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M&M 2nd ed. Nested APs have been nerfed in 3.8 and 4.2

D

Duggan

Well-known member
I hadn't noticed this until now, but as pointed out by CelticREI on the ATT, you can't nest APs including situations where you add Array or Magic. I know that this was not always the case because I used to have a build involving someone with Weapons Summoning including a grenade launcher with alternate modes of fire.

The problem is very easy to recreate:
1) Create a new character
2) Add Blast 10 to them and add an AP.
3) You'll notice that the dialogue for the AP has nothing below it allowing for another Alternate Power.

As noted in Steve Kenson's post, Nested APs are legal. Indeed, they were once supported, although I couldn't say how many versions ago.
 
Supporting nested alternate powers would add some nasty complexity to the data files; certain assumptions are made that the hierarchy of powers won't get too crazy, and allowing alternate power nesting below that would potentially cause all sorts of problems. They may have been included in HL in the past, but only as an oversight - I'm pretty sure they were removed because they weren't working properly (because of the aforementioned assumptions).

It's something that could be fixed, but it'd take a big chunk of time, so I have to balance it against the other stuff (bugs and other features) that people want fixed in the M&M files. :(
 
Ah. It does lead to some odd ambiguities like if someone, as with the original poster, tries to add one of the "Array" powers including "Array" where it looks like the power simply doesn't work as stated. Does this have to do with powers being automatically "turned on"?

There's a slightly complicated workaround by using Containers as the AP which will hold the nested array, but it would be nice to have a canonical way to do this. Fortunately, I believe all of the archetypes that use nested APs do have a Container of some sort, generally a Device, as an interim step.

Huh... I wonder if maybe this is why I was getting the errors in this post with my attempt to model King Cole's Devices (which have APs in them) as an Array.
 
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