Type: Alteration
Action: Free (active)
Range: Personal
Duration: Sustained
Saving Throw: None
Cost: 3 points per rank
You can increase your size, and therefore your strength and durability. Every rank of Growth activated increases your Strength by +2 and Constitution by +1. The additional Strength does not improve your Strength-based skills, however, since your mass also increases. Every four ranks of Growth active increase your size category by one full level. So a medium creature with Growth at 4 ranks is large, at 8 ranks is huge, at 12 ranks is gargantuan, at 16 ranks is colossal, and at 20 ranks is awesome-sized. You gain all the benefits and drawbacks of your new size category. (See Size, M&M, page 34 for information on the effects of different sizes.) Your base movement speed increases by 5 feet per size category you enlarge.
Intermediate ranks of Growth also increase size, but not necessarily size category. See the Increased Size Table for a character’s approximate size at any given rank of Growth.
POWER FEATS
• Alternate Power: If you have Growth, you can acquire Shrinking as an Alternate Power feat.
• Growth Strike: You can add the momentum of increasing in size to your melee attacks, literally enlarging under an opponent’s jaw, for example. This gives you a +1 damage bonus per size category you enlarge until you reach your opponent’s size and only works on opponents at least one size category larger than you. So growing from medium to awesome size as part of an attack does +5 damage, for example.
• Innate: Your size, or ability to change size, are an innate part of your nature and cannot be countered or nullified. Innate is particularly common for permanent Growth that reflects the natural size of larger creatures.
• Macroverse: If you have Growth 20, you can enlarge past awesome size, to the point where you cross a dimensional barrier and enter a “macroverse” (which may or may not really exist at the superatomic level, where our universe exists within a single atom). Entering or leaving a macroverse is a move action. In the macroverse, you lose your Growth effect, but gain Shrinking equal to your Growth rank (and when you shrink smaller than miniscule size, you leave the macroverse and return to the normal universe at awesome size, where your powers return to normal). This feat is only available if the GM determines a macroverse exists in the setting.
• Affects Others: You can grant the benefits of Growth to someone else by touch, enlarging them up to your maximum rank. As a +1 extra, both you and one other you are touching can increase in size.
• Attack: A Growth Attack increases the size of an unwilling target. While this grants the target all the benefits of increased size, it also imposes all the drawbacks; being 30 feet tall can be very inconvenient, especially if you have a secret identity to maintain!
• Duration: Continuous Growth allows you to remain at whatever size you set for yourself until you choose to change it or your effect is countered.
FLAWS
• Action: This flaw does not apply to Growth; it is a power drawback instead (see the following section).
• Dispersal (–2): You increase in size by dispersing your bodily mass in some fashion over a larger area. You do not gain the increased weight, Strength, Constitution, or carrying capacity associated with Growth or the increased resistance to knockback (since your mass doesn’t increase), although you do gain the
other effects of your increased size. This flaw is most often asso-ciated with growing characters that also become Insubstantial, turning into mist, for example, in which case Growth may be Linked to that effect, although it is not required.
• Permanent: You are permanently at the maximum size for your Growth rank. You gain all the benefits and drawbacks of your size, but cannot turn off your Growth to achieve a smaller size. Permanent Growth is often also Innate to reflect the natural size of larger creatures.
DRAWBACKS
• Action: Generally, requiring longer than a free action to change your size is a drawback rather than an Action flaw, simply because it doesn’t limit the use of Growth much once you’ve assumed a particular size. Taking a move action to grow is a 1-point drawback, a standard action is 2 points and a full round
action is 3 points, with each additional step on the Time Table adding 1 point to the drawback (if the GM allows a longer Action drawback).
• Full Power: A character with this drawback can only grow to maximum size permitted by Growth rank and return to normal size. You cannot “stop” at any intermediate size or size category. This may limit the benefits of Growth in enclosed spaces or other situations where attaining full size would be problematic. It should only be applied to Growth greater than 4 ranks, since anything less doesn’t result in any significant disadvantage.
UNDER THE HOOD: GROWTH
Growth is a “package” of traits associated with larger than normal creatures: greater strength, toughness, carrying capacity, and so forth. These traits come at a bit of a discount when bundled together as Growth due to some of the effect’s inherent limitations: no modification to Strength-based skills, reduction in attack and defense due to increased size, and the general inconveniences of being more than medium sized, like not fitting into most buildings or vehicles and finding many structures unable to support your increased mass. Note that these difficulties are taken into account in the point value of Growth: permanently and innately larger characters don’t get drawbacks or complications for their size, they’re part of the package. Also note that Growth tends to ignore real-world complications like the square-cube law, which says a huge or larger humanoid creature would be structurally unable to support its own weight. Whatever rubber-science or supernatural explanation used to explain other impossible super-powers applies here as well. In realistic settings, the GM may choose to limit Growth to appropriately shaped and structured creatures.
LARGER CREATURES
Innately larger-sized creatures in Mutants & Masterminds have the appropriate ranks in Growth with all of the associated effects and ability modifiers, a permanent duration, and usually Innate (see Power Feats for details). This is suited to any creature that is naturally larger than medium size.
GROWTH ABILITIES AND POWER MODIFIERS
Any power modifiers applied to the Strength of a character with Growth can pay additional points to cover the character’s Strength at increased size, and must do so to extend their benefits to that enhanced Strength. So, for example, if a character has Growth 8 and the Penetrating extra on his Strength bonus of +2 (costing 2 power points for an extra on an effective rank 2 trait), then an additional 8 points is required for the character’s full Strength bonus (at maximum Growth) to be Penetrating. This same is true of modifiers applied to the Constitution score or related saving throws (Toughness or Fortitude) of a character with Growth. So a growing character with Impervious Toughness, for example, should take into account the character’s maximum Constitution, and therefore Toughness, while grown