Type: Trait
Action: None (passive)
Range: Personal
Duration: Continuous
Saving Throw: None
Cost: 2 points per rank
You’re capable of lifting and carrying more than normal for your Strength score, maybe much more. Each rank of Super-Strength grants you a +5 bonus to your Strength score when figuring carrying capacity (see Carrying Capacity, M&M, page 35). Your Super-Strength also gives you a +1 bonus per rank on Strength
checks involving sustained application of strength or pressure, including grapple checks and breaking objects, but not Strength based skills or melee damage.
SUPER-STRENGTH AND STRENGTH BONUS
Super-Strength power feats often refer to “Strength bonus,” this is your normal modifier from your Strength score (including Enhanced Strength), not including any modification from Super-Strength rank unless it is specifically called out. You can think of some of the following power feats as Alternate Powers of Strength with SuperStrength as a prerequisite.
POWER FEATS
• Bracing: You can use your tremendous strength to brace against the force of an impact. This is an Alternate Power, substituting Immovability for Strength and applying the Sustained duration to the Immovability rather than Permanent (so it can be acquired as an Alternate Power). You gain Immovability with a rank equal to your Strength bonus. Since switching between Alternate Powers is a free action, you generally need some forewarning to brace against an impact (see the Immovable effect for details).
• Countering Punch: You’re so tough you can counter some effects by punching them! This takes a ready action or a victory point for an instant counter, just like normal countering, and only works on ranged attacks (you still block melee attacks normally). Make a Strength check to counter the incoming power. If successful, you literally punch or knock it out of your way. If using the Countering Contest rules (see Countering Effects, M&M, page 70), you can even fight you way “upstream” of a ranged attack and knock it back into the attacker!
• Groundstrike: You can strike the ground, creating a powerful tremor, radiating out a radius of (Strength bonus x 10) feet from you. Make a Strength check. Anyone in the area makes a check to resist a trip attack equal to your check result (see Trip, M&M, page 159). Reduce your result by –1 per 10
feet between you and the target, out to the maximum radius. Targets in the area can make a Reflex save (DC 10 + your Strength bonus) to halve the DC to avoid the trip attack.
• Shockwave: By slamming your hands together, you create a tremendous blast of air pressure, inflicting physical damage equal to your Strength bonus in a cone-shaped area in front of you with a length and width (at the far end) equal to your Strength bonus x 10 feet. Targets in the area can make a Reflex save (DC 10 + your Strength bonus) to halve the damage.
• Super-Breath: You can exhale a powerful blast of air, making a Strength check to trip targets in a cone-shaped area with a length and width at the far end equal to your Strength bonus x 10 feet (see Trip, M&M, page 159). Targets in the area can make a Reflex save (DC 10 + your Strength bonus) to halve the DC to avoid the trip attack. Your Super-Breath also blows out flames with a damage bonus equal to or less than (your check result –10).
• Thunderclap: By clapping your hands together, you create a thunderous blast of deafening noise in an area of (Strength bonus x 5) feet around you. Those in the area must make a Reflex save (DC 10 + your Strength bonus) or suffer an Auditory Dazzle effect with a rank equal to your Strength bonus.
FLAWS
• Duration: Sustained duration Super-Strength may represent an effect requiring a certain measure of concentration, like a sort of “tactile telekinesis,” for example. If the character is stunned, his Super-Strength may stop working, problematic if the character happens to be holding up semi-truck, supporting a collapsing bridge, or the like at the time!
• Permanent: Super-Strength cannot apply this flaw, since it doesn’t impose any real limitations.
• Uncontrolled: Uncontrolled Super-Strength generally means you’re ham-fisted, likely to break things without even meaning to by over-applying your strength.
The GM can require reliability rolls and Concentration checks to avoid damaging things when it’s important.
ASSOCIATED EFFECTS
• Enhanced Strength: This effect goes with Super-Strength the majority of the time. While some super-humans have only increased lifting and sustained applications of strength, most couple them with an improved Strength bonus (and therefore melee damage, bonus to Strength skills, and so forth). SuperStrength allows for Mutants & Masterminds characters to have the tremendous sorts of carrying capacities seen in the comic books without giving them Strength scores in the triple digits, particularly since the combat effects of Super-Strength in the comics are rarely so extreme.
• Protection: Super-strong characters also tend to be supertough, and often have Enhanced Constitution, Protection, or both (possibly including Impervious
applied to the Toughness derived from their Constitution score).
OPTION: MANDATORY SUPER-STRENGTH
Mutants & Masterminds separates lifting and controlled applications of muscle power somewhat from the raw Strength score, allowing for a wide range of lifting capabilities within the narrower range of Strength bonuses allowed at a particular power level. Some Gamemasters may prefer a more direct correlation between Strength and Super-Strength, in which case the following option can be used. For each point of Strength bonus over +5, a character must also have 1 rank of the Super-Strength power. So a character with Strength 22 (a +6 bonus) must also have Super-Strength 1; Strength 24, Super- Strength 2; and so forth. Characters can have more than the required amount of Super-Strength, but must have at least that amount. Since Super-Strength costs 2 points per rank, this effectively doubles the cost of Strength past Strength 20 to 2 power points per point rather than 1 (or 4 power points per +1 Strength bonus).
POWER STUNT; COAL INTO DIAMONDS
It’s not a common use of Super-Strength, but some characters in the comics can use their tremendous strength to duplicate the effects of eons of geological heat and pressure to squeeze ordinary lumps of carbon (like coal) into raw or even perfect diamonds! This is actually no less realistic than most superpowers, but the GM may still want to limit it to light-hearted Silver Age style games, and should use the same guidelines as other Transform effects when it comes to characters with the ability to manufacture limitless wealth. See Transform later in this chapter. Generally, this stunt isn’t one characters acquire with power points, but instead something they do occasionally as extra effort. In fact, the GM may wish to require this, saying characters cannot buy this feat, but can only perform it using extra effort.