Effect: Summon Duplicate
Action: Standard (active)
Range: Personal
Duration: Sustained
Saving Throw: None
Cost: 2 points per rank
You can create a duplicate of yourself. Your duplicate is a minion with the same capabilities as you, except for this power and any hero points. However, you can spend your own hero points for your duplicate’s actions. You must have this power at a rank equal to your power point total (minus the cost of Duplication) divided by 15 and rounded up for your duplicate to possess your full abilities. If you have it at a lower rank, create your duplicate as a scaled-down version of
yourself, with a power level equal to your power rank and starting power points determined accordingly (power rank x 15). So a power level 11 hero who has Duplication 8 creates a power level 8 duplicate with (8 x 15) 120 power points and proportionately lower-ranked traits. In either case, your duplicates do not possess the Duplication power themselves, only you do.
Your duplicate thinks and acts just like you, so it is automatically helpful toward you. Gamemasters should generally allow the hero’s player to determine the duplicate’s actions. Your duplicate disappears if your power is countered for any reason. You can also make your duplicate disappear at will by turning off your
power.
POWER FEATS
• Absorption Healing: You can make an immediate recovery check by “re-absorbing” an undamaged duplicate (see Recovery, M&M, page 165).
• Mental Link: You have a mental link with your duplicates, allowing you to communicate with them over any distance and know whatever they know.
• Progression: Each time you apply this feat, move your total number of duplicates one step up the Progression Table (2, 5, 10, etc.). You can still only create one duplicate per standard action.
• Sacrifice: When you are hit with an effect requiring a saving throw, you can spend a hero point to shift the effects to one of your duplicates instead. In essence, the attacker hit a duplicate and not the “real” you. The duplicate must be within range and a viable target of the effect.
EXTRAS
• Heroic (+1): Your duplicates are not subject to the minion rules. The GM may wish to restrict or even ban use of this extra for player characters.
• Horde (+1): You can summon up to your maximum number of duplicates with one standard action. You must have the Progression power feat to take this extra.
• Survival (+1): If you die while duplicated, one of your duplicates becomes the “real” you and gains Duplication at your original power rank. You must have Duplication at a rank equal to your power level to take this extra.
FLAWS
• Feedback (–1): If one of your duplicates is damaged, you suffer painful psychic feedback. Make a saving throw against damage equal to the damage your duplicate suffered, using the duplicate’s Toughness save bonus (which should be the same as your own).
• Limited Actions (–1): Although you and your duplicates can each take a move action every round, only one of you (you or one of your duplicates) can take a standard action each round. So generally only one out of the group can make an attack each round, for example.
• Real (–1): All of your duplicates are the “real” you—perhaps from different time-lines or periods. You suffer the worst damage of all duplicates when you stop using this power. If any of your duplicates die, you die as well! You cannot have the Survival extra.
• Sequential (–1): Your duplicates are “numbered” in order of creation, with you as Number 1, the first duplicate you summon Number 2, and so forth. If any duplicate in the sequence is rendered unconscious or eliminated, the same happens to all the other duplicates later in the sequence (i.e., with a higher number).
• Unconscious (–1): You are unconscious and helpless while one or more of your duplicates are in existence.
UNDER THE HOOD: DUPLICATION
Duplication (like various Summon effects) is potentially problematic because it effectively grants one character multiple (perhaps numerous) actions, allowing one player to control multiple characters. Assuming you don’t simply wish to ban Duplication outright in your Mutants & Masterminds games, there are some things to consider when managing it. Be cautious about allowing the Heroic extra, especially in conjunction with the ability to create more than one duplicate; it can unbalance the power and allow the duplicator to hog the spotlight and the action in the game. Likewise, the Horde extra may be better suited to non-player characters than heroic duplicators. The aiding another and ganging up rules (see Aiding Another and Ganging Up, M&M, pages 10 and 161, respectively) are helpful guidelines for dealing with groups of duplicates working together towards the same goal; encourage players to use aid actions and coordinated tactics to simplify the actions of duplicates in combat, giving a bonus to the primary character’s action rather than having to deal with multiple individual actions all at once. Although it’s not reflected in the power’s description, a key element of most comic book duplicators is that apart from the Duplication power itself they tend to be fairly normal people. Their advantage isn’t that they have extraordinary skills or powers, but that there are a lot of them. You may want to take this archetype into consideration when a player wants to create a duplicating hero, and it is an occasion when the Heroic extra can be less problematic, since being a small group of modestly capable people is the hero’s main strength.