Also, are you keeping the “At-will/Encounter/Daily” triad? How are these balanced point-wise and game-effect-wise? Can you buy the same effect at different uses? If so, how do you cost a daily vs. an at-will vs. encounter? If there is a difference in effect, how do you balance them? Part of this is related to the campaign style. I’ve been in superhero games where we’ve generally had one fight in a day, and in games where we’ve had to run a gauntlet of different encounters. If you know somebody’s GM’ing style, you might decide to just buy at-will and daily powers.

Further, how do super-stats work? Are they bought with power points or something else? Point-buy 22 won’t work well for modelling a wide variety of heroes. And many people judge a superhero game by it’s ability to make a number of their favorite heroes work in it. If you do make super-stats available, how do they interact with attacks and damage?

Finally, how do meta-powers work? Superheros that copy other people’s powers or who have wildly flexible powers like Green Lantern? Without them, I don’t think this game will pass muster as a complete superhero game.

Furthermore, you could have a feat – or even just a mechanic – where you could temporarily switch out powers for other powers for a turn\encounter\day (depending on how many of these Variable points you want to spell) of equal or lower base cost (ignoring discounts) to represent what in M&M is called an Alternate Power – like Iron Man using his repulsors to boost his flight speed, or Flash using his vibration power to cause a disruptive resonance in an object. Something that is possible, but not something they do all the time.

So, a level 1 character can do the ultimate supernatural meteor swarm of death and disaster power, as can a level 10 character. However, the level 10 character has the opportunity to make it more ultimate.

I’d say your total number of power variability points can’t be modified by feats or anything, but Leader-type powers could grand temporary pvps. Maybe feats could alter how you use points or perhaps let you regenerate points.

Could be a bit powerful in later levels, but they are superheros.

Also, it goes without saying that I didn’t even get into redoing damage, villains, the death system, stealth or any of the five dozen things that would have to happen to actually do this.

That anecdote aside, for character creation everybody got an offensive power, a defensive power and a travel power. The offensive powers pretty much defined your class while the other two don’t need to necessarily make sense. A different PC was a vibrating ferret-man, for example. As you leveled up you got more tricks in line with your offensive powers. Psychic guy gets telekinesis, Martial arts guy kicks things harder, ferret-man vibrates harder and might get an added benefit like The Flash’s vibrate through walls trick. This sort of a system is nice because that travel power really helps let the slower guys keep up, simply by not having any slower guys.

I’d give the first utility power free, but maybe tier which ones you can get free. That way everyone will be able to stay somewhat together without having to spend extra points on rather situational movement stuff.