How to make a battery in M&M?

Question

In Mutants and Masterminds, one of the flaws a power can have is called "Limited Uses", which decreases the number of times a power can be used from infinite to some finite number. It's used most often with devises to represent ammo or fuel.

My question: How would I go about creating a battery device? That is, say I make a weapon with the limited use flaw but I want to give the character a couple of "batteries" that he can spend an action to put into the weapon and recharge it. Essentially, how would I make ammo clips?

Would they be another, separate device? What would they cost (in power points)?

Answer 1

This would strike me as a modification to the 'Limited Use' complication. It all depends on how frequently you have to do it and how long it takes in combat.

Is reloading a free action? That's not a 'Limited Use', it's a description. If you can run out of reloads, that's the 'limited' part of limited use, and I don't know how you'd reload your spare clips. Perhaps you could use a Hero Point to change the scene: "I'd like to spend a Hero Point. When Gobsmacker hit my teammate Glory into that pile of crates, maybe one of the ones that smashed open had a bunch of magazines?"

Is reloading a move-equivalent action? If you can reload and shoot in the same turn, it's not such a huge limitation. Maybe you can weaken the cost reduction of the flaw to -1point/2 ranks?

Is reloading a standard action or a full-round action? At this point, it starts being a somewhat severe impact to the character. I'd say you handle this by saying, "You can reload X times with standard actions." Maybe spend 1 power point per reload, treating them like a power feat.

Does reloading take multiple rounds? If it takes this long, keeping your character out of combat for the duration, I'd argue in favor of it being a bigger issue than simply a power that stops after a few shots. I'd be in favor of it being -3 points/2 ranks (round down) instead of -1 point/rank.

Answer 2

I'm only familiar with M&M 2E, but I assume that since the 5-shots limited use of the "unreliable" flaw appears in both systems, any solution relevant to 2E can be worked out to suite 1E - if it doesn't already by RAW.
(Presented in increasing complexity order)

Use GM Fiat

Since this battery dependent weapon is intended mainly for the enemy mooks and bosses (where a boss would have a reload option) - just have the boss reload, or run out of shots whenever it suites the game or seem plausible.

Use the Basic Rules for "Unreliable" Power

Treat this as a device with a power (probably Blast for a ranged weapon) that has the Unreliable flaw - In 2E, the weapon will function normally for 5 shots, after which it will need to be recharged as described in the Fades flaw:

A faded power can be “recovered” in some fashion, such as recharging, rest, repair, reloading, and so forth. The GM decides when and how a faded power recovers, but it should generally occur outside of combat and take at least an hour’s time. The GM may allow a hero to recover a faded power immediately and completely by spending a hero point.

(emphasis mine)

Mooks have this device but no hero points, so they can't recharge it without taking it back to the "recharge chamber". Bosses in 2E can have hero points (rather "villein points"), have your bosses spend those to instantly recharge (hand-wave: they have some "mini-reactor" batteries on them). If a PC gets his hands on a weapon, you can allow them to instant-recharge, but only by spending a hero point - you can also rule that they are allowed a limited number of such recharges - dependent on how many such batteries they've found.

"There is no Spoon" - the Battery is the Device, not the Weapon

This may sound a bit backwards, but mechanically it works:
The weapon itself is just a piece of hi-tech equipment (or arcane or alien or whatever...). It's not a Device and has no powers what-so-ever, the battery does all the heavy lifting rules-wise:
Treat the battery as follows:

• Device (easy to lose)
• Flaw: Unreliable - use the 5 shots limit alternative
• Flaw: Limited - only works when loaded into a suitable weapon
• Any powers you want the weapon to have.

This way, you can use the powers only if you have a battery loaded into the weapon, and a boss with multiple batteries and a single weapon is still limited to having only one active battery at any time.

Bonus: you can have several sizes or types of weapons, treat them as Devices with Boost and Drain powers limited only to batteries - that way you can have for example:

• a "sonic plasma gun" (regular)
• a "sonic plasma cannon" (boosts range and power rating)
• a "sonic plasma flamethrower" (shorten range, area attack)
• a "sonic plasma whip" (drain the ranged attack to 0, boost melee attack + entangle)
• etc. etc.

Hope any of this is useful to you.

Answer 3

I'm not familiar with M&M but from a generic standpoint it sounds like the limited flaw already does what you want; you just need to raise your limit (clips*uses/clip). What you're really talking about it is a flavor difference. If there's a flaw that forces you to delay between using the power, you could use that but otherwise there's probably no good way to balance a flaw that allows an arbitrary number of "shots" between "reloads".

Answer 4

If this is 1E, your primary resort is to speak with your GM and decide what it's worth pointwise to get more than those limited uses. After all, you got a certain number of power points back for taking the Flaw, right? There were three power supplements (Power Corrupting was one of them as I recall it) that might give you additional options, but primarily, you and your GM need to discuss what you need to pay for this.

In 2E, there's a semi-canonical method of using Equipment to "pay back" a Flaw or Drawback at the reduced rate. The catches are that Equipment can be removed by the GM at any time, is easily broken by attacks on it, and it should consist of items commonly available and/or made by common household materials. So, for example, here you might buy a Device 1 (Blast 10 (Unreliable), Easy to Lose) item for a total of 3 pp and then spend 3 ep (less than 1 pp) for extra battery packs. That's up to your GM as to whether they think it's a fair way to deal with this, and do expect the GM to periodically rule that your battery packs are dead, or have them explode messily after you get hit by an electrical attack.

Ultimately, for either edition, if you don't want the penalty involved in the Flaw invoked... don't use the Flaw. Pay full cost for your power and describe it as being battery powered. If you're playing 2E or 3E, the GM will have to give you a Hero Point when your batteries run out as a Complication. In 1E, canonically, it's just never an issue.