Tabletop Tuesdays — Mutants & Masterminds 4e: “Sound & Fury”

Hey all! It’s Tuesday, and recently, Green Ronin announced the fourth edition of Mutants & Masterminds. To say I am excited would be understating, and I’m lucky enough to have gotten a sneak peek or two, and I’ve been skeeting on Bluesky about how much I love the Archetypes included in the 4e Origins playtest as and example of how Mutants & Masterminds’ flexibility is done so freaking well: even when you start with the Archetypes (which I totally suggest doing as an ease-of-entry point), you can do so much. And you’ll be able to see that for yourself on July, 31st (by visiting the Green Ronin Gen Con Booth 101), or heading to DriveThruRPG, or The Green Ronin Online Store to get your copy!

Soon my collection will grow again!

Mostly, what I mean is this: When you want to try out a new tabletop role-playing game, creating characters is often the most frustrating process. Archetypes let you offer shorthand to the players (ideal for their first go) but even if two characters decide to use the same Archetype? No worries, they aren’t going to be identical even if their numbers are almost exactly in synch.

Even better? As a GM, you can use the Archetypes to create villains on the fly, too. Add a layer of theme or “flavour text” to the various stats, and… you’re done with all the crunch. No, really. You can spend the majority of your prep time on motivations, plot, and all the rest. I freaking love that about M&M.

Let me show you what I mean, just with the Blaster, which you can visit there with a simple click.

Sound & Fury

I’m a big fan of using a phrases and idioms for superheroes and supervillains, so allow me to introduce “Sound & Fury,” a pair of villains who aren’t exactly big on subtlety or cleverness, but have the power to pull off being a challenge owing to the fact they’re masters of blasting with fire and sonic energy.

Energy—When you look at the Blaster M&M Archetype page, the first note about customizing is choosing your energy type, so with this duet, we’re going with Sound and Fire. Sound is going to be the more subtle of the two—I’m picturing her as being more sensitive to sound itself, where as Fury is a simple guy: he likes to watch things burn.

Skills—No specific choices to be made here as written on the template, gaining Acrobatics (show-offs), Deception and Persuasion (I mean, when you can throw fire and sound around, people tend to listen to you). Insight and Perception round out the bunch, which makes sense for characters who are relying more on their powers than any real training. They’ve learned to keep their heads up. You can always nudge skill points around, but both Sound and Fury tend to rely on being quick and mobile and a bit scary, so leaving them be as is would be fine.

Advantages—So, hopping up to the start of the start of the template you see Blasters have Ranged Attack 4 and Ranged Defense 4, then get to choose two Advantages for the character. For Sound, I’m thinking Evasion and Improved Initiative to give her that sense of “I felt that coming” through soundwaves in the air. For Fury? Critical Shot (where if you land a Critical Hit you get to use your Reaction to fire again) and Split Shot (because sometimes you want to burn two things at once).

Powers—Both Blasters get an Energy Aura, which provides them with a damaging layer of protection (in Fury’s case, it burns; in Sound’s case, it vibrates). This has no customization or choices as written in the Archetype, but even just by virtue of the two different energy types, you can see how it would play out differently in a game. For one thing, Fury is quite literally on fire. But Sound? I can picture her reaching out and touching a giant window just to watch it shatter.

The Blaster also starts with an Array where you choose three different versions to define the character’s core ability of, well, blasting. This is where the major choice of the Archetype is placed. For Fury, the choices seem pretty obvious: Energy Blast, Blinding Beam, and Blinding Flash, but he’s far, far more likely to do the Blast thing than faff about messing with blinding people. Still, when Sound is around, maybe she can talk him into it a bit more. Speaking of Sound, choosing Energy Blast, Stunning Blast immediately strike me as the obvious choices, but down at the bottom of the page, it points out you could swap out Dazzle Sight for Dazzle Hearing with the Blinding Beam, making it a Deafening Beam, and yes, I wish to do so for Sound. When you’ve got the two of them coming up against a hero, their one-two punch can be to blind and deafen said hero, and that’s going to be trouble for a lot of heroes.

Finally, they can both fly.

Options—Every Archetype comes with two extra points to nudge some stats around with. For Fury, I’d spend one on another Advantage: Snap Shot, so he can snipe at anyone who moves within range of him as a reaction (once per round, of course), and the other on a +1 to his Fortitude (making him just that little bit tougher). For Sound? I’d add +1 to her Will (making her just a little bit steadier) and +2 ranks to her Perception skill, which I’d again explain as her sound sensitivity just tuning her in (no pun intended) to her surroundings.

Boom. Two villains, ready to rumble (literally, in Sound’s case). The players won’t really have any idea that the two characters are almost identical as far as their stats go, only that one of them is trying to burn them to bits and the other one is beyond loud, and their initial one-two punch means one member of the team is already stumbling around blinking and yelling “I can’t hear anything!” really loud because they can’t hear anything.

Roll for initiative.

A Little More Customization…

As they are Sound & Fury are totally ready to go toe-to-toe with some heroes, but if I had more time, and I wanted to tweak the characters even more, I’d probably take those Archetypes and adjust a few things:

For Skills, I’d shift Fury’s Persuasion into Intimidation, and his Insight into Athletics. He’s a bully and a jock, and given how Mutants & Masterminds has those lovely Social interaction options, even in battle, I’d rather him do his version of those tricks via intimidation.

Under Powers, at the bottom of the Archetype page, it mentions how you could have a character transform into energy instead of having the energy shield, and I really like that for Sound, so I’d swap out her Energy Aura for Sound Form (Insubstantial 3; which leaves her with two more points to spend elsewhere, meaning she’d get two more options). I’d also be tempted to swap her from being a flyer into something more sound-based: splitting the Flight 8 (2 points per rank) into Speed 8 and Leaping 8 (both of which cost 1 point per rank), with the idea that she can make sonic-powered jumps, or create a kind of sound-wave she rides along a surface.

The options—which Sound now has two more points for—I’d put another +1 into Will (again, because she’s the steadier of the two by far, and also when you can turn insubstantial—and thus aren’t going to be hurt by a punch—heroes tend to try attacking you with mental attacks) and then put one point into Enhanced Senses for Ultra Hearing (letting her pick up sounds beyond the normal range of human hearing).