Extremely simple Mutants and Masterminds loophole

[User3]

It's so easy that I'm surprised no one has thought of this; if they have, I apologize and I swear to god that I didn't see it before. This occured to me while I was watching an episode of DBZ: Cooler's Revenge.

Get a character. Load up on as many game-breaking powers as you can. I heartily recommend luck, sorcery, gadgets, drain, neutralize, deflection, natural weaponry, super vision, duplication, super speed, soforth. Don't pick mimic.

However, for all of the previous powers, load them up with as many extras as you can think of. Make them excessively costly. Now load them down with flaws. I mean a lot of flaws. Until they all cost 1 pp for each of the powers. Yes, with all of the extra goodies you snagged it might seem impossible. Too bad. Keep loading. I don't care if it makes the power completely unusuable (for example, sorcery with the uses flaw four times and slow four times and heroic effort and device and whatevers), just neem it down to 1 pp. Take these to maximum rank.

This is the important part. Take the mimic power. Take enough extras on it so that you're duplicating all of the powers and enough extras and flaws as you see fit. Don't, however, neem it so much that the power becomes completely unusuable. Do not take the 'tainted mimickry' flaws for the love of god.

Now mimic... yourself. Yes, mimic yourself. All of the flaws instantly erased and you have a whole grip of vast powers.

Ha ha! EXCELLENT.

Even though I've already broken the game, I should really write up a character based on this. Hmm.

The question is, though, should his name be The Wish or The Word? Or something different...

[Fwib]

I don't know M&M, but I find it hard to believe that it doesn't have the same "If it isn't really a flaw/drawback, you dont get cheaper powers/extra points" rule.

[User3]

The powers in themselves are a complete drawback. They are completely unusable in their current form and all they do without the mimic trick is suck up valuable pp.

The trick can sort of be compared to a fighting druid dumping all of his physical stats at character creation (freeing up more points for the intellectual stats) and then splitting the difference by polymorphing.

The Mimic trick in Mutants and Masterminds takes stat replacement to its logical extreme--while druids progressively get stronger as the game grows older because new monsters and feats are getting published, there currently hasn't been a point where there is a monster who starts with all stats at 100 and quadruples your caster level and save DC as an extraordinary ability. But there is stupid craziness anyway like the ability to transform into blink dogs for unlimited teleportation or into myconids for unlimited potion making.

Or perhaps hitting closer to home, it's like those PrCs you occasionally see people designinh for themselves that give out fighter BAB, full spellcasting and saves, and mega-skill points and abilities. Of course they get slapped down by DMs but in the long run the game favors these twinks. It's only a matter of time until someone designs the next Ur-Priest or Beholder Mage.

The Mimic trick contemptuously bypasses the gradual acquisition of power (handed to you unwittingly by greedy and shortsighted game designers) by allowing you to design a Real Ultimate Monster or Real Ultimate PrC your own damn self.

I consider the Mimic trick the ultimate argument against stat replacement for that reason.

[RandomCasualty]

1125108365[/unixtime]]

I consider the Mimic trick the ultimate argument against stat replacement for that reason.

Well, stat replacement isn't neccessarily bad. Selective stat replacement is. If you replace one stat, you must replace everything, and lose all your abilities, and so on.

Allowing someone to choose only the good and ignore all the drawbacks can't be balanced. If you force people to take the drawbacks as well as the good stuff, then you can possibly balance it out.

Becoming monsters is fundamentally broken in D&D because monsters have the innate assumption that they won't have magical items. That's a subtle disadvantage built into the CR of the monster. As soon as you allow people to be monsters *and* have magic items, they break the game.

[Lago_AM3P]

Well, stat replacement isn't neccessarily bad. Selective stat replacement is. If you replace one stat, you must replace everything, and lose all your abilities, and so on.

Okay, on a simpler level, is it fair that in a party of a fighter, mage, cleric, and rogue a fifth character has a character class that will allow them to Xerox another person's character sheet and allow them to use it at will?

What you are effectively letting a person do is fight at the optimum level of any other person in the party. If you're fighting a golem, you can shift from rogue to wizard. If you're fighting a lich you can shift from fighter to cleric, soforth. The non-stat replacement characters can't do that and there are occasions where they will just not be fighting at their optimum level. And the game is BALANCED on the idea that

Note that it also isn't workable to make it so that any character set shines at any time and the only difference is the special effects but not in game balance. While this is what Mutants and Masterminds does and there really isn't any difference (in theory) between shooting someone with an energy blast, punching them with super strength, or hitting them with a magic sword, a character who can do all of these (just not at once) is unbalanced, because they have more depth.

[Username17]

To put things into the abstract terms I love so much:

Imagine for an instant that you have two power levels: PCs and Cohorts. The power level of the Cohort is less than that of the PC, and in a properly exponential scale that can be represented by a static penalty. So that means that a PC has some power level N, where "N" is the bonuses that a PC has in their primary task - and a Cohort has a power level N - C, where "C" is the difference in bonuses between a Cohort and a PC.

Now let's enter in the character who replaces himself with various crap. When he transforms into some form or another, he needs to end up with a power level of less than N, because otherwise he's just the Roxxor, being in all ways superior to the other PCs who just have a power level of N and have no ability to swap themselves around.

But on the other hand, imagine for a second that the multi-form guy has a power level of N - C or less. Ouch. At that point, our multiformatic character isn't worth anything at all. Cohorts are already swappable, so the swappable character is just "you plaqy two Cohorts", and that's lame.

So just in abstract, if multiform isn't between N and (N-C), it's not workable at all. And that means that any game system that can't reliably place a character between those two (as d20, Shadowrun, and Whitewolf cannot) just can't have stat replacement at all.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

Call me mad but, what if the mimic ability just plain wasn't really stat replacement.

I mean I imagine M&M already has a bunch of damage types floating around, strong guy damage type, heat vision damage type, electro blast damage type, all the comic book damage types.

So why should mimic attacks allow a character to take those damage types? Why not just make mimic attack have its own damage type, the mimic damage type. Its nature and potency decided not by the powers it mimics (which it does mimic, in description only) but by the qualities purchased for the mimic power itself.

So when Comic Super Sampson guy goes against Mimic Dude mimic dude yells out "Strength of Sampson MIMIC Attack" and smashes Super Sampson with the same old damaging mimic attack he always uses.

[Josh_Kablack]

1125163042[/unixtime]]To put things into the abstract terms I love so much:

Imagine for an instant that you have two power levels: PCs and Cohorts.

...

So just in abstract, if multiform isn't between N and (N-C), it's not workable at all. And that means that any game system that can't reliably place a character between those two (as d20, Shadowrun, and Whitewolf cannot) just can't have stat replacement at all.

One minor quibbles with this otherwise genius assessment:

1. A game needs to have sidekicks/cohorts for the N-C floor to exist. In a game without cohorts available, a N ceiling is the only hard and fast reference point.

[Username17]

In many cases there is a second reference point available even if sidekicks and troopers are not. It's the effective penalty you'd get from being the wrong person for the job. Let's call it the Rock-Paper Differential, or just R for short. If you turn into something that's less than N-R, you're being screwed, just like if you turned into something less than N-C.

The Rock Paper Differential is the penalty you'd experience fighting a scissors lizard as a Paper Tiger as compared to being a Rock Lobster instead.

----

But of course, that's just for combat. The ability to turn into any ability set you care to name out of combat is functionally identical to having a contact who has a similar ability set. So however much the game charges you to "know a guy" who happens to be a doctor is the amount that it should charge you for the ability to transform into a Chancy in your spare time.

-Username17

[MrWaeseL]

1125186637[/unixtime]]Call me mad but, what if the mimic ability just plain wasn't really stat replacement.

I mean I imagine M&M already has a bunch of damage types floating around, strong guy damage type, heat vision damage type, electro blast damage type, all the comic book damage types.

So why should mimic attacks allow a character to take those damage types? Why not just make mimic attack have its own damage type, the mimic damage type. Its nature and potency decided not by the powers it mimics (which it does mimic, in description only) but by the qualities purchased for the mimic power itself.

So when Comic Super Sampson guy goes against Mimic Dude mimic dude yells out "Strength of Sampson MIMIC Attack" and smashes Super Sampson with the same old damaging mimic attack he always uses.

Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich (awesome game, btw.) has something like this. All attacks deal 'damage' and have a magnitude, though damage isn't always HP, it could be hypnotise or something similar. You should probably check it out.

[PhoneLobster]

Freedom Force? I've been totally on top of that since the original game.

vs the Third Reich was a bit of a dissapointment really. It brought almost nothing in the way of innovation, or even interesting new characters (it had a few new characters, but they were dumb).

Still what do you expect from a "not really a sequal yet" sequal?

[MrWaeseL]

I never heard of the original, and only played vs. The Third Reich. It might not be innovative, but it is seriously awesome.

[Draco_Argentum]

1125281767[/unixtime]]The Rock Paper Differential is the penalty you'd experience fighting a scissors lizard as a Paper Tiger as compared to being a Rock Lobster instead.

Okay, I get Rock Lobster and Paper Tiger. Why is scissors a lizard?

[dbb]

It rhymes, kind of? Say "scissor lizzar'", dropping the 'd' from the end. In fact, for me, I can just drop the 'd' down to ...

--d.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

1125369312[/unixtime]]

1125281767[/unixtime]]The Rock Paper Differential is the penalty you'd experience fighting a scissors lizard as a Paper Tiger as compared to being a Rock Lobster instead.

Okay, I get Rock Lobster and Paper Tiger. Why is scissors a lizard?

Because when Magic: The Gathering released it's humor-themed Unglued set, they included three cards which alternatly cancel out, and were canceled out by each other. These were Rock Lobster, Paper Tiger, and Scissor Lizard.

-Desdan

[Draco_Argentum]

Ah, thanks Desdan.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Now mimic... yourself. Yes, mimic yourself. All of the flaws instantly erased and you have a whole grip of vast powers.

So where does it say that mimicry erases all the flaws in the power? I finally dug up my M&M book, and I see nothing that supports this interpretation.

[Lago_AM3P]

My mistake, I totally misread the tainted mimickry part.

What you actually want to do is a little more complicated. You need the duplication, shapeshift, AND mimic powers (this time with multiple people).

Make a bunch of duplicates of yourself. Take the shapeshift power with the extra that lets you shapeshift into a person's powers. Have your duplicates shapeshift into people with different powers. Then use Mimic to get all of the powers at once.

How's that?

[MrWaeseL]

Why am I not surprised that you need a "Shapeshift" power for this combo?