Character Creation and House Rules
Wiki? What wiki?
No Book, No Problem!
Kids These Days
Your character may own a smartphone (phone plus internet, aka advanced phone, costs 2 equipment points) without paying for it with equipment points, however, that phone shall not function during any scene in which a character may be endangered and desire to use it. You should decide what the explanation is for the phone's failure at that time (dead battery, drop it, no signal, et cetera).
Character Backstory
Your character should be of a reasonable age for a freshman in high school. Beyond that, I don't care to restrict people's creativity excepting some level of congruence between their story and the mechanics on their character sheet. Additionally, the character should make sense for whichever school they are attending: a non-human or magic-user for the Baneberry Academy and a hunter-in-training for the Rainsford Insitute.
Commentary on the Content Limits of the Game
Your character may cuss. It should be appropriate to the situation and consist of a single swear word only. If you want your character to cuss at length, state that they are doing so and not what exactly they are saying. Racist, sexist, or otherwise prejudiced language for real world issues should be avoided at any reasonable cost - the same will not be true of prejudice against non-humans, which is a major theme of the game and serves as a stand-in for all of those other social problems.
Your character will almost certainly be wounded if they engage in combat. You may describe their status in reasonable terms, and may mention the presence of blood with an adjective or two but may not describe the injury in lurid details. Under no circumstances should you mention gore of any sort.
Your character might be naked at some point. You may mention the fact of it but may not describe any part of their body that would not be visible when fully dressed unless you are describing some feature that is not inherent, such as a tattoo or scar, including the absence of such when it would be expected. This allowance is invalid for tattoos or scars located on a sexualized body part.
Your character might get laid - they are teenagers, after all. You will refrain from describing any of the lurid details leading up to the event. You will also immediately fade to black after the clothes start to come off - at the latest! There will not be any detailed discussion of the particulars, even in PMs. This statute and the previous one, in particular, will NOT get warnings if violated - you will simply be banned unless I can immediately tell somehow that you goofed on accident (an event that has about the same odds as finding a snowball in the fires of hell itself).
On Languages and Speech
Many characters in this game are bilingual, or multilingual. Many of the players are not. In the interest of transparency and mutual entertainment, please write your characters speech in English, and denote the other language they are speaking in some fashion. I personally put [Language] tags in front of the coloured speech block, but anything will do. Single words or simple phrases in a language other than English may be used when appropriate.
Your speech should be coloured, including the quotation marks on each side of it, and you should stick to the same colour. If you decide to change it, perhaps because you've been using the same colour as someone else, either literally or merely close enough (for example, the various blues), choose a new colour and then stick to that one, please and thank you.
Red and orange may not be used for speech text. The latter is used for OOC text in an IC thread, and the former I reserve for important information during combat and other time-critical round-by-round situations.
Fragility of Life
The sheer difficulty of killing anybody in the default rules reduces the feeling of threat somewhat. In order to raise the stakes, non-player characters such as supporting cast and unnamed bystanders who suffer the incapacitated condition from anything even vaguely lethal will begin dying instead. The PCs might survive a battle they lose, but the people around them are likely to be a very different story.
Character Sheet Format
I don't care so long as I can clearly see how all of the points have been spent. I'm happy to post a sample if desired.
Power Level and Points
For the sake of sanity, all the player characters will have the same power point total and power level. This may require reconsideration as the game progresses but for now, we'll keep it this way.
CURRENT POWER LEVEL: 6
CURRENT POWER POINT TOTAL: 90
We will not be advancing in power level automatically based on accrued power points, rather, the power level increases by one for every year of school completed.
Banned Effects
Movement: Space Travel - Inappropriate to the game's themes.
Movement: Time Travel - Inappropriate to the game's themes and bloody obnoxious to adjudicate.
Senses: Postcognition without the uncontrolled flaw.
Senses: Precognition without the uncontrolled flaw.
Senses: Extended above 1 rank while in possession of relevant perception ranged attacks.
Senses: Penetrates Concealment while in possession of relevant perception ranged attacks.
Remote Sensing while in possession of relevant perception ranged attacks.
Quickness applicable to the Artificer, Inventor, or Ritualist advantages and sufficient to make them viable combat options.
Descriptors
I'd like to see descriptors explicitly called out on character sheets, even if they're relatively obvious. For example:
Medium (Inherited, Magical) [2]
Comprehend 1 [2/rank]
Spirits: understand
The divine and moral descriptors are not permitted without explicit approval. When in doubt and breaking the laws of physics, magic is probably what you're looking for.
Backstory, Narrow, and General Flexibility With Skills
You may make Expertise rolls suitable to your backstory without having any ranks in the skill, to represent the hobbyist nature of your knowledge.
An abnormally narrow Expertise skill can be taken for half the usual price (1/4 point per rank). This can be a skill that will almost never come up in the game (example: encyclopedic knowledge of Star Wars) or it can be an unusually narrow version of a more common Expertise specialty (example: taking Catholicism instead of Religion).
I'll allow related skills to functions as Expertise as well, with a less forgiving DC than usual. For example, you may make a Vehicles roll to repair a vehicle, at a more difficult DC than if you possessed Expertise: Mechanic (rendering more complex repairs almost impossible to actually pass the check). Another example might be using a Close Combat skill with a particular martial art to know something about the history of that art's development, rolling with Intelligence instead of Fighting.
Combat Posts
Begin your post with a fluff text describing the results of anything that was done to your character in the round since their last turn, followed by their actions for this turn. Do not detail the effects of your turn on another character. NOTICE: As the GM, I will freely ignore this restriction whenever it suits me, which will almost always be for the convenience of everyone involved.
Put any rolls you have made beneath the fluff text of your post in a new paragraph. Be sure to include any Save DCs and the effects of failing them in there as well. This text should be orange. You may place horizontal rules, spoilers, or whatever other formatting floats your boat as long as this standard is met.
Area Modifier Shapes
Large scale area effects in M&M3 get rather expensive, rather quickly, and several shapes from M&M2 are outright missing. Simultaneously, the perception shape is confusingly named and wide open for abuse so I'm removing it. Use the following shape options instead of those found in the SRD. Note that these shapes scale according to the rank of the effect they modify instead of the rank of the modifier itself - when 'pulling the punch' such an effect also covers a smaller area. The Area modifier can be taken more than once, choosing a different shape each time. The configuration of the shapes must be decided in advance and cannot be changed once set. For example, for a +2 cost per rank, a Cloud may be left at the far terminus of a Line.
- Burst: The effect has a circular area with a 5-foot radius per rank.
- Cloud: The effect fills a circular area with a 5-foot diameter (not radius) per rank and lingers in that area for one round after its duration expires (affecting any targets in the area normally during the additional round).
- Cone: The effect fills a cone with a length and width of 10 feet per rank.
- Explosion: The effect radiates out 10 feet per rank from a center point, much like a burst (above), except it loses one rank of effectiveness per 10 feet after the first (having its full effect in the first 10-foot radius, then minus 1 rank, minus 2, and so forth).
- Line: The effect fills a path 5 feet wide and 25 feet per rank long in a straight line.
- Shapeable: The effect fills one 5-foot cube per rank, which you can arrange in any shape you wish, so long as all of the cubes are touching.
- Trail: The effect fills a line up to 25 feet per rank behind you as you move, affecting anyone in the area you’ve moved through. Note the action required to use the effect does not change unless you also apply an Action modifier. So as a default, you have to take a standard action each round to use an attack effect.
Additional Area-Related Modifiers
Adjustable Area [Flat 1 point per rank]
You may decline to use the Increased Area modifiers on an effect when you use it. At the second rank, you may reduce the area of an effect to the size of a lower rank without reducing the effect DC. For Example, Damage 8 Area Cones are normally 80 feet long and wide, but with two ranks of this modifier, the user may choose to affect an area as small as 10 feet long and wide instead, or any multiple of 10 in between.
Increased Area [Flat 1 point per rank]
Increase the area increment of an effect one time per rank of this modifier. For example, a burst becomes 10 feet per rank of the effect with 1 rank of this modifier, 15 feet with 2 ranks, and so on. The rank of this modifier cannot exceed the rank of the effect it applies to.
Diminished Area [Flat -1 point]
Increase the effect ranks per increment of an area by one. For example, a burst becomes a 5-foot radius for every 2 ranks of the effect.
Communication Is Clunky
I don't like the way communication effects scale; it's just clunky and overpriced at the first rank. Communication is now 1 point per rank like it was in M&M2 and uses an Extended Range column on the Ranks and Measures Chart (see below). By the way, communications equipment actually has to use this effect instead of jumping straight to a mile for one equipment point.
Speaking of Extended Ranges
It's back, and several effects use it. Communication, Remote Sensing, and Teleport with the Extended modifier. NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT THE M&M2 CHART!
RANK MASS TIME DISTANCE VOLUME EXTENDED
0 50 lbs. 6 seconds 30 feet 1 cft. 300 feet
1 100 lbs. 12 seconds 60 feet 2 cft. 660 feet
2 200 lbs. 30 seconds 120 feet 4 cft. 1,320 feet
3 400 lbs. 1 minute 250 feet 8 cft. 2,640 feet (1/2 mile)
4 800 lbs. 2 minutes 500 feet 15 cft. 5,280 feet (1 mile)
5 1,600 lbs. 4 minutes 900 feet 30 cft. 5 miles
6 3,200 lbs. 8 minutes 1,800 feet 60 cft. 15 miles
7 3 tons 15 minutes 1/2 mile 125 cft. 50 miles
8 6 tons 30 minutes 1 mile 250 cft. 100 miles
9 12 tons 1 hour 2 miles 500 cft. 1,000 miles
10 25 tons 2 hours 4 miles 1,000 cft. Same continent
11 50 tons 4 hours 8 miles 2,000 cft. Neighboring continent
12 100 tons 8 hours 16 miles 4,000 cft. Same planet
13 200 tons 16 hours 30 miles 8,000 cft. Orbiting the planet
14 400 tons 1 day 60 miles 15,000 cft. Neighboring planet
15 800 tons 2 days 120 miles 32,000 cft. Same starsystem
16 1,600 tons 4 days 250 miles 65,000 cft. Neighboring starsystem
17 3.2 ktons 1 week 500 miles 125,000 cft. Same galaxy
18 6 ktons 2 weeks 1,000 miles 250,000 cft. Neighboring galaxy
19 12 ktons 1 month 2,000 miles 500,000 cft. Same galaxy cluster
20 25 ktons 2 months 4,000 miles 1 million cft. Literally anywhere
This message was last edited by the GM at 23:26, Tue 10 Sept 2019.
