The Mutants & Masterminds game system allows you to create any sort of hero you want by choosing your character’s abilities, skills, powers, and other qualities. You have a starting “budget” of power points with which to build your hero. There are also certain limits and guidelines imposed by your character’s power level, but within those limits you can build whatever type of character you want. The following section covers all the details of how to do it.
Creating a hero in Mutants & Masterminds follows a series of simple steps, using the information presented in the other chapters of this book.
You’ll need a copy of the character sheet and some scratch paper to create your character.
1. Hero Concept
Before you get started, consider what sort of hero you want to create. What are the hero’s basic abilities? What are the hero’s powers? What’s
the hero’s origin? You may want to take a look at the hero archetypes on pages 17-23 for some idea of the different types of heroes you can
create. You also can draw inspiration from your favorite characters from comic books, television, or the movies. Take a look through Chapter
5 and see if any of the powers there inspire a character idea. You may want to jot down a few notes about the sort of hero you’d prefer to play,
which will help guide you through the rest of the character creation process.
2. Check with Your Gamemaster
Your GM may have particular house rules or restrictions on characters in the game, not allowing certain powers or concepts. If there are no aliens in the setting, for example, then you can’t play an alien hero. Likewise, if your Gamemaster bans mental powers from the campaign, then a psychic isn’t appropriate. Run your hero concept by your Gamemaster before you start working on it. You might also want to consult with your fellow players so you can create your characters together and ensure they’ll make a good team.
3. Power Level
Your GM sets the starting power level for the series. Generally this is 10th level, but it may range anywhere from around 5th level to 20th level or more. All characters begin play at the same power level, which determines their starting power points and where you can spend them. See Power Level later in this chapter for details.
4. Basic Abilities
Choose the ability scores you want your character to have and pay 1 power point for each ability score point over 10. Choose the attack bonus and defense bonus for your character, paying 2 power points per +1 to attack or defense bonus. Choose the saving throw bonuses for your character, paying 1 power point per +1 save bonus. Keep in mind these bonuses are limited by power level. See Chapter 2: Basic Abilities, for details onthese abilities and Power Level later in this chapter for more on power level limits.
5. Skills
Choose the skill ranks you want your character to have and pay 1 power point per 4 skill ranks. Keep in mind your character can’t have a rank in any skill greater than the campaign’s power level +5. See Chapter 3: Skills, for details.
6. Feats
Choose the feats you want your character to have and pay 1 power point
per feat or rank in a feat. See Chapter 4: Feats, for details.
7. Powers
Choose the powers you want your character to have and pay the power’s base cost, multiplied by the number of ranks. Power modifiers increase or reduce a power’s capabilities and cost. See Chapter 5: Powers, for details.
8. Complications and Drawbacks
Choose the complications you want your character to have. Choose the drawbacks you want your character to have (if any) and add their value
to the power points you have to spend. Keep in mind you’re generally limited to no more points in drawbacks than the campaign’s power level. See Chapter 6, for more detail on complications, drawbacks and their effects.
9. Check Your Math
Go back through and add up the cost of your hero’s ability scores, attack bonus, defense bonus, saving throw bonuses, skills, feats, and powers, and subtract the value of your hero’s drawbacks. You should end up with a figure equal to the starting character points shown on the Starting Character Points Table on page 24. If not, double-check your math and either remove or add traits to your character to reach the starting Character point total.
10. Add Up Saving Throws
Calculate your character’s total saving throw bonuses by adding together your base save bonus and ability modifier for each (Constitution for
Toughness and Fortitude saves, Dexterity for Reflex saves, and Wisdom for Will saves).
11. Finishing Details
Look through Chapter 6: Characteristics and figure out details like your hero’s name, appearance, origin, background, and motivation.
Choose your hero’s allegiances (if any). If you can, consider creating a sketch or detailed description of your hero’s costume.
12. Gamemaster Approval
Show your new hero to the Gamemaster for approval. The GM should check to make sure your power points are spent and added up correctly,
the hero follows the power level guidelines, and is generally complete and suited to the campaign. Once your GM has approved, your new hero is ready for play!
The fastest and easiest way to create a Mutants & Masterminds hero is to select one of the hero archetypes in the following section. A hero archetype offers a ready-made character, complete with statistics, skills, feats, and powers. Give the hero a name, a costume, and an origin story, and you’re ready to take on whatever supervillains the Gamemaster has to throw at you!
The hero archetypes are also useful for Gamemasters looking for some quick villains or NPC heroes. Take a few archetypes, give them catchy
names and descriptions, and you’re ready to go! (Villains are covered in more detail in Chapter 11 as well). Skills are listed with the number of ranks after the skill name and the total skill bonus listed in parentheses. For example: Bluff 5 (+8), means the character has 5 ranks of Bluff and a total bonus of +8 when making Bluff checks. All of the archetypes are for a power level 10 game, the default starting power level for Mutants & Masterminds. Several of the archetypes use the Attack/Defense trade-off rule (page 24) to adjust their maximum attack, defense, damage, and Toughness save bonuses, as determined by their power level. If you really want to see the nuts and bolts of how the archetypes are built, check out the Doing the Math table below. It contains all the details of their construction.
You create your Mutants & Masterminds hero by spending power points on different traits. Each ability, skill, feat, power, and other trait has a power point cost, while drawbacks give you additional power points to spend.
Starting Character Points
The campaign’s power level provides a guideline for how many power points you get to create your character (15 points per power level), as
shown on the Starting Power Points table. The Gamemaster can vary the starting power points as desired to suit the campaign. You can find
more on this in Chapter 9: Gamemastering.
basic tRait costs
tr a t cO S t i n pO w E r pO n t S
Ability Score 1 per ability score point above 10
Attack Bonus 2 per +1 bonus
Defense Bonus 2 per +1 bonus
Save Bonus 1 per +1 bonus
Skills 1 per 4 skill ranks
Feats 1 per feat or feat rank
Powers base cost × rank (see Chapter 5)
Drawbacks –1 or more points (see Chapter 6)
staRting poWeR points
pO w E r lE v E l St a r t n g pO w E r pO n t S
1 15
2 30
3 45
4 60
5 75
6 90
7 105
8 120
9 135
10 150
11 165
12 180
13 195
14 210
15 225
16 240
17 255
18 270
19 285
20 300
Spending Power Points
Each trait costs a certain number of power points. You “spend” or allocate your power points to give your character different traits. Once spent, power points cannot be re-allocated without the use of a particular power or the Gamemaster’s permission. The basic costs of various traits are given on the Basic Trait Costs table, with specific costs for powers given in Chapter 5, and specific values for drawbacks given in Chapter 6.
Power Levell
Power level is an overall measure of effectiveness and power, primarily combat ability, but also generally what sort of tasks a character can be
expected to accomplish on a regular basis, assuming the ability to take 10 and take 20 (see Checks Without Rolls, page 11). Power level is a value set by the Gamemaster for the campaign. It places certain limits on where and how players can spend points when creating heroes. Power level affects the following things:
• Attack: Your hero’s total attack bonus cannot exceed the campaign’s power level.
• Defense: Your hero’s total defense bonus cannot exceed the campaign’s power level.
• Save Difficulty: The saving throw modifier for your hero’s attacks and powers cannot exceed the campaign’s power level. So at PL 8, for example, your hero cannot have a save modifier greater than +8 (a +8 damage attack, or a power with a save DC of 18, for example).
• Toughness Save: Your hero’s total Toughness saving throw modifier cannot exceed the campaign’s power level.
• Fortitude, Reflex, and Will Saves: Your hero’s total Fortitude, Reflex, and Will save modifiers cannot exceed the campaign’s power level +5.
• Skill Rank: A character cannot have more ranks in a skill than the campaign’s power level +5. So in a PL10 campaign, a player character cannot have more than 15 ranks in any one skill (10 + 5).
• Ability Scores: Ability scores are limited to a bonus no greater than the campaign’s power level +5. Strength is restricted by the Save Difficulty limit to a bonus no higher than the campaign’s power level, as is Constitution by the maximum Toughness limit. This means a limit of (10 + twice power level) for Strength and Constitution and (20 + twice power level) for other ability scores. The Strength and Constitution limits may be raised with an attack/defense trade off (see the following section).
Attack/Defense Trade-offs
Although the campaign’s power level defines certain limits, there is some flexibility to them. Players can choose to lower one power level limit on a hero to raise another related limit. You can adjust power level limits in the following ways:
•Attack & Save Difficulty: You can trade-off attack bonus for the saving th row Difficulty Class modifier with an attack on a one-to-one basis.
So a PL 10 hero could have a +8 attack bonus in order to have a +12 save DC modifier, for example, or a hero that has chosen to have a
+15 attack bonus is limited to a +5 save DC modifier. This modification does not apply to powers that do not require attack rolls; they
remain limited by the campaign’s normal PL limit on save DC modifiers. Strength is considered an “attack” for purposes of this trade-off, so lowering your attack bonus limit increases your Strength bonus limit.
•Defense & Toughness: You can trade-off defense bonus for Toughness saving throw bonus on a one-to-one basis. So a PL 10 hero with a +7 defense bonus could have a +13 Toughness save bonus. Conversely a hero in the same campaign who has a +15 defense bonus is limited to a +5 Toughness save bonus.
No limit can be reduced to less than 0 in this way and the GM must approve all such trade-offs. Attack/defense trade-offs allow for some variety in combat-related bonuses while maintaining power level balance among the heroes overall.
Power Level and NPCs
While the GM should keep the power level guidelines and suggested starting power points of the campaign in mind while creating villains
and members of the supporting cast, such non-player characters are not restricted by the campaign’s power level and may have as many character points as the GM wants to give them. Instead, determine an NPC’s power level based on the character’s highest appropriate trait(s). This power level is simply an approximation to show what level of challenge that NPC offers, and is not necessarily related to the NPC’s power point total, which may be greater than or less than the recommended starting power points for that power level. NPCs are often designed to fill a particular niche in the campaign and do not need to be as well rounded or balanced as heroes.
Example: The Gamemaster is creating a villain for a power level 10 campaign. The bad guy has a +8 attack bonus and a primary attack with a +16 damage bonus. Averaging these together gives the GM a power level of (16 + 8)/2 which equals 12. So long as none of the villain’s other traits exceed this limit, the GM notes the villain’s power level as 12, a reasonable challenge for a group of PL 10 heroes.
Likewise, NPCs may have whatever traits the GM wishes to assign them. In fact, some non-player characters are better treated as plot devices (see page 211); giving them game stats may limit them too much! For example, an omnipotent cosmic entity doesn’t need a comprehensive list of traits; neither does a mysterious alien artifact with vast and unknown powers. They serve whatever dramatic needs the Gamemaster wishes. You can find more about creating non-player characters and plot devices in Chapter 9: Gamemastering.
Re-allocating Character Points
Normally a hero’s traits are relatively fixed. Once character points are spent on traits, they remain there. In some cases, however, the Gamemaster may allow players to re-allocate their characters’ points, changing their traits within the limits of the campaign’s power level, perhaps even losing some traits and gaining entirely new ones. This change may come about as the result of events in the series, such as a hero encountering something that alters her powers (intense radiation, mutagenic chemicals, cosmic power sources, and so forth). It’s up to the GM when these character-altering events occur, but they should be fairly rare unless their effects are intended to be strictly temporary complications (lasting only for one adventure, see Complications, page 122). Very few players enjoy changes to their characters made without their consent, so GMs should be very careful when implementing this type of change.
Power Level and Character Growth
As the heroes earn additional power points through adventuring, the GM may wish to increase the campaign’s power level, allowing players to spend some of their earned power points to improve traits already at the campaign’s limit. Not raising the power level forces player characters to diversify, improving their less powerful or effective traits, and acquiring new ones, but it can make the players feel constrained and the heroes to start looking the same if it isn’t raised occasionally. Increasing power level by one for every 15 earned power points is a good rule of thumb, depending on how quickly the GM wants the player characters to improve in overall power. (See Increasing Power Level, page 178, for more information.)
Hero Creation Examples
For examples of how to create your own hero, let’s look at how a couple of the hero archetypes on pages 17-23 were created.
The Costumed Adventurer
Mark wants to create a hero who’s a dark avenger type, someone with no super-powers, but great training and skill, along with various crime-fighting gadgets. The hero is intended for a power level 10 game, with 150 starting character points. Mark starts out with the ability scores.
He wants his hero to be capable both physically and mentally. So he assigns 18s to Dexterity, Wisdom, and Charisma, to make his hero quick, agile, perceptive, and imposing, with a forceful will. He puts 16s in Strength, Constitution, and Intelligence, making his hero well above average in those abilities, but not quite as much as the others. Each ability point above 10 costs 1 power point, so Mark has spent 42 of his 150 points.
Next, he looks at skills. He wants his adventurer to be quite skilled and makes a wish list of all the skills he wants. He starts out assigning 8 ranks to each skill—knowing skills cost 1 power point per 4 ranks—but then shifts a few of those ranks around, decreasing some less important skills and increasing others. When he’s done, Mark has assigned 120 ranks in skills, quite a respectable amount, and spent another 30 points (120 ranks, divided by 4). That leaves 78, or a little more than half, of his 150 power points remaining. Since Mark wants his adventurer to be a capable fighter, he looks next at attack and defense bonus. Since he doesn’t envision his hero either doing a lot of damage or being especially tough, he asks for, and receives, permission from the GM to lower his hero’s damage and Toughness save limits by 2, raising his attack and defense limits by the same amount. Mark then buys his hero’s attack and defense bonus right up to the limit of +12 each (10 for the game’s power level, +2 more for the trade-off). This costs 2 points per +1 to attack and 2 per +1 defense, or a grand total of 48 points. That leaves Mark with only 30 points, and he still has to buy his adventurer’s feats, powers, and saving throws. Fortunately, Mark has decided his hero doesn’t really have any powers, relying on skills, feats, and equipment (from the Equipment feat). So he first looks at his character’s saves. He buys up his Reflex save from +4 (for his 18 Dexterity) to +10 for 6 points and his Will save from +4 (for his 18 Wisdom) to +10 for another 6 points. He could increase them as high as +15, but that wouldn’t leave him many points for anything else, so he decides +10 is enough. He increases his hero’s Fortitude save from +3 (the basic bonus from his 16 Constitution) to +6, not quite as high, since he decides his hero relies more on reflexes and strength of will. Mark has spent a total of (6 + 6+ 3) or 15 points on saves, half of what he has left.
Now he looks at his hero’s Toughness save. Mark can’t increase that directly by spending power points; you can only improve Toughness using feats and powers. His hero has a +3 bonus from his Constitution score and his Toughness save can be up to +8 (it would normally be +10, but Mark lowered his Toughness save limit to raise his defense bonus limit). Since Mark doesn’t want his hero to have any powers, he decides it’s time to look at feats.
The Defensive Roll feat (see page 60) catches Mark’s attention: it grants an improved Toughness save by using agility to “roll” with attacks, perfect for Mark’s hero! He could take up to 5 ranks in it, for a +5 bonus to Toughness, but Mark is a bit concerned with both spending a
third of his remaining points on one feat and with the fact that his hero loses the Defensive Roll bonus whenever he loses his dodge bonus. So he looks over Chapter 7 and decides to split the difference. He takes 3 ranks of Defensive Roll (for a +3 Toughness save bonus) and he’ll give his hero some armor built into his costume.
That brings Mark to equipment. He picks out the equipment he wants for his hero, using the information in Chapter 7. It adds up to 20
points worth of equipment altogether. That requires 4 ranks in the Equipment feat, so Mark assigns 4 more points to that. He’s now spent
7 points on feats, leaving him with 8 more. He makes a list of other feats he wants and whittles it down to a total of 8 ranks, dropping a second rank in Improved Initiative to get Sneak Attack instead, which he feels best suits his character.
Mark looks over the list of Drawbacks in Chapter 6 but he doesn’t think any of them suit his hero, so he doesn’t take any. He does, however, note some Complications he thinks might apply, getting some ideas he can give the GM so he can earn some extra hero points during the game. He also decides his hero has an Allegiance to Justice over all else, which may provide some story hooks, and even some con-
flict with his fellow heroes in the future. Mark goes back and adds up his costumed adventurer’s points, coming up with the starting total of 150, so he presents his new hero, “the Sentinel,” to the Gamemaster for approval and he’s ready to play!
The Energy Controller
Kelly wants to create an energy-controlling heroine for a power level 10 campaign. Looking through the powers in Chapter 5, she picks Light Control and starts building a character around that concept. Since Kelly wants her heroine to have fairly powerful offensive and defensive powers, she asks for and gets permission to lower her heroine’s attack and defense limits to raise her damage and Toughness save limits. Based on that, she assigns a rank of 12 to her Light Control, for a cost of 24 power points. Light Control grants the ability to shed light over an area, but Kelly also wants her heroine to have some offensive capabilities. So she chooses some Alternate Powers as power feats for her Light Control; first, the Blast power for a “photon blast.” Since it has the same cost (2 points per rank), it has the same rank as Light Control (12). She also picks Dazzle (visual) 12, and Dazzle (visual) 8 with the Area extra (costing 3 points per rank). The three power feats cost 1 point each, for a total of 3 power points. Kelly wants to give her character a defensive power as well. Since she needs to be able to use her defenses and attack at the same time, she doesn’t want to make it an Alternate Power of her Light Control. She picks a Force Field, a glowing protective aura of light, and assigns it a rank of 12, since she chose to lower her character’s defense bonus a bit. She also applies the Impervious modifier, so the power costs 2 points per rank rather than 1, or a total of 24. Kelly has now spent 51 of her 150 power points.
To finish things off, she gives her character the power to fly, paying 12 points for Flight at rank 6, and gives her Immunity to light-based attacks and powers, requiring 5 ranks of the Immunity power, and costing 5 points. That brings her total power cost to 68, leaving 82 power points remaining.
Next, based on her heroine’s power ranks, Kelly assigns a +8 bonus each to attack and defense, lowering their maximum value by 2 since she
raised the limit on damage and Toughness by 2. That costs 2 points per +1 or a total of 32 points (16 for attack, 16 for defense). She has 50 power points left to spend on abilities, skills, feats, and saving throws.
Kelly goes back and looks at ability scores now. She decides her character has excellent Dexterity, being quite nimble and agile, and assigns it a score of 18. She also assigns a Charisma of 16, since she wants her heroine to be both a forceful and engaging personality. She puts a couple points each into Strength and Wisdom, putting them at 12, above average, but not extraordinary, and decides her character is of average Intelligence, leaving it at 10. When she gets to Constitution, Kelly wants to make it better than average, since she sees her character
as somewhat tough. The problem is an increase in Constitution will also increase her Toughness saving throw, which is already at it maximum bonus. So Kelly decides to lower her Force Field rank to 10, leaving room for a +2 Constitution bonus (a score of 1415).
She puts the 4 character points she gets back from lowering the Force Field’s rank into Constitution, raising it to 14 (and bringing her Toughness save back up to +12, although now only 10 points of it is Impervious). With 32 power points left, she looks at saving throws. Toughness is already maxed out. She raises Fortitude to +5 (3 points), Reflex and Will to +8 (4 points and 7 points, respectively) for a total of 14 power points.
Picking out the skills she wants for her character, she assigns them ranks and adds them up. They come to only 38 ranks, so she assigns two
more ranks to bring them up to an even 40, costing 10 power points. She picks out six feats to round out her character’s capabilities: Accurate Attack, All-Out Attack, and Power Attack provide plenty of options in combat. Precise Shot allows her to fire blasts into melee easily. Quick Change lets her get into costume (and into action) fast, while Taunt allows for some fun roleplaying as well as giving her an extra edge in a fight.
Adding things up, Kelly finds she has spent only 148 power points. Looking things over, she decides to bump her character’s Fortitude save up by +2, costing 2 more points and bringing the total to 150, the starting total.
Kelly looks at the Drawbacks but decides none of them suit her character.
She picks Good as her heroine’s primary allegiance, seeing her as someone who always tries to do the right thing, and considers some suitable Complications for her. She gives her character the name “Lux, Lady of Light,” and shows the character sheet and her sketch of Lux’s costume to the Gamemaster for approval.