What is?

[YAKO SOMEDAKY]

What is the checkmark (Alt) in the power tab ehen I creat a Power?

[viresanimi]

Hmm... strangely I've never really noticed that.

My thinking would be, that it is to show if a power that can be turned on / off is .. well. On. Some setups can also involve switching between powers. Again, I suspect that it has something to do with displaying active powers. I could be totally wrong here, because I honestly don't know.

Just my two coppers worth of speculation.


Vires Animi

[DrakosDJ]

It is just to indicate that the power is an alternate power to another. In M&M you build a power using the appropriate Effects and Modifiers. Alternate powers are a way to build several similar or related powers as one power with alternate effects.

So for example you have a character with a variety of fire blast powers; one that is a straight blast and second that is a ball of fire. In M&M you can build the first one as the "Base" power and it costs you full points; so for example the Fire Blase is a Ranged Damage Effect costing 2pp per rank (10 ranks costing 20 pp). The second power is built as an alternate power to the Fire Blast called Fire Ball; when you build the alternate power you can only spend as many pp in it as you did in the base power; so for example the Fire Ball power would be a Ranged Area Damage power at 3pp per rank so they would only be able to get six ranks (18 pp) because a seventh would raise the total PP to 21, which is more than the base power. The benefit to making the Fire Ball an alternate power to the Fire Blast is that instead of costing 18pp it only costs 1pp (all alternate powers only cost 1pp apiece); the drawback is that only one of the related powers can be used/active at a time, so in any round where you use the Fire Blast you cant also use the Fire Ball.

Hope this helps.