Mutants and Masterminds is kind of interesting. I like how it’s designed so character creation is entirely point buy. There’s no classes. No spells. You pay for skills and abilities directly. There’s basic powers, and modifiers you can use to make them more interesting. It’s also geared towards balance as opposed to simulation, which means you can make whatever type of character you want instead of having to stick with what’s optimal.

Unfortunately, it’s not well-done. For example, they frequently forget the game uses a log scale and cut numbers in half. Someone with a Dodge rank of -2 who is Vulnerable has their active defenses halved, which brings their Dodge rank up to -1. Equipment is 3 to 4 times cheaper than Devices, with the only differences being flavor (Equipment is something a normal person can get) and a different method of calculating Toughness that very often makes Equipment stronger. I ended up making a list of house rules trying to fix all of them (and admittedly including a few alternate rules that aren’t clearly better or worse) that’s so long that it would probably be easier to make a new RPG.

I don’t suppose I can get any advice on something I would like? My requirements are:

1. A point buy system that lets you make any character you want.
2. Costs are based on making characters balanced, and not how literally expensive a piece of equipment would be and that sort of thing.
3. Must be balanced as far as reasonably possible without massive flaws like M&M.
4. I’d really like having a wide variety of characters you can make and things you can do. Make it so you can just play a Swarm, or a character of any size class, or anything else you can think of.

It’s a “new adult body”, not a “newly adult body”. I’m not sure having a new body resets your age. Though if nothing else, getting a long-lived body means you won’t have to cast Clone as often.

Also, I looked into it and it looks like the people she’s talking about died before 5e. In 3.5, it was a lot harder to undo aging. There was an epic feat for it, and I suppose Clone and Reincarnate arguably might work, but it didn’t say they do, and neither could bring someone back that had already died of old age.

23 years. I’m assuming you’re going for Squalid living conditions rather than Wretched, so you can only save half your money. But you’d still be able to afford Poor conditions for most of your life. If that’s not worth it, why even bother the first time? Just do the minimum it takes to get to a good afterlife, like go grab a sword and go on a suicide mission for a good god.

Of course, really what you’d do is spend 3.5 years saving up 250 gold, then learn a tool proficiency, and now you’re a skilled worker and can live a Modest lifestyle and save 1 gp per day, and save up the rest of the money in 2 years.

plus another 400 to pay the caster.

How do you know how much to pay the caster? I thought 5e didn’t have an equation for that. Adventures League has a few spells you can buy, which mostly follow the equation level^2 + 2*consumed component cost + unconsumed component cost/10. Using that, Clone should cost 2840 gp (including components).

Edit: I mean 10*level^2 + 2*consumed component cost + unconsumed component cost/10

But poison is purple. It’s acid they’d get it mixed up with.

But you could have just used a shade of red that looks the same. It would be just as safe, and have red health potions.

How common is using Clone to live forever? The spell is cheap enough that even poor people can afford the material components (so long as they don’t mind a squalid lifestyle), but I’m guessing there’s not enough casters for everyone.

Once you’re a high enough level you can cast Plane Shift and visit. Arguably, you can just use Sending. It can contact other planes, but I’m not sure if their soul in the afterlife technically qualifies as the same creature.

I’m not sure if that’s a joke? If you have red/green colorblindness, you wouldn’t be able to distinguish yellow either. You’d just see blue and not blue.

That’s hard fantasy. Soft fantasy can be good too.

But then they’re too awesome to use, so you never use them and never find out the enemies can use them against you.

I’d have made the heads go in rainbow order (though there’s not enough of them to technically do the pride flag), and maybe give each one of them a different pride flag on their necks. Still cute though.

Then make an Alchemy Jug. I don’t need the sheep for an infinite money glitch.

Good to know. I was worried someone didn’t sheer their sheep and it was getting really hot under there.

What if you’re double gay for unrelated reasons before they cast the spell?

I guess you’d need flight too, so Phantom Steed wouldn’t be enough. They probably wouldn’t be able to reach a city in time.

Also, it only really works in open areas, so you’d have to avoid any caves.

Would it fit? I suppose technically the rules say a gargantuan creature is 20 feet by 20 feet or larger, and you can make a ten foot radius sphere with Wall of Force.

But also, that would give it total cover, and Vicious Mockery does not grant itself an exception from that. Message is the only one I know of that does.

You might be able to find some cheese strat. One good trick is to use a Phantom Steed to constantly outrange your opponent. But Vicious Mockery doesn’t have enough range to make that effective.

I’m sure someone can figure out a method, but Vicious Mockery isn’t going to be the interesting part.

(instead, they try to play the same character with different names).

I’m imagining every session they play a new character who meets the party and decides not to join them.

But a much better way would be to say “with safety tools and lots of inter-group romance”.

What if someone things humans are fine, but is against variant humans?

I knew it’s just optional rules, but I think it’s funnier to think of it as an in-universe race of humans.