'll find a great many options. In particular, you'll see various Alternate Power feats listed for the powers in Chapter 3. Don't feel constrained by these lists; they're by no means the only possible Alternate Powers for those traits, just the most common ones. Likewise, while a great many modifiers are discussed with each effect or power, they aren't necessarily the only ones that can apply. Generally, if a particular modifier isn't discussed, you can assume it applies to that effect just like any other. Use the guidelines given in the modifier's description in Chapter 2.
What This Book Is Not
While Ultimate Power is intended to be a comprehensive guide to powers in Mutants & Masterminds, there are a number of things specifically not included in this book:
First, apart from discussion of the Device power structure, Ultimate Power does not include devices or equipment of any kind. It's not a catalog of super-science technology or magical artifacts (which warrant books of their own). You can certainly use the guidelines in this book to create such things, but you won't find any worked examples in its pages.
Second, Ultimate Power doesn't go into depth on systems of magic and mysticism, apart from an expanded write-up of the Magic power. Such a detailed treatment of magic also warrants its own book.
Ultimate Power only addresses powers; it does not provide detailed treatments of skills or feats, or of characters based primarily on them. Its effect guidelines can be useful in terms of creating new feats (using the Powers As Feats guidelines, see Mastermind's Manual, page 36), but otherwise, all the material in this book is related solely to powers.
Finally, Ultimate Power is not the last word on powers in Mutants & Masterminds. That authority rests solely with the Gamemaster, who decides which (if any) of the powers in this book should be included in the game, how they're acquired, and ultimately how they work. Just because a particular power is listed in this book doesn't mean players have carte blanche to give it to their characters. If the GM objects, then the "official" rules say the GM is always right.
As always, keep Rule Number One (see Rule Number One, M&M, page 7) in mind when addressing any issues raised by the material in this book: Do what is the most fun for your game! Don't let any published set of guidelines tie your hands, either limiting what you want to do in your game or forcing you to do or include something you'd rather not. The Ultimate Power is yours.
