Power Profile: Animal Powers Power Profile: Animal Powers Power Profile: Animal Powers
Power Profile: Animal Powers Power Profile: Animal Powers Power Profile: Animal Powers
Animal Descriptors
The following are important descriptors for animal powers.
Animal Features
Offensive Powers
The struggle for survival in nature equips many animals
with offensive capabilities, which offensive animal powers
duplicate.
Crushing Grip
Whether its like a powerful bear-hug or a pythons constricting coils, you have a mighty grip able to hold and
squeeze an opponent. The Enhanced Strength granted
by this power is still limited by power level. Crushing Grip
is often accompanied by advantages like Improved Grab
and Improved Hold.
Crushing Grip: Enhanced Strength, Limited to Grabs 1 point
per rank.
Ferocious Charge
With a rush of movement at your opponent, you can
hit with considerable force, like a charging rhino or
bull. Protection or Immunity 2 (Own Slam Damage) is
common with this power, as is the Improved Critical
advantage.
Ferocious Charge: Strength-based Damage, Limited to While
Charging 1 point per 2 ranks.
Natural Weapons
Nature equips animals with weapons ranging from
sharp claws and teeth to fangs, horns, spines, and
mandibles. You possess similar natural weapons; some
may be Penetrating, while others have a Linked venom
effect (see the Venom power, following) or ranks of Improved Critical.
Natural Weapons: Strength-based Damage 1 point per rank.
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Quills
You have a coat of sharp quills or spines, making it dangerous to grab you and allowing you to inflict additional
damage in close combat.
Quills: Reaction Damage (to being touched) 4 points per rank.
Shock
You can deliver a powerful shock by touch, like an electric eel. If you can generate the shock by reflex whenever
someone touches you, apply the Reaction modifier.
Shock: Cumulative Affliction (electric shock; Resisted and
Overcome by Fortitude; Dazed, Stunned, Incapacitated) 2
points per rank.
Terrifying Roar
You can emit a fearsome roar, cry, or other animal call able
to shake and startle your foes. A truly terrifying roar might
be a Hearing Area Affliction instead.
Terrifying Roar: Enhanced Intimidation 1 point per 2 skill ranks.
Venom
The animal kingdom is filled with a wide range of venomous creatures, most using fangs or stingers to inject their
venom into a target (thus the use of Toughness for the
initial resistance check).
Venom can be Linked with a Damage effect for more
serious injection methods, like envenomed claws or
dagger-like fangs. Vary the conditions imposed by the
Affliction to suit different types of venoms: paralytics, for
example, may hinder, immobilize, and paralyze.
Venom: Progressive Affliction (Resisted by Toughness,
Overcome by Fortitude; Dazed, Stunned, Incapacitated) 3
points per rank.
Webbing
You can produce webbing like that of a spider, but scaled
up to human size, giving your webs greater tensile
strength and durability. In addition to using your webbing
as an attack, you may be able to use it for the Movement
(Swinging) effect as a regular power or power stunt.
Webbing: Ranged Cumulative Affliction (Resisted by
Dodge, Overcome by Damage; Hindered and Vulnerable,
Defenseless and Immobilized), Extra Condition, Limited
Degree 3 points per rank.
Defensive Powers
Animals have many defensive adaptations making them
tougher or better suited to their environment. In particular, characters may have different forms of Immunity,
Movement (Environmental Adaptation) and even Enhanced Advantage (Favored Environment) to reflect an
animal-like adaptation to an environment.
Protective hide
Your skin is tougher than normal, being leathery or
covered with armored scales, for example. For extremely
tough or armored hides, add ranks of Impervious.
Protective Hide: Protection 1 point per rank.
Regrowth
Like certain lizards or worms, you can regrow lost body
parts and heal quickly from injury, ignoring many of its
complications.
Regrowth: Regeneration 1 point per rank.
Squeeze Through
You can compress and shift your body to squeeze through
small spaces an ordinary human could never fit through.
Squeeze Through: Movement (Permeate), Limited to Small
Spaces 1 point per rank.
Movement Powers
A number of movement effects make for good animal
powers: Burrowing for moles or worms, Leaping for grasshoppers or gazelles, Speed for cheetahs, horses, and other
swift land-animals, and Swimming for aquatic creatures of
all types. Others include the following.
Serpent Slither
Like a snake, you can slide along the ground and climb
head-first down surfaces your body can grip.
Serpent Slither: Movement 1 (Slithering) 2 points.
Wall-Walker
You can stick to walls and ceilings like an insect (or some
types of lizards and salamanders).
Wall-Walker: Movement (Wall-Crawling) 2 points per rank (up
to 2 ranks).
Wings
You have fully functional wings: bird-like, bat-like, or even
insect- or butterfly-like. You may be able to grow and
shed your wings at will; if this takes any longer than a free
action, apply the Activation modifier to your power. The
fastest sustained flight for an animal is about speed rank 6.
Utility Powers
These powers involve various animal-related abilities from
communicating, controlling, and working with animals to
taking on some of their useful traits.
Animal Companion
You have an animal ally or companion able to understand at least simple commands and carry them out, and
likely well-inclined towards you. Your companion may
be an ordinary trained animal or an unusual specimen in
some way, such as having greater than normal Intellect or
unusual abilities. Create your companion as a character
with 15 power points per rank, using the sample animals
in the Heros Handbook and Gamemasters Guide as templates.
Animal Companion: Summon Animal Companion, Heroic, SelfPowered (see Summoning Powers) 3 points per rank.
Animal Form
You can transform into an animal or animal-like form.
Common in-between forms are humanoid mixes of
human and animal traits, like a classic therianthrope.
The default version of this power lets you assume a single
animal form with no more power points than your normal
(human) form. If you can assume multiple forms, increase
Morph rank to 2 (for a general type of animals) or 3 (for
all animals) and apply a rank of Metamorph for each individual form. See the animal archetypes on pages 133136
of the Gamemasters Guide for a list of potential animal
forms. This includes the Swarm archetype, allowing you
to transform into a swarm of insects (or similar tiny creatures) rather than a single animal.
A humanoid in-between form counts as a separate
Metamorph rank and mixes humanoid and animal traits
allowing you to, amongst other things, speak and have
hands while gaining many of the animals other traits. The
various difficulties of function in animal form are covered
by complications (see Animal Complications).
If you can assume any animal form, see the Shapeshift
power from Morphing Powers, with the Limit Only
Animal Forms.
Animal Form: Morph 1 (Animal Form), Metamorph 6 points per
rank.
Animal Mimicry
You can temporarily mimic the traits of different animals.
See the Meta-Powers profile for more on mimicry in
general.
Animal Mimicry: Variable (physical traits), Limited to traits
possessed by animals 6 points per rank.
Animal Senses
Animals have a tremendous range of sensory abilities
compared to those of normal humans. Some of the Senses
effects Animal Senses may grant include:
Heat-Sensing Pits: Various reptiles have heat-sensing pits, granting them the benefits of Infravision (1
rank).
Survival Sense: Prey animals often have a preternatural sense for danger, perhaps providing the benefits
of Danger Sense (1 rank).
Animal Summoning
You can summon animals to do your bidding. The default
version of this power works on natural animals in your
nearby surroundings; the animals come in response to
your summons under their own power and fulfill your
commands to the best of their abilities. The GM determines what animals (if any) are nearby and how quickly
they can respond.
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Chameleon Camouflage
You quickly shift your color and pattern to match your
surroundings, allowing you to blend into the background
like a chameleon, although this power is far more adaptive and efficient.
Chameleon Camouflage: Concealment (Visual) 2, Blending 2
points.
Create Chimera
You have the unusual power to merge two or more different animals, creating a combined creature with a mix
of their traitsa chimeraable to carry out your commands. Your rank in the power sets the limit of the most
powerful chimera you can create. Once you no longer
sustain the power, the animals forming the chimera return
to their normal forms (and likely to their normal habits
and habitats as quickly as possible).
Create Chimera: Summon Chimera, Broad Type (Mixed Animals),
Heroic, Limited to Available Animals 4 points per rank.
Multiple Limbs
You have additional limbs, like many members of the
animal kingdom. This power ranges from a prehensile tail
(able to function like a hand) to feet adapted to work as
hands, or additional arms (or tentacles).
Multiple Limbs: Extra Limbs 1 point per rank.
Animal Complications
Animal powers come with a number of potential complications, usually tied into the animal mind-set and the
physical limitations of animals as compared to humans.
Disability
Just as they have abilities humans do not, animals also
lack many human traits, particularly greater intelligence,
language, and manipulative appendages (and the tool
use that comes with them).
Characters who assume animal forms may run into some
of these disabilities as complications, earning hero points
for them. Just as with other complications, these disabilities only earn hero points when they actually come into
play. Just because a hero cannot speak while in animal
form does not earn the character an automatic hero
point; a situation must arise where the inability to speak
is a hindrance. Likewise not having hands or other animal
disabilities.
Note that if you want you character to not have one or
more of these disabilitiesbeing able to speak normally
in animal form, for examplejust disregard the complication and the associated hero point award.
Enemy
Animal powers tend to encourage two types of enemies.
The first is the natural enemy associated with the characters animal type. For example, someone with cat powers
may have a dog-themed foe, or a mongoose-powered
hero might confront snake-themed villains (cobrathemed, to be more specific). See the Nemesis and Opposite roles for villains in the M&M Gamemasters Guide for
additional discussion.
Involuntary Transformation
Animal powers with a transformative aspect may sometimes prove outside the characters control. The classic
example is the lycanthropes transformation during the
full moon; the character might have complete control the
rest of the time, but lose it when the moon is full. A more
whimsical version is the character who transforms when
wet, posing difficulties in maintain a secret identity.
Power Loss
Various circumstances can cause the loss of animal
powers depending on their source. Supernatural powers
may cease to function in the presence of magical or
religious wards, on consecrated ground, or in the presence of certain charms, from natural plants to magical
diagrams.
Animal powers originating with supernatural beings like
totems may also be revoked at the beings whim, should
the character misuse them or fail to follow a certain
code of behavior. Regaining the lost powers could be
as simple as returning to right behavior or as complex
as seeking the totem out and asking for some type of
penance.
Temper
A measure of animal bloodlust is a common complication
for those with the powers of predatory creatures. See the
Identity complication for more.
Weakness
Identity
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