<div align="center"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 24pt;"><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: impact;">Character Creation - Advice and Rules Tweaks</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br/><hr/><br/>Character creation will follow Mutants and Masterminds 3rd edition rules... with a little meddling from me.   Please don't assume you know what might be in here - have a look!  There are some warnings, a little advice, and a request for a couple of bits of information that <em>every</em> player should tell me about their character.  If you don't do so, I'll know you've not read this section! ;D<br/><br/><hr/><br/><strong>Power Level and Points</strong>:  At the start of the game, characters are Power Level 10, with 150 Power Points to spend.<br/><br/>For those of you in Muse's <em>Eden Universe</em> game, this is a marked step <span class="bbc_u">down</span> in power: there is a good reason why characters in that game have been recruited to the world's premier superpowered defence force!  In Adventures in Emerald your characters are not in that league (at least, not yet), but they are already far ahead of many active supers: there are many well-established supers in the Power Level 8-9 range.  And with Emerald City experiencing <em>very</em> low levels of super-activity, your characters might well expect to be perfectly able to handle anything that <em>does </em>happen to come their way in such a nice place to live.<br/><br/>An important note is that the sample characters in the Heroes' Handbook are all PL10, built with 150 points.  They're very good examples of broadly-competent superheroes, and most of them are easy to adapt and refine to better suit personal tastes.  You are under no obligation to use them as any sort of guide, but if you want to see how things <em>can</em> work then they demonstrate a number of possibilities.<br/><br/><hr/><br/><strong>Dump-Stats</strong>: None of your Abilities should be treated as being irrelevant.  If your character is charismatic and noticeable, give them Presence.  If they're smart, give them Intellect.  I <em>will</em> make use of the rulebook's mention of some checks being on your Ability alone rather than a skill, and I'll only apply skills when they can be brought into play.  E.g. being a master at Persuasion is highly unlikely to help if you're not talking, but Presence can help even a mute character look good while duking it out with a supervillain.  In summary: use your Abilities to tell me about your character, and pick the scores they <em>ought</em> to have.<br/><br/><strong>Strength</strong>: Some elements of the weight/time/distance table absolutely break down when dealing with remotely-normal humans.  World records in shot-put and javelin would be casually smashed by untrained teenagers, and full-grown adults could be bench-pressed by children.<br/><br/>Rather than try to figure out new numbers, I'll just ask that you say whether your character's Strength score is wholly-mundane or 'super'.  Things like Strength's effect on damage will be <em>unaffected </em>by that choice, but I'll let 'super'-strong characters use the listed numbers for what they can pick up and how far they can throw it.  E.g. a super-Strength 4 character could indeed pick up and throw a 200lb man the 120 feet permitted in the rules; a mundane Strength 4 man would 'just' be a really strong human.  Of course, 'super' Strength could potentially be hard to conceal, and could also be Nullified....<br/><br/>And yes, <em>this applies to all characters</em>.  As the examples above show, even a 'super' Strength of -2 is pretty impressive by real-world standards - so tell me if your character is 'super-strong' or merely mundane!<br/><br/><strong>Attractive (and Presence)</strong>: The Attractive Advantage is a) entirely optional and b) can be picked up during play.  You are <em>absolutely</em> free to choose to start with one or two levels of it, but this is <em>not</em> a game where you have to decide at character creation precisely how beautiful your character will be for the whole of the time you play them.  Indeed, characters being mentored in how to make more of their appearance would very much fit the theme, if you'd be interested in that sort of RP!<br/><br/>By default, you can assume that any character you make will look good while running around in spandex.  Levels of Attractive make you stand out among other supers: one level of the Advantage could probably get you modelling gigs; two is truly quite exceptional.<br/><br/>Presence is your natural (or possibly supernatural!) charisma and magnetism.  If your character is someone to whom people naturally pay attention even when not admiring their good looks, represent this with Presence.  Social skills are used actively in appropriate situations... but it's Presence that has people pay attention without knowing why, or feel that your character just seems innately trustworthy or interesting or or scary or likeable.<br/><br/><hr/><br/><strong>Arrays</strong>: Alternate abilities are great, but the official write-up of arrays is rather a mess.  They're specifically <em>not</em> meant to be simply 'all the powers I have', but there's limited guidance on how to actually use them.  Fundamentally, they seem to be intended for when a character has a single source of power that can be used for different effects - and if one of those effects is active, none of the others can be.  No combinations, no fancy mutli-power stunts employing more than one of the effects, no blurring of the lines: it's like turning a dial to switch between different settings.  Be careful that you don't accidentally render your character unable to do things you want them to (e.g. fly at the same time as they throw a ranged attack) by squashing powers together as alternate effects of each other, and note that I do reserve the right to ask for more detail on <em>why</em> a given set of powers should fit together as a single array.  A clear theme to <em>how</em> an array generates its different effects will make me a lot more likely to accept it!<br/><br/><strong>Defences</strong>: Don't feel bad about investing in defences.  This is no more reprehensible as "min-maxing" than having a fantasy warrior wear good armour and carry a shield.  If you have one or more Defences far below the permitted limits for Power Level 10, then opponents suitable for PL10 are likely to find it easy to beat you up (or even do really nasty things like take control of your character's mind) if they can make those kinds of attacks.  If <em>all </em>of your Defences are appreciably lower than they could be, then you are putting yourself at additional risk from every single attack you might face: this is probably not a wise move!<br/><br/>If you do choose to have any clear vulnerabilities then please use them to help to define your character: if your PC has areas in which their defences are very weak, this should be a clear <em>feature</em> of them and their powerset (at least as if exists at the start of the game), and it merits as much explanation as does one of their superpowers.<br/><br/>Again, use the scores you choose to put on your sheet as a way to describe your character!  :D<br/><br/><strong>Expertise</strong>: Feel free to take Expertise in things like "Cape Culture" or "Superheroes and Supervillains".  For anyone who spent time as part of the 'scene' themselves, it makes sense as a result of first-hand experience... and characters who are only just entering adulthood (and who are getting their first pay packets to spend / waste entirely as they choose) are in <em>the</em> prime demographic for fandom culture.  I can't promise that pop culture or old tales will tell you anything <em>vital</em>, but there could certainly be advantages to being able to say "I saw him on TV fighting the Liberty League in Freedom City last year: he flew and threw lightning bolts!"<br/><br/>Likewise, feel free to use Expertise to cover any hobbies or interests that don't really fit in elsewhere or that really need highlighting.<br/><br/><hr/><br/><strong>Actions</strong>: Mutants and Masterminds uses several different categories of action, each of which denotes a different amount of effort required to activate (or maintain) something you would like your character to do.  <em>Every</em> power will take one sort or another of action to use: <em>pay attention to these</em>!!!  In almost all cases, you get <em>one</em> Standard action and <em>one</em> Move action per round.  This means that (without something that specifically permits it, such as the use of a Hero Point), you <em>cannot</em> use two Standard Actions in the same round.  It's all too easy to design a character with some cool combination of effects in mind... only to discover that they're not actually possible to use together in a single round.  As with the warning regarding arrays above: do try to make sure that the points on the sheet actually let you do what you want to do (such as fly and shooting lightning bolts at the same time).<br/><br/>Similarly, if you want an effect to remain in place even if you're asleep or knocked out, make sure you check that you have actually acquired it in a form that will do so.  And if your conception of a power is that it is slow to use and takes effort to summon up, then make sure that you are reducing its speed (and getting a reduction in its Power Points cost!) to match that.<br/><br/>And when writing up your character sheet, <em>include the Action type(s)</em> for every power you have - and make note of the impact of any Advantages you have that might help with the 'Action Economy'.  This is especially important for some of the multi-stage powers: it's quite possible to design something in M&amp;M that needs to be 'fired up' with an action to enable the power's use (say, by charging-up a super-suit's power core or drawing a flow of mystical energy into oneself); takes another action to actually bring the desired superpower into effect; and then uses a third type of action to maintain it in subsequent rounds.  But even simple powers <em>will</em> interact with other things you do, so make a note of what each of your options requires.<br/><br/>I know I'm asking you to do more work in preparation, but this way you can much more easily see how you can combine your assorted choices to let you do <em>really cool</em> things in play.  ;D<br/><br/><strong>Contacts and Connections</strong>: A big part of my reason for posting the Setting Information above is to give you the chance to identify people, places, and things in which your characters might be interested and to which they might have ties (especially close ones).  Do they support one or more sports teams?  Do they send fanmail to the Gray Ghost every time she posts a blog?  Do they study at one of the universities, aspire to compete in the Emerald City Tournament of Martial Arts, intern as a coffee-carrier for Eyewitness News, work as barista in a tourist trap on Yellow Brick Row...?<br/><br/>Every character should have a reason to be in the city: somewhere they are studying, somewhere they work, somewhere they have retired to, an elderly relative they have moved to Emerald City to care for...  Make sure that you have the skills and Advantages to support this: e.g. if you want your character to live a life of luxury in a mansion on Sunset Hill, then Wealth (or some rather interesting Complications) are going to be a requirement!<br/><br/><hr/><br/><em>Edit</em>: 30th of December: added recommendation to have a look at the sample characters in the Heroes Handbook (they're all viable Power Level 10 builds), and some notes on Attractive and Presence.<br/></div>