Character Points

You create your Mutants & Masterminds hero by spending character points on different traits. Each ability, skill, feat, power, and other trait has a character point cost, while drawbacks give you additional character points to spend.

STARTING CHARACTER POINTS

The campaign’s power level provides a guideline for how many character points you get to create your character (15 points per power level), as shown on the Starting Character Points table. The Gamemaster can vary the starting character points as desired to suit the campaign. You can find more on this in Chapter 9: Gamemastering.

SPENDING CHARACTER POINTS

Each trait costs a certain number of character points. You “spend” or allocate your character points to give your character different traits. Once spent, character 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 LEVEL

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 throw 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 & NPCS

While the GM should keep the power level guidelines and suggested starting character 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 character point total, which may be greater than or less than the recommended starting character 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 character points through adventuring, the GM may wish to increase the campaign’s power level, allowing players to spend some of their earned character 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 character 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.)