Weather Conditions

The M&M Handbook does a good job talking about Extreme Heat/Cold, Various Levels of Gravity, and Atmospheric Conditions (including Vacuum). But what about your other weather Effects?

NATURAL WEATHER:

Winds: Winds can range from negligible to hurricane force. They interfere with your ability to move around, disburse gasses, and can even knock you over.

Wind Force	Wind Speed	Ranged Attacks	STR DC
Light	10 mph		-
Moderate	20 mph		-
Strong	30 mph	-2/-	0
Severe	50 mph	-4/-	5
Windstorm	75 mph	impossible/-2	10
Hurricane	175 mph	impossible/-4	15
Tornado	300 mph	impossible/impossible	20

Ranged Attacks- Penalty for making ranged attacks with physical weapons, including bows, guns, go in the first column. The second number is the penalty for using energy weapons such as blasts or ray guns. Wind generally doesn't affect these but as the speeds increase the battering of the wind against yourself and body makes it difficult to see or aim such weapons.

STR DC: The DC to move through the wind for a medium creature. Get -4 to your check for each size below medium and +4 to each size above medium. Pass the check to move at 1/2 speed against the wind. Fail and you are checked, unable to make forward movement. Fail by 5 or more and you are knocked prone by the force of the wind. Fail by 10 or more and you are blown away by the force of the wind. Flying creatures are automatically treated as if they failed by 1 step further, and must succeed by 5 or more to make any forward progress. Gaseous creatures would automatically fail the save with the worst possible result regardless of size. Incorporeal creatures would not be affected.

The noise of the winds creates a penalty to sound based and smell based perception checks equal to the strength DC.

On top of the strength of the wind, winds of strong or more can cause flying debris. Strong would include papers and other light objects, where tornadoes could include cars or creatures. Every round spend with flying debris would impose a penalty on visual perception checks equal to the strength DC of the wind- which may make perception attacks difficult. It would also cause damage to those caught within- PL equal to the STR DC (half damage with a reflex save at same PL)- nonlethal damage.

Instead of flying debris, there may be a dust or water involved, which makes the same perception penalties, but no direct damage in the winds.

Precipitation

Rain or Snow is interesting as background. Once it becomes severe, it can cause further problems.

Heavy Rain can cause a penalty to all perception checks as it's loud, obscures vision, and washes away scent.

Precipitation	Perception
Light	0
Moderate	-2
Strong	-4
Severe	-8
Monsoon	-10
Downpour	-15

In addition, rain and snow can cause ground effects from floods or snow-cover, and usually accompany winds. Snow usually accompanies low temperature penalties. Freezing rain or ice storms are rain effects with extreme low temperatures and probably cause ice effects on the ground. They can also accompany darkness quite well.

Hail: Hail is another weather event- treat it as a damaging aura, setting the PL based on the severity of the hail, with damage checks ranging to every minute to every round depending on the severity of the hail.

Fog: Fog usually has no wind, and acts simply as a physical obscurement effect for visual. Thick fogs give partial concealment within 5' and full concealment beyond that.  If it's a light fog, it probably just imposes a -5 penalty to perception checks and gives partial concealment to people within 30', full beyond that.

Thunder: Random thunder during rain can create a temporary audible obscure effect, and cause sound based powers a chance to fail (if the user must hear himself), probably a 20% fail chance, and sense dependent sound effects to fail altogether. Alternately it could cause a -4 to -20 penalty to audio perception checks depending on severity.

Lightning: Lightning can temporarily light the sky against darkness, but if it strikes a character, treat it as a blast attack- base PL 10, but can be more powerful if you wish, reflex half. A character probably has only a 1 in 20 chance of being targeted by lightning, but a character with lots of metal (or made of metal) might increase these odds to 1 in 10 during severe lightning storms.

Ground Conditions

Cluttered: This could include deep snow, deep leaves, going through garbage, floods, or any other surface that won't support your weight and is about leg-deep. Walking would be at normal speed, but any acrobatic or reflex checks would be at -4. Deeper conditions could impose further penalties and decrease movement speed. Some materials conduct electricity and may make certain attacks more likely to succeed. Vehicles could suffer -4 to -20 or could become stuck in snow, mud, or water and unable to operate at all.

Slippery: Whether it's oil or icy, slippery conditions would force a character to make an acrobatics check if he moves faster than half his speed or fall over. (Vehicles get a -20 to drive checks to avoid losing control- which can be counteracted by driving very slow). Skating is possible to increase speed but uphill travel could be difficult or impossible without special tools.

Earthquake: An earthquake could cause problems even when standing still- or destroy structures around you. GM should assign a PL to the earthquake, anyone touching the ground must reflex save against the PL or fall prone. Buildings and structures anchored to the land must toughness save or take damage, with damaging consequences to creatures near or inside them.

Abnormal Weather

Instead of statting out each- I threw together some abnormal weather conditions you might consider to add flavor to your campaign, travel, or battles.

- Lava Flow
- Overgrown with vegetable matter (vines)
- Raining Fire and Brimstone, or animals (Frogs, Cats and Dogs)
- Sharknado/ Arachnoquake
- Wild Magic / Power Granting / Dead Magic zones or fog
- Gravitational or Magnetic anomalies
- Acidic/Poisonous/Chemical Rains or Fogs
- Meteor Swarm or Raining Debris of some kind.
- Avalanches
- Tsunamis
- Steam Guyser
-Noise Pollution (bull horns, loud music, concerts, etc)
- Columns of Fire (aliens from independence day, earth terraforming, divine retribution)
- Radiation or Nuclear Fallout
-Volcanic Eruption/ Clouds of Ash


Spice up the campaign with a little bit of weather!

Potions

I've wanted to play an alchemist for some time- but there isn't solid rules for creating magical objects.
So we'll look right now at the artificer feat.

Note: Quickness can increase the design check. A -2 flaw on quickness allows it to apply to one task. (Such as designing). That means that for 3PP, you can get a rank 9 design quickness (1000x). That means up to 16 PP can be designed in 1 minute. You'll also need the 1 point artificer feat. Quickness cannot increase the crafting feat time.

Personally, I would say that because you're creating the same items over and over, you would probably get a +5 on the design check, allowing you to design in 1/2 the time for free, though I can assume you could skip the design check altogether. The craft check would be unaffected.

So below are a few pre-made potions. The design check uses Knowledge(arcane lore), and the craft check uses Craft(chemical). Remember, you can half the time of both checks with a +5 to the check.

Potion of Invisibility(8pp) Checks: 18/23
Design Check: (8 hour/4 hour)
Craft Check:  (32 hour/16 hour)

Potion of Flight (PL3- 50mph, 6pp) Checks 16/21
Design: 6 hour/3 hour
Craft: 24 hour/ 12 hour

Potion of Super-Movement (any one-2pp) Checks 12/17
Design: 2 hours / 1 hour
Craft: 8 hour/ 4 hours

Potion of Super-Senses (up to 4 pp) Checks 14/19
Design: 4 hours/ 2 hours
Craft: 16 hours/8 hours


Alternately- you can PURCHASE single use potions. Spend Equipment Points equal to 1/4 their PP cost for one dose. (If GM says there's a potion make available)

The Boss Battle

So here you are- the boss battle. You roll his first toughness save and -oops, he's dead!

How can you liven up your boss battle?

First, see the combat complications and minion tactics for ways you can make the combat itself more difficult or utilize minions to provide as much chaos as possible. Also try unkillable enemies for enemies you can't just beat up.

But sometimes you do need to beat up the boss, and you don't want him to just go down.

• Power Level: Well the simplest way to drag out the fight is to make the boss a higher power level than the party, or by simply making him immune to the party's favorite tactics. While this can stretch out a combat, it usually comes down to team attacks or playing "mother may I" in order to beat the boss.
• Hero Points: Well, that's what they're for, right? Give out hero points to give the boss a few extra saving throws? You could give him second chance as an alternative, at least giving him a better chance of not dropping all at once- but still, you're just skirting their powers.
• Broken Tactics: Like the entry here, but you can have the boss use the broken tactics himself.
• Transformation: Give it to Dragon Ball Z to really show you how to drag a boss battle out for half a season. Frieza is a great example. The guy had like 4 different boss forms, and the destruction of each form let out the next. Video games use this sometimes too, no matter how much damage you do to a boss, it merely brings on his next form, which could be justified by having triggered powers, or just a nifty cut scene. This way you can also play like two or three different bosses in one, each time raising the stakes until he comes crashing down in party victory. This could also include him whistling and calling in cohorts, or him being a simulacrum you defeat before the real boss.

Frieza has to be killed like 4 times!

• Multiple Bosses: For some reason, this gets overlooked sometimes- but if there's no ONE boss, then all the PCs won't tend to beat up on him all the time. If you've got a team of bosses, each with different types of powers and unique in their own right, the party won't necessarily look at one as the "boss" and they can do interesting things in the combat and not drop at once.

Who's the boss here?

• Multiple Actions: Maybe the boss can take multiple actions to make him more dangerous. There are ways in game to justify this, from having his armor be a separate "creature" or having him have multiple personalities schismed in his head, each with it's own actions.
• Ablative: The opposite of transformation, and perhaps a subset of multiple bosses or multiple actions, but pieces of the boss get stripped away during the combat, perhaps making him weaker (or not), but showing progress as you fight him. Perhaps his arms fall off during combat, rendering him unable to use certain powers, or you beat down his force field, or the boss is a hydra who is losing heads- the boss can't be killed straight out, but you can rip pieces off him until he's completely beaten.

Just when you thought you won- he's still fighting

• The Boss isn't the challenge: Sometimes the obvious boss isn't the true target. Maybe he's possessed by an amulet or his sword or something, and destroying it breaks the spell. Or perhaps you need to destroy his doomsday machine, and destroying him isn't really important at all.

Nicholas isn't the real villain- it's his Book!

• You must first fight the Dragon: There are multiple bad guys- but instead of fighting them all at once, you fight them in sequence, with several boss battles in a row. Luke fights Vader before the battle with the Emperor, The Turtles fight the Foot Clan before the Shredder, and when you get to the end of Final Fantasy VI, you fight a series of bosses on the way up Kefka's tower before fighting the three statues, then Kefka himself (who also has multiple bosses, multiple forms- some with the ablative quality). In many cases, the main boss is not able to be challenged until his dragon is destroyed.

Okay, first you'll fight Bebop and Rocksteady, then Krang will come fight you- then you fight Shredder.

Mission Rewards

So you've gotten to the end of the mission. How do you reward your players without just giving them power points? Is everything about getting that next ability? Here are some suggestions for how to reward your players without handing out the PP.

Equipment Points- Maybe it's a bag of reward money, but by handing out equipment points, you allow the character to buy weapons, items, cars, and property. Wealth is easily given out in other games, why not in mutants?

Power Components- Maybe it's a consumable item that emulates extra effort, maybe it's a focus that treats one special power as one level higher, but this way you can give out special one time items as a reward.

Artifacts- Call it a device, an artifact, or whatever, but pass out a permanent magical item to the players. Maybe it's Excalibur, maybe the Shield of Captain America- but it's basically a specific power that a given hero can hold on to as needed.

Benefits- Like the benefit feat. Maybe they gain special security clearance, or some kind of special contact or friends to help them overcome challenges in the future.

Fame/Infamy- Just being known in the field for your good or evil actions. Maybe it helps in future intimidate or diplomacy checks if you are super famous.

Skills- Maybe the character has learned something in his adventures that translated directly into skill points rather than just base power points. Maybe they gained some special knowledge of arcana or technology.

Unlocking Character Options- Maybe they are now allowed to take special blood magic powers, or wild magic, or they are now allowed to purchase extra powers when they previously were not able to.

Alternate Rule: Power Lock

POWER LOCK

 

In comics, sometimes two powers collide in a brilliant display of energy. This, is power lock.

This is an alternate rule which can be used in place of countering powers. Two parties on the same initiative that attack each other with a powers that could realistically counter each other. Fire and ice, even fire and fire. The two collide and the people are in power lock.

Each Round you are in power lock, you can move as normal, but only in 5 feet increments. You can strafe, go backwards, or go forwards (usually in an attempt to find cover). If you get behind cover, the power lock ends and the opponant's power hits the cover, which takes damage as normal from the effect.

As a standard action, you can attempt to overpower your opponent. Make an opposed power level check between your two powers. Victory means your opponent gets a -1 to his power's power level for the duration of the power lock, or you get +1 (up to double the original value). Falure means that the opponent gets either +1 to his PL or -1 to your PL. One one of the powers reach zero, the loser takes the full force of the modified power level attack (automatically hits), which could be up to double the original power level. A natural 1 by either player automatically lowers their PL by 1 (in additional). A natural 20 by either player automatically lowers their opponent's PL by 1 (additional). So if you roll nat 1 and your opponent rolls nat 20, your PL is -2, and then they win, so they can apply an additional -1 to you or +1 to themselves.

You can instead, as a standard action, withdraw from the contest, taking the full force of the opponent's power, which automatically hits.

This can be used with ranged powers or perception powers.

Perception powers can go in power lock also.

Extra effort can be used to increase your PL by 2 for the duration of the combat, and may be used multiple times (once per round), just as hero points can allow for a reroll of the opposed power check. You may want to allow for knockback rules for the defeated opponent for added flavor.

50 Mission Ideas

1. A villain is stealing the powers from other Supers
2. A man has the power to create special power-nullifying drugs and the government wants him to help create a "cure"
3. The Christian apocalypse happens precisely as described in the book of revelations.
4. Special religious artifacts must be taken from the vaults in the catacombs below the Vatican.
5. Mutant terrorists take over a small third world country, and the PCs must support their hostile take over and legitimize it by getting other nations to officially recognize them or else risk a horrible PR catastrophe.
6. Morpheous the god of dreams is hijacked causing nightmares everywhere. The heroes must enter the dream world to save the god of dreams.
7. Villains seek the Necronomican so they can raise an undead army.
8. The PCs must battle the jabberwocky beneath the Tum-Tum tree, and battle the Bandersnatch and the Jub Jub Bird.
9. The hatian solendon is one of few venomus mammals on the earth. It's bite can nullify powers. The heroes must either liberate the creatures from a government lab or get some for further testing.
10. A Jurassic park is opened. The PCs must capture a live T-rex so it can have a medical procedure done.
11. A genetic engineering company is trying to create the perfect mimic.
12. A company creates a precognitive device and starts murdering other precogs to prevent their meddling in its version of the future.
13. The PCs must fight ancient clockwork robots constructed by Ben Franklin as the unravel a mystery surrounding the American revolution.
14. People are dying in strange circumstances, like in Final Destination. Can the PCs defeat a force of nature?
15. A corporation becomes self aware, like a malevolent presence, and controls its board members by causing mysterious accidents or suicide.
16. A brain in a jar is taking control of people's minds so that it can take multiple mental actions per round and become undefeatable.
17. An alchemist creates a homunculus using the universal solvent, but it goes berserk and is melting everything.
18. PCs must go into deep space to prevent genocide on a distant planet
19. The party must deliver a subpoena to a genie charged of twisting the wishes in a malevolent fashion.
20. A helicopter transporting dangerous chemicals crashed over a zoo causing mutated animals to escape and wreak havoc
21. A bomb goes of at a precog convention- why didn't they see it coming?
22. The heroes are shrunk by superintelligent roaches for being in their territory, can they get back to their size before the house is sprayed with deadly chemicals?
23. An angry telekinetic with road rage is throwing cars around haphazardly while driving
24. A villain sends the PCs into books, causing them to skip into worlds based on other roleplaying systems, such as D&D or shadowrun or call of cthulhu
25. A giant space monster is going to crash into the world. Only cthulhu can defeat it, but it will then eat the people of the world.
26. The party is present at a bank when people try to rob it
27. A goth band is causing teen suicide with its music. A huge concern threatens all the teens in the city. Only a cosmic battle of the bands with happy pop star music can weaken them.
28. Someone is stealing beauty from models
29. A group of scientologists attempt to resurrect L Ron Hubbard
30. Mormans gain powers after a meteor strikes Utah
31. Heroes are brought to internet world after an AI becomes self aware
32. Terrorists try to blow up the swiss particle accelerator
33. The yakuza are searching for Pandora's box, a box which can trap anything inside
34. The devil is trading super powers in exchange for people's souls
35. The PCs are hired to be security at a girls birthday party- where a supervillain attacks
36. A precog is listening to the future and stealing songs as his own.
37. PCs have their memory wiped and don't know what happened
38. The PCs are cloned and the clones are sent to a slave camp off-world. Can their clones escape? If so- they find their true selves at home!
39. The heroes have to help deliver baby dragon eggs over the ocean- but must pass through a dangerous area of mists where pirates frequent.
40. Psychos seize santa's workshop, and only the heroes can save Christmas
41. The mad geologist puts a bowl of stone around the city while the mad meteorologist causes rains to flood the entire city. Can the heros stop them.
42. A league of evil mad scientist exists, with a villain from every field of study (the mad paleontologist, the mad botanist, etc). Their henchmen are mad grad students and mad lab assistants. Each has powers based on his field.
43. A time portal to exactly 300 years in the past exists in a remote area, where a local hunter accidentially affects history so that native americans defeat white settlers. He constantly visits the anomaly causing further changes until the PCs can find a way to collapse the time portal.
44. A medicine man is hunting dragons and using their parts as medicine. An enraged dragon seeks to kill him. Which side to the heroes take?
45. A young magician gets an intelligent book of magic that tricks him into casting spells that get continually more evil.
46. The king of atlantis is able to project himself astrally into the future, and possess those of atlantean bloodline. How can the party kill someone who has already been dead for centuries?
47. Classic movie monsters team up to turn every day into Halloween.
48. An animated house eats those who go inside.
49. Vampires, Gremlins, or similar creatures attempt to put out the sun.
50. Aliens from a planet with no advertising restrictions cripple earth's communication systems as they spam various advertisements and crooked deals into all of our computer systems. How can we get them to stop short of genocide?

Extras and Flaws

There are some extras and flaws not included in base M&M- that really should have been.
Here are some below.


Flaws:

Material Component: The power relies on material components that are consumed in the using of the power. Perhaps you need to sacrifice a great diamond to bring a soul back from the dead, or you need to crush opals to raise zombies. This is a 1 point per rank flaw for a power that requires 1 EP of materials to use. For each +1 to the flaw, double the existing cost (-2/rank for 2 EP, -3/rank for 4 EP, -4/rank for 8 EP, etc).  Create objects powers cannot create suitable components.

Material Focus: This power relies on a material component which is not consumed in the use of the power. Perhaps a scrying power can be used with any very expensive silver mirror worth $10,000 or more. Perhaps you require a magic wand to use your powers (any magic wand- not a specific one). For a 1 point flaw (not 1 per rank) it requires a focus worth 1 EP. For each extra point of the flaw, go up one step on the time/value progression table in the value of the component. If the material is broken or stolen, it must be repurchased. Create object powers can't create suitable foci.

Charge Time: Once used, this power cannot be used for 1 round. This is worth a 1 point/rank flaw. For each extra step on the time/value progression table (1 min, 5 min, 10 min) it's worth an extra point/rank.


Extra:

Charging: This power can be "charged up" with a full round action. The power is visibly charging in some way. A standard action "powers" it further, and a move action maintains it, so if you move and charge, you gain no further charge, but don't lose the power. If you are unable to take move actions you lose all charge. You can charge it up to 50% more than the power level, at a bonus of 1 per standard action spent "charging". So if you have a PL 10 blast power, you can charge for 1 round, then blast the next making it PL 11. If you charge for 5 full rounds (5 full round actions), then blast on the 6th, it will be at PL 15 (max). This is an extra costing 1 power point per rank. The GM may want to limit this only to combat powers as powers like nullify, boost, or healing might be too powerful since they can be charged when time is not a factor, or he may say that each bonus to PL requires 1 step on the time/value progression table for such powers (allowing a healing that takes 1 hour to cast heal better than it does in combat for example).

Power Component: This power can be made more powerful by utilizing rare oils, magical power components (such as a healing spell boosted using troll's blood), or similar. The power is treated as +1 PL if 1 EP worth of equipment is used to empower it. For every increase to PL it costs a number of EP 1 step higher on the time/value progression table. (2, 5, 10, 25 etc). This would not stack with extra effort.

Sympathetic: This power is more effective when you have a piece of your target. If you have a personal item, likeness, or picture of your target, they get a -2 on their saving throw to resist your power. If you have a vial of blood, clippings of nails or hair, or other body parts, they get -5 to resist your power. Do not count your ability to see them in person or touch them as part of delivery of the spell as part of this, though if they are completely bound and/or helpless it may apply. +1/rank.