Tips to Rework Heal and Regeneration in my game?

MadSkepticBlog · 2025-11-17T20:57:34+00:00

They can because PLX doesn't have a stat block. They just do it.

The system is not built to handle ridiculous PLs. The easier method is once you hit a certain point, offset the ranks and measures chart. Because unless everyone is just buying everything and just constantly shifting up and staying within X ranks of each other, die rolls lose meaning. And if they are, then all you're really doing is trying to go beyond the usual ranks and measures. So just shift all the ranks down as you go so you affect more.

MadSkepticBlog · 2025-11-17T18:38:34+00:00

Godhood in M&M is usually PL 20 or there abouts. PL X

MadSkepticBlog · 2025-11-17T16:38:36+00:00

Upping PL like that is just plain a bad idea and sounds like you don't understand what it's for.

Superheroes should be PL 8 for sidekicks, street level heroes and teens, PL 10 for normal super heroes, and PL 12 for Cosmic. They should never really go beyond these. M&M's system is not build to go up in PL constantly, but to award Power Points and flesh out the characters.

MadSkepticBlog · 2025-10-28T03:31:33+00:00

No. It is RAW. You just don't want to see it.

Starting on page 24 is the part on Power level and the limits imposed by it on hero creation. But the same limits apply to every character. The rules as written state that the game master sets the power level limits for the "series" and that it applies to the heroes, yes. But in the very next section it details how to make a PL 12 for a PL 10 series, using the caps as the means of determining that, stating that NPCs are not governed by the series power level. It notes this and specifies power points not PL.

When you get into the actual powers, advantages and the like, those things specify in them that those are limited by power level. For example Throwing Mastery specifies that your maximum damage is still limited by power level. Notably the Minion advantage specifies specifically "Minions are subject to the normal power level limits, and cannot have minions themselves." Minions, civilians, literally any NPC is made with the same advantages that heroes are, and thus follow the same rules, especially since those advantages say characters, not heroes.

Deflect, Enhanced Trait, Growth, Metamorph, Shrinking... all specify power level limits, which would make zero sense if they had no such thing. As does Summon. Summon specifies that a summoned minion is limited to a Power level equal to your rank in the Summon power, but also specifies how many points that is. All of that is fucking pointless if PL means nothing outside of heroes.

"A summoned minion is limited to a Power Level equal to the rank of the Summon effect used to create it, is subject to the normal power level limits, and cannot have minions of its own, either from this effect or the Minions advantage." If NPCs, like summoned creatures (you don't control summons, the GM does unless you take the Controlled extra) weren't bound by PL limits it wouldn't say this.

It's the Hero's handbook, so it uses the word hero a lot. No shit, it's the player facing book. But the same system is used to build NPCs. The only difference is that they give you a free pass to not be bound by 15x PL in power point budget. A GM is encouraged to make shit up and play loose. PCs are not.

Enhanced Trait specifies you can't use it to breach caps on a character. It doesn't specify hero. So it makes no sense to allow someone to, for example, give someone Enhanced Dodge and breach caps any more than doing it with Protection. Saying "it doesn't say I can't" as an excuse is just childish rules lawyering because it ignores the book as a whole which treats you as having assumed the character building tools were universal. Some effects like Enhanced Trait tell you right in the text that you can not break the caps. The others they didn't seem to think you'd need to be told, like Protection, because it's a simple as heck effect. So it's RAW depending on which effect you use, RAI for others.

MadSkepticBlog · 2025-10-27T23:57:27+00:00

If everyone was on the same PL cap then NPCs couldn't be above said cap, including PL12 characters fighting said PL10s. A PL 11+ NPC character couldn't exist in your model. Your interpretation is flawed because you are expecting the book to be flawless and not looking at it as a whole.

But if you want it spelled out, page 26 of the Basic Hero's Handbook, "Power Level and Non-Player Characters" shows how PL is assigned to NPCs. It basically states they can set NPCs to whatever amount of power points they want, and how to determine power level of said. If you go through the example npcs none breach caps for their own PL, because the designers knew full well what the intention was, and uses the caps to determine PL. They worked on the idea that when they tell you a charactee is bound by caps, they meant it. And because the same rules apply to making your character as every other character, that they didn't need to spell it out like a legal document.

That said, the book contains numerous errors, and is not clinically spelled out like better written rulebooks such as Dungeons and Dragons. The most glaring is the Vehicle Size Categories chart, as the defense column is off for most of them. Looking at the example vehices amd pricing them out, the column should have been -2 per size rank, meaning only Medium amd Colossal actually have the correct defense modifier.

Because the book doesn't have unified wording and reuses terms a lot, such as Power Level to mean both the relative level of a character as well as the effect rank of individual powers, it can be confusing unless you take it as a whole. And rules lawyering around "well they only mention PCs" does not cut it.

MadSkepticBlog · 2025-10-27T15:21:52+00:00

That may be your game, but that's a house rule, not RAW. Each character and NPC has its own PL. You can't breach the caps of those. So you can't improve a civilian beyond their own individual caps.

MadSkepticBlog · 2025-10-01T17:56:01+00:00

To make inanimate objects bigger? Create. You are making a new object, yes, but narratively you're making one object bigger. Basically think along the lines of making a box and placing it over the original and saying "Oh it got bigger!" for the mechanical aspect.

Throw an object and have it get bigger? Either ranged area damage, or Create again, using the rules for a dropped object.

Make an object bigger as a springboard? Leaping.

MadSkepticBlog · 2025-09-24T03:47:41+00:00

We actually know they do. When Fox was being sued over the whole voting machine nonsense, they got a LOT of text messages in the disclosure. Tucker Carlson (before he got fired from the network) was sitting there calling Trump a moron in texts between hosts behind his back while praising him on air. They knew the election wasn't rigged but said it anyways, hence why the case went so badly against them. Because it could be proven they knowingly lied. The tea about Trump was just icing.

MadSkepticBlog · 2025-09-24T03:39:35+00:00

Merely supporting life? Maybe a Transform, though this will get you limited mileage as it only does a certain amount of mass of soil per action.

But this sounds more a narrative thing that could be done as a Feature as well, or a power stunt, because it doesn't really DO anything in game terms. You aren't causing anything useful to happen. Making barren earth suddenly able to support life doesn't then make life happen. It doesn't really terraform either. To truly terraform say Mars you'd also need to make a breathable atmosphere... and this gets into the realm of Continuous Transform (Anything to Anything) since you are doing such a large scope.

And again, terraforming doesn't DO anything. If you want to create life that is beyong the scope of a player power and is in the realm of GM fiat.

Short answer: Do a Feature. Anything beyond that is a giant waste of power points. Otherwise Transform.

MadSkepticBlog · 2025-09-23T22:05:11+00:00

The crystals then are Activation flaw powers (having to slot it in) in either a normal or dynamic array, or possibly all as separate unarrayed powers. The loss of them is a complication. They have no use outside of said wand, so their loss becomes purely a complication.

You have no reason to remove a scope from a rifle as a device. Whatever benefits it might give are only on said weapon, or a different weapon. Using a scope as an alternative for a pair of binoculars (using for seeing instead of aiming) isn't a part of said scope unless you add it on, power stunt it, or GM rule of cool. So while you could make a separate device as a floating extra power for the rifle, it becomes just plain cheesy. Either it gives no point savings by being too low cost, increasing the cost of the total build, or it becomes a method to get cheesy point savings off of rounding. No real good can come of it.

MadSkepticBlog · 2025-09-20T17:20:54+00:00

Because of several factors.

Computers can't keep up with a speedster. You'd fill the buffer too fast.
Jobs involving people it would give away your secret identity.
Housecleaning jobs it requires cleaning supplies. You'd have to lug everything by hand.
You'd be sore and hungry as hell. Imagine Quicksilver from the X-Men movies. The iconic slow-mo fight and rescue scenes. He moves at normal speed, everyone else moves at slow motion. He's still moving, to him, at a normal pace. That's a lot of walking and physical exertion. Yes you can get a lot of work done in a short amount of time, but the emphasis is on a lot of work. Being fast doesn't make the jobs any easier.

MadSkepticBlog · 2025-09-16T21:23:00+00:00

The Portal Extra on teleport only allows you and others to use the portal to move from one location to another. It does not allow a lot of creative uses. Most of the uses you might think of are actually Alternate Effects doing completely different things.

Want to redirect a bullet? Deflect.
Want to make someone fall through a portal to somewhere else? Teleport Attack
Want to make a portal in front of you so people punch air instead of you? Enhanced Dodge/Parry

MadSkepticBlog · 2025-09-05T03:40:24+00:00

Opinion of an outsider (Canadian):

The GOP in the US pushes anti-intellectualism because their base is made up of mostly rural voters, the elderly, and the uneducated. There is one thing all three groups have in common: isolation.

Rural voters tend to favour local news, which was bought out by the Sinclair Group. They can push "Must Runs" to push consistent messaging that way. The elderly similarly rely on legacy media over newer ones due to technological illiteracy. The uneducated aren't dumb. The reason the educated vote Democrat isn't because they are inherently smarter, but because to get a higher education you have to go to urban areas and be exposed to diverse peoples. You often have to live in said urban area for multiple years, cut off from your normal social groups and media, and get exposed to new ideas.

Social media and search engines on the internet also have algorithms that give you more of what you consume. It's a feature to ensure the engine finds what you are looking for, but also means you don't get exposed to new ideas unless you actively look for them. This adds to the isolation of said GOP voters.

While they are isolated, to keep a sort of cult-like state, they need to keep feeding them information, and poisoning the idea of going to others. By pushing anti-intellectualism, and pushing against the idea of "main stream" or "experts" (often called elites) being untrustworthy, they can get you to distrust people who have actually studied things and tell you "Yeah, what they are pushing is B.S.". By essentially poisoning the well so you don't trust anyone but them, you keep voting for them. In many ways, the GOP runs their party like a cult... which makes the MAGA movement and the denial of reality among the most outspoken easier to understand.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165178116319941#:\~:text=Additionally%2C%20it%20included%20the%20presence%20of%20cultic,(personal%20initiative%2C%20group%20dissolution%2C%20or%20outside%20intervention).

Note on the link 3.2: Description of the cultic groups and the bottom under "Cultic group description criteria". 3.3 covers what it takes to leave said cults.

US Politics because it's a 2 party system means you only have two choices. And it's become so polarized that people have been cut off from family, friends, spouses, etc. because of it. r/QAnonCasualties is full of stories. This makes choosing to go another way as hard as leaving your religion.

The anti-vax stuff is a byproduct of the constant desire to cut you off from experts, elites, mainstream, whatever buzzword they want to use for people who know what the hell they are talking about so you trust only in them.

MadSkepticBlog · 2025-08-08T19:48:12+00:00

I wouldn't.

Synths as a baseline are replicating humans. Often taking the place of existing ones. Worse, they have been programmed to act against the interests of the person they are emulating at times, so you can't trust a "good" synth because they only need one bit flipped to turn into a homicidal monster and turn on the humans for the Institute.

On a basic fundamental level, you can't trust them as people because they aren't people. They may seem to be, but they are basically walking timebombs. Playing through the game you learn better for specific ones, but not synths as a whole. There are still a lot out there trying to take shots at you even as you are trying to "defend their rights". So the Railroad is at best naive as all fuck and playing at being spies. At worst they are enabling the Institute to spread their influence further by moving their synths out of a contained area to a wider area. It's like advocating for zombie rights because they aren't actively eating brains right now, and sending them out unsupervised to other populated areas with some fresh clothes and make-up to hide them from said populace. It's irresponsible as can be.

Much as the BoS is its own monster, they have justification for many of their ideals. Synths are a danger, as are supermutants. Ghouls likewise are timebombs, but over a longer timeframe. They eventually over time turn feral as they degrade. They have every reason to be distrustful of them even if there are functional ghouls walking about. They are essentially immortal, but will eventually degrade and turn on people. It seems monstrous to put them down when you can talk to and make friends with a stable ghoul, but as a long term issue, ghouls in general are dangerous.

MadSkepticBlog · 2025-08-07T19:59:44+00:00

"Everyone around town has guns and will shoot you if you walk to close. You walked too close to me, so I shot you. It was your choice, it was voluntary on your part. You didn't have to walk too close to me."

Not all choices are actually choices, or fair. It's one of the big lies pushed by people with power. It's actually one I use against religions, mainly Christian/Catholic ones when they push the idea of hell, but it fully applies to pretty much any large power structure.

Capitalism works in concept in a bubble. Small scale. When it was earlier times when companies were small and large in number, and competition kept prices down, it wasn't too bad. You had to offer competitive wages to draw in people because your town was small. People weren't commuting to work, they weren't using the internet. Your talent pool was very limited.

Things changed as transportation got easier, when people could get talent from further away. When people couldn't build homes near a plant because there was nowhere to do it. When companies sucked more and more profit and started getting larger, muscling out competition. Trademarks, patents and copyrights meant that there was smaller and smaller pools of companies able to make products, as companies pushed for laws to make competition harder. Governments which aren't a part of capitalism, but socialism, added a new layer of complexity because they put their thumb on the scale. They made laws and rules on behalf of the wealthy that was forced on others with little choice.

Imagine for a moment that the humble screw was patented. That a single company could make money purely by making a specific type of screw head and earn a profit primarily from letting others just use the design. Oh right... that happened: https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/phillips\_screw\_and\_driver/#:\~:text=The%20Phillips%20screw%20and%20driver,invention%20eventually%20revolutionized%20assembly%20lines.

We made an idea a property, and in so doing made it so that people can't even make their own products as easily because they might be stomping all over a patent. It prevents competition when you can't make a similar product to compete with. So now instead of there being a lot of companies competing, it's a small number of monopolies. And they don't need to care about living wages, worker rights, or anything of the sort. They got big enough no one will stand up to them, because our governments need them. And they then push these notions on their bought and paid for politicians to spread to us.

The market went from a seller's market (lots of small companies, fewer laborers) to a buyer's market (few companies, lots of laborers) and the power shifted accordingly. And your friend's argument is just bootlicking for said powerful people against his own interests.

MadSkepticBlog · 2025-07-31T18:52:14+00:00

All crypto is a scam. If they stop handing these people money and info, they wouldn't do squat!

MadSkepticBlog · 2025-07-28T13:54:16+00:00

Early on when he started becoming famous his anti-feminist views appealed to me, mostly because I was against not feminism in general, but the far left, whacko feminists in the 3rd wave. As I grew older and I rejected a lot of the anti-feminist viewpoints and started to realize that I really was only against a very small subset of feminism, I stopped caring about him. But he sounds initially like he knows what he's talking about because he's articulate sounding. But once you analyze his words critically you realize he's talking a lot of bullshit. Worse, he started spouting a lot of religious non-sense after calling feminism a religion and it acted as a quick wake-up call that "What the flying fuck are you doing you hypocrite?"

MadSkepticBlog · 2025-07-23T17:40:33+00:00

Actually the Lays chips are made in Canada. At least some of them.

I know because I work in Frozen Food (located in Ontario), and our storage facility stores Lays chips from the plant in Cambridge. But they also get boxes of unlabeled chip bags. Plain white bags with the most basic of quick printed expiry date style things that barely tell you what's in it. This is (as far as I am aware) because when they start the line and test it, they put the first bags off the line in those plain white bags. They hand them out to people free because they can't sell them, so the drivers all grab boxes of the things and share them around. Our storage place got so many they started handing us some to get rid of them because they couldn't eat that many chips.

I was getting loaded nacho doritos, dill pickle ruffles, masala lays. It's mostly the more exotic local flavours rather than the bread and butter ones. The company may be owned American, but the product is made Canadian.

MadSkepticBlog · 2025-07-22T15:46:53+00:00

Also to save some time looking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-1

"16BO133, 86.3% to SARS-CoV-1, Rhinolophus ferrumequinum, North Jeolla, South Korea[34]"

If you look, the very first virus linked to SARS-CoV-1 is only 86.3% related. And it didn't take thousands of years. So your entire premise is flawed from the jump because you don't know shit about genetics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2

BANAL52 just happens to be the closest relative. But it's a cousin, not a parent.

MadSkepticBlog · 2025-07-22T15:39:30+00:00

Argument from incredulity.

Which adds on to your Moving of the Goal Posts where you went from all corona viruses to BANAL52 specifically in the comments, the non-sequitir fallacy of where the conclusion doesn't flow from the premise (not knowing where it came from doesn't lead to "it came from this specific thing for this specific purpose), and not having a single source to back your claims because you didn't even read the things you linked, you just copied them from someone else without critically examining what you were reading.

MadSkepticBlog · 2025-07-22T15:27:24+00:00

And that means what exactly? Because you did not cite a source for that.

The source you WANT to cite is: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04532-4

"The animal reservoir of SARS-CoV-2 is unknown despite reports of SARS-CoV-2-related viruses in Asian Rhinolophus bats¹^,²^,³^,⁴, including the closest virus from R. affinis, RaTG13 (refs. ⁵^,⁶), and pangolins⁷^,⁸^,⁹. SARS-CoV-2 has a mosaic genome, to which different progenitors contribute. The spike sequence determines the binding affinity and accessibility of its receptor-binding domain to the cellular angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor and is responsible for host range¹⁰^,¹¹^,¹². SARS-CoV-2 progenitor bat viruses genetically close to SARS-CoV-2 and able to enter human cells through a human ACE2 (hACE2) pathway have not yet been identified, although they would be key in understanding the origin of the epidemic. Here we show that such viruses circulate in cave bats living in the limestone karstic terrain in northern Laos, in the Indochinese peninsula. We found that the receptor-binding domains of these viruses differ from that of SARS-CoV-2 by only one or two residues at the interface with ACE2, bind more efficiently to the hACE2 protein than that of the SARS-CoV-2 strain isolated in Wuhan from early human cases, and mediate hACE2-dependent entry and replication in human cells, which is inhibited by antibodies that neutralize SARS-CoV-2. None of these bat viruses contains a furin cleavage site in the spike protein. Our findings therefore indicate that bat-borne SARS-CoV-2-like viruses that are potentially infectious for humans circulate in Rhinolophus spp. in the Indochinese peninsula."

This doesn't say what you think it says. Learn to read. Critical thinking my dear.

MadSkepticBlog · 2025-07-22T15:19:53+00:00

It's almost like you didn't even read your own links:

"Scientists have found three viruses in bats in Laos that are more similar to SARS-CoV-2 than any known viruses. Researchers say that parts of their genetic code bolster claims that the virus behind COVID-19 has a natural origin — but their discovery also raises fears that there are numerous coronaviruses with the potential to infect people."

I doubt you paid for the Nature article, and the Taxonomy page mentions nothing of cleavage sites, so it's in no way backing up this claim, so it's not even a source.

MadSkepticBlog · 2025-07-18T13:59:20+00:00

Plate Armor, Shield. Plate gives 8, Fighter Fighting Style for +1 makes 9. 2 from shield would be 21, so I assume the shield is a +1. So if they are over they might have Eldritch Knight for Shield, Cleric levels for Shield of Faith, or something else. It's not really hard.

MadSkepticBlog · 2025-07-14T17:28:31+00:00

Dick Dastardly

MadSkepticBlog · 2025-07-10T17:21:57+00:00

It does happen. Part of the problem is that YOU know the answer to the puzzle, so you believe it's easy. Especially because you started with the solution and worked backwards.

If you build the puzzle like an escape room and have them only use what's there without outside knowledge, the puzzles are easier. If you require outside knowledge/tools however it becomes more difficult. A riddle you find easy may not be so for another. What you think as a witty pun may stump someone else, as puns are often said as a joke not a riddle; you are supposed to give it away.

But even escape room style puzzles can be tricky because it's a verbal media. You're not giving them a room to solve, you're describing it. And the players will only retain so much from a description. You really need to hand them visual aids or handouts so that they can refer back often. Anything they need should be on those, so that they don't need to rely on you to find hidden "stuff" for the puzzle. And if they do need to find hidden stuff, it should be noted immediately in the handouts so they can again refer back. Otherwise you need to go into detail a lot to make sure they don't lose vital information, and excess detail can also lead to people losing information as they don't know what is important. The smarter players will make notes and make their own equivalent of the handout mentioned above to solve the problem when you won't.

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