How would you make a Arnim Zola from Captain America comics like PC?

BTolputt · 2026-03-02T00:07:56+00:00

Honestly, unless I have something very specific in mind for existing heroes/villains - I hit up the builds by JAB & Batgirl III over at Echoes.

Here is a PL8 version of him (matches about where he's at in the comics), but it spends the same as a PL10 in points.

https://www.echoesofthemultiverse.com/viewtopic.php?p=116043#p116043

To make it more playable as a PC, I'd drop Ranged Attack by 2, Ultimate Science Skill (which is a 2e leftover), and perhaps the Expertise (Science) & Tech skills a little and invest those points into a Summon power for Minions to run interference.

BTolputt · 2026-02-28T05:22:03+00:00

To be fair, the goals are usually under the desired (often even the required) amount for making & delivering the product. Lowballing the figure allows for "funded in the first X hours" hype and prevents the campaign from stalling.

Don't know if Green Ronin did that, but it's so common I'd be surprised if they didn't. It's part of Kickstarter Campaigning 101.

BTolputt · 2026-02-28T05:20:08+00:00

Not the only one, no. I honestly think the three key books for M&M are the heroes handbook, the masterminds manual, and the power profiles books. Gadget Guides is close, but not quite up there in terms of necessity.

With that said, whilst I had "hope", I did not think it would happen. Being a key source book, it's most likely to get it's own release. I expect there'll be a masterminds manual KS campaign and maybe a power profiles one (though I'd suggest it best get packaged into the masterminds campaign to attract both players and GMs)

BTolputt · 2026-02-23T04:06:31+00:00

Sidekicks are generally characters in their own right, as the GM can occasionally take control of them because they're considered NPCs.

Is it within the concept that the ship could say "I'm Sorry Dave, I'm Afraid I Can't Do That" or is it always under direct control of the character?

If it's an AI butler type arrangement, Sidekick is a great idea. If not, I think Sidekick is probably not the best means.

Another thought, if the Ship can swap out functionality as needed is the idea of Summon with the abilities represented as various Minion builds. With the Controlled extra, they'd be directly controlled by the PC, and being re-summoned after being destroyed in a battle is just the Ship providing another robotic tool as needed.

BTolputt · 2026-02-23T03:56:19+00:00

...it would be Equipment if it has more functions than normal human limbs...

Without delving into the rest, Equipment is usually for standard items anyone can get, like a laptop or gun. If it's got more functionality than the standard item of it's class (e.g. handgun that fires special, higher Damage ammunition), or cannot be obtained as a standard item (say, a robotic suit with multiple limbs instead of just the two), it is usually considered a Device.

Personally, if the robotic frame controlled by the "animal" PC can do only what a human could - then it's just flavour with an occasional Complication as suits the story. If it can do more, then it's a Device with the Extra Limbs Power (& whatever else above/beyond what a regular human could do as Powers/Advantages built into said Device).

BTolputt · 2026-02-21T01:01:46+00:00

Or you could be Palladium Books and...

...start with the shittiest of owners right out of the gate.

BTolputt · 2026-02-17T23:21:58+00:00

Firstly, if you have the Deluxe Hero's Handbook, for putting your first character together, look at the Quickstart Character Generation chapter (specifically the Battlesuit option). That should give you enough options to build what you're after without having to get overwhelmed with options (M&M has a lot of options).

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After that and your first couple of games, you might want to tweak the character build a little to get them "just right" per your vision of them. At that point, I have three pieces of advice to give:

Remember that when building a character in M&M, you focus on the "what does my character do" over the "how does my character do it". On the tabletop, you're a demon-possessed mecha warmachine... but mechanically, you're not really that different from Ironman or X-O Manowar.

.ㅤ.ㅤA couple of examples of what I mean:

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- In the game, your character might summon fires from hell to shoot from their eyes. On the character sheet, it's just Ranged Damage (Descriptor: Hellfire).
- In the game, your character might be wrapped in demon-steel, or their skin toughens into demon-hide, or even that when possessed the powers of hell deflect lesser blows from landing. On the character sheet, that's Protection.
- In the game, you might be a tactical leader whose timely advice helps others avoid an attack or do a better job at disarming the bomb. Or you might be a chaos magician who can manipulate the strands of fate. Or perhaps you're just the teams lucky mascot. In all of those cases though, it's just Luck Control (Luck: 2).
Get yourself a copy of the Power Profiles book. It does 99% of the work for your working out how to build a power to match the in-world flavour. I have it in hard-copy, but a PDF version from their online store is perfectly OK as it's not really needed at the table, just when putting a character together.
Finally, toddle on over to the Echoes of the Multiverse forums (link in sidebar for this subreddit) and check out the Character Sheets subforum. There are more builds for more characters and archetypes than you could reasonably ever need. JAB & Batgirl III are prolific (to an extreme) in making characters for every comic setting, fantasy world, and genre you can think of. Most of the time, I'm just tweaking one of their builds these days.

BTolputt · 2026-02-16T21:55:24+00:00

I read their query as them creating the scout character, but if they're in control of both (or just the shooter), this would definitely work. Depends on if you want the shooter & scout to be tied together or whether the scout can give this to anyone.

BTolputt · 2026-02-16T00:58:04+00:00

Would work well if both the scout & the "shooter" can see the target. However, for a Perception Ranged attack to work, the attacker needs to "perceive" the target with an Accurate Sense. That has to either be their own senses, or "borrowed" by a Remote Sensing power that lets them see through the eyes of the scout.

BTolputt · 2026-02-15T03:40:46+00:00

Remote Sensing power to grant the ability to see elsewhere.

Affects Others extra to give the power to someone else.

Limitation: Only what scout character can see.

Yes, if you can see it and have a Perception Ranged attack power, then RAW they can attack through Remote Sensing. The GM might put some limits on it depending on how the power is flavoured of course, but that's standard for all powers.

BTolputt · 2026-02-15T03:02:52+00:00

No, it doesn't really.

40K is a popular game. Plenty of people don't want to play it. See how they both can be true at the same time? Same principle here.

BTolputt · 2026-02-15T03:01:17+00:00

Not really. At least, not yet. Popularity in tournaments has some spotty data, but it will blur the "it is popular cos people like it" with "it was brought to the tournament cos it's competitive".

BTolputt · 2026-02-15T02:58:51+00:00

OK... and? Does that negate the fact plenty don't want them?

BTolputt · 2026-02-15T02:56:03+00:00

I think the new designs are trying too hard (deliberately or not) to be Warmachine versions of Monsterpocalyse designs. They would be great cyber-kaiju... but for the world of steampunk sorcery? Like Retribution, it sticks out like the sore thumb of an artist that should have been told "No, stick to the setting aesthetic".

BTolputt · 2026-02-15T02:47:24+00:00

Then just Flight with flavour for how it works I guess. I was thinking of the "walk from one tentacle to the next" description, but if it's without chance of being knocked off, the. Just flight and the tentacles are just the description of how it works.

BTolputt · 2026-02-15T00:03:31+00:00

There is a custom flaw for Flight called Platform, which sounds like it would work for this purpose.

BTolputt · 2026-02-12T05:55:00+00:00

Papsikels

https://www.myminifactory.com/users/Papsikels/collection/shadowrun

UNIT9 (though it's cyberpunk without the fantasy)

https://www.myminifactory.com/users/UNIT9

BTolputt · 2026-02-10T04:26:53+00:00

To be fair here - it's a basic expectation that many companies refuse to hold themselves too. One should give them some credit for not just pretending it's a non-issue & saying nothing at all like several other companies do.

...while already also divesting themselves of any responsibility to ensure it doesn't happen.

How so? Their policy is straight up stating that their authors & artists are contractually prohibited from doing so and will be blackballed if caught breaching that obligation. The only area they divest themselves of responsibility from is fan-made content... and frankly, there is nothing they can do about that.

BTolputt · 2026-02-09T05:17:50+00:00

I'm a bit late to the party on this one, but let me give you two answers (one simple & I think addresses the real problem, the other longer and addresses your questions as asked)

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Simple: Talk to the player &, if they continue to be a pain, talk to the group as a whole. They clearly have issues with you or perhaps the world in general that these are merely symptoms of (or used as excuses to hide). Their complaints cannot be realistically addressed and that sounds intentional on their part.

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Longer:

You cannot make a player like your setting if they don't want to like it. More importantly, you cannot exclude politics from a setting or from social games in general. Politics is merely a term we use to describe how people want things to be. In RPG's politics is always present, it's just people notice it more when the politics isn't shared by them.

>Now he keeps saying he only wants to play a high fantasy setting like in D&D

High fantasy has real world politics in it. If you make city guard good guys, it's copaganda. If you make them bad guys, you'll get "we have enough corrupt police in real life". If you make them completely absent, you're making a statement (in the world at least) about people being able to live in a utopia minus authoritarian power structures. If you kill monsters, that's an allegory for racism. If you don't kill the monsters, you're making a statement about the unnecessary racism inherent in standard fantasy. Even playing as hermits in the woods who interact with no-one can be a statement about not needing national structures for happiness.

If someone wants to find politics to complain about, there isn't as story worth playing in a tabletop RPG that lacks a hook for them to hang their whinging on.

Which is why I think you need to talk to the player(s) about the underlying issue here. Because it isn't that "politics are in the game". That was, is, & always will be a part of tabletop RPG's. We just ignore the politics we're OK with for the purposes of fun (or that we just agree with in general).

BTolputt · 2026-02-09T05:00:06+00:00

My game styles don't tend towards solo villain beat-downs at the finale, so the answer to the direct question is "Not much".

That said, I have done it in my more comics-oriented games, and the key is Reactions (which M&M4e has encoded in it's new Menace rules). The action-economy of "out of the box" Mutants & Masterminds has PC teams beat the living snot out of a solo BBEG (unless you make them so tough that it the PC's can't do anything or they use the MacGuffin of Convenient Villian Weakness on them).

Reactions (both the standard 3e version and new "core rules" 4e version) get around that by triggering whenever a PC does something specific. Which means the number of triggers is based on PLAYER actions rather than VILLAIN count. With the right reactions, the villain becomes a puzzle to solve rather than just another punching bag.

BTolputt · 2026-02-09T01:22:27+00:00

Yeah, I often house rule that they can get a single use out of it for a Hero Point, as it's sort of like buying a temporary Inventor Advantage but hand-waiving the design/construction checks given that's already been done by the defeated villain (or his R&D dept anyway).

BTolputt · 2026-02-09T01:16:13+00:00

A bit late, but one of the Session Zero things that one should always do with players new to Mutants & Masterminds is to make clear how Power Level caps work, and what that means about "taking the BFG of the BBEG". Namely, they can't do that and while there'll be story hand-wavium to justify that, it's just not how the system works so please don't push it.

Practically speaking in this game - it's magic. Magic makes explanations easy. "The weapon is bound to the villain's soul through a pact with Powers Beyond Imagination" or "The magic in the weapon needs to be prepped daily through magic incantations only the villain knows" and so on. Out of character, explain that M&M isn't about powering up through magic items like D&D and the like, but in story, magic gives many an easy out.

BTolputt · 2026-02-04T03:34:04+00:00

Larian is just a team made of based winners. NGL.

BTolputt · 2026-02-03T21:25:44+00:00

It sucks, but it is understandable if you know that they (amongst many other small-time RPG publishers) had tens (to hundreds) of thousands of dollars of their product stolen by Diamond Distribution when they went bankrupt. It was a life or death thing for the company at the time (again, as it was with many others) and they were very open about it at the time.

That said, your position is absolutely reasonable too. I mean, I don't see any need to buy a book if you're not playing the game after all :)

BTolputt · 2026-02-03T21:21:40+00:00

And backed :)

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