M&M 3rd ed. Variable, environment-dependent powers

[kevatron400]

Hi everyone. I'm new to herolab and in the middle of my first foray into GMing.

I'm five sessions down, and the story is coming to a climax (incidentally, you can read the pseudo-novelisation I've been doing of the story here).
I intend for the main boss at the end of this adventure to be an amorphous fungal blob monster, who feeds off of light and electricity. Feeding off light increases his regenerative capabilities, whilst electricity will make him grow, increasing his size/strength/stamina as you'd expect.

I've only just bought Hero Lab, and am still pretty new to M&M. I was hoping someone could help me out:
How do I specify that the growth and regen powers are dependent on external factors, and in fact increase in level as the character consumes more energy sources?

Any help for a struggling noob would be much appreciated!

 

[Duggan]

For an NPC? It's really generally not worth the heartache of trying to program something in. Just up the ranks or the details thereof as they absorb levels. Any power can be turned on and off, so there are ways to have "base" and "pumped" levels, and anything which can have ranks can be tuned on the fly (although, unfortunately, not to the point of letting you "link" things so that they just increase proportionally).

You can go through the Editor and set up a custom power that will increase the right values. I believe you can look at Growth and Shrinking for a model for "X ranks gives you X/2 benefits here, X here, etc", moreso in 2E. I can walk you through that if you'd like.

 

[Sketchpad]

Alternatively, you could buy the powers at his max rank and give them Limited: PL is equal to the amount absorbed .

 

[Faerie]

What about giving the powers for regeneration and growth the Uncontrolled and/or Limited flaws?

Uncontrolled makes it so the villain has no real choice in the power activating, it will ALWAYS activate in a given situation. An Anime example would be the neko-ken from Ranma 1/2. He can't chose to enter the neko-ken (a cat-like state of mind where he gains energy claws and enhanced speed, agility, and possibly strength). Instead it will happen when around cats, even if Ranma doesn't want to enter that state.

Limited makes a power only work in specific situations, such as "does not affect yellow", "Can't be used at night", or "Only available when standing in melted butter". Yes, that last example is silly by intention. But I saw a guy who wanted that as the limit for his character's Blast power.

Needless to say I rejected his char concept. I did NOT want a food based super team again. Once with heroes such as Beef Man, Cheese Boy, and The Milkshake was quite enough, thank you very much.