[this will be a work in progress - I will edit this list when I get home]

Mutants & Masterminds breaks down immunity between the following options:
Aging - Immunity 1
Critical (presumably critical hits)  - Immunity 2
Disease  - Immunity 1
Environment (any one type: cold, heat, high pressure, radiation, vacuum)  - Immunity 1
Energy (Chemical, Cold, Darkness, Electricity, Fire/Heat, Gravity, Kinetic, Light, Magnetism, Radiation, Sonic, Vibration) - varies by type
Exhaustion  - Immunity 5
Life Support (disease, poison, any environment, suffocation)  - Immunity 9
Mental Effects  - Immunity 10
Poison  - Immunity 1
Pressure  - Immunity 1
Social (interaction) skills  - Immunity 5
Sleep  - Immunity 1
Starvation and Thirst  - Immunity 1
Suffocation  - Immunity 2
Any effect calling for a particular saving throw (either: Fortitude, Reflex or Will)  - Immunity 30 (per save)
Special  - Immunity 1-10 depending on how common the power/special effect is (bullets would be 5, gravity would be 2, any technological or elemental would be 10)
Immunity 1: a rare power descriptor (such as your own powers, a close sibling’s powers, etc.).
Immunity 2: an uncommon power descriptor (such as chemical, gravitic, necromantic, etc.).
Immunity 5: bullets, cold, electricity, falling, fire, magic, radiation, sonic, etc.
Immunity 10: a common power descriptor (such as all effects with cold, electricity, fire, radiation, or weather
descriptors, for example)
Immunity 20: a very common power descriptor (any bludgeoning or energy, for example).

Some rephrased M&M benchmarks:
Immunity 1 (starvation & thirst)
Immunity 1 (sleep)
Immunity 1 (aging)
Immunity 11 (life support [cold, disease, heat, high pressure, low pressure/vacuum, poison, radiation, suffocation], sleep, starvation & thirst)
Immunity 12 (aging, life support [cold, disease, heat, high pressure, low pressure/vacuum, poison, radiation, suffocation], sleep, starvation & thirst)

Some HERO system benchmarks:
Immunity (starvation & thirst) = Life Support (Diminished Eating 3)
Immunity (suffocation) = Life Support (Self-Contained Breathing 10)
Immunity (sleep) = Life Support (Diminished Sleep 3)
Immunity (aging)= Life Support (Longevity 5)
Immunity to low pressure/vacuum = Life Support (Safe Environment 2)
Immunity to cold, disease, heat, high pressure, low pressure/vacuum, poison, radiation, suffocation], sleep, starvation & thirst = Life Support (Total [45 points])
Immunity to aging, cold, disease, heat, high pressure, low pressure/vacuum, poison, radiation, suffocation], sleep, starvation & thirst = Life Support (Total [50 points])
Immunity to all terrestrial diseases & biowarfare agents = Life Support (Immunity 10)
Immunity to all terrestrial poisons & chemical warfare agents  = Life Support (Immunity 10)

The disadvantages of using ectoplasmic material are:
1) It can be dispelled. If you are relying on something conjured as a barrier, or armor, or a weapon, a savvy spellslinger can disrupt it with a Counterspell.
2) It may not fool some people, if the creator doesn't focus enough on how to make it. The importance of fooling people, of course, varies.

If you just need a temporary shelter in the heat of a pitched magical war, then making it look like real stone may not actually matter. Your conjured armor or weapon may be just fine looking fake (but again, a savvy spellslinger may notice, and dispel it).

If you need to make a temporary fake wall to disguise your magical laboratory from the Feds? You may want it to look like it belongs there. If you want a skittish mortal to trust that your midday meeting in the middle of the park is surrounded by lots of other mortal witnesses, even though you have actually led him to an abandoned lot full of glass and hiding places, then yes, fooling the mark with the accuracy of your conjured parkgoers is important.

Now, what someone does with that information can vary. A detective may not know what the wall actually *is* made of, but he will realize it is not what it seems, and presumably conjecture that something important is behind it. A skittish mark realizing they've been lured into a trap before you have time to spring it? Well, who knows what then.

Ah, at 1100 "Likes" there will be content. Got it.

This also helps differentiate social stunts.  People with + accuracy/power stunts are good at winning arguments.  People with timescale stunts are good at actually changing peoples beliefs.

So you could have stunt for things like "The Long Con" or "Come to Jesus".

Diaspora (FATE) was touted as having a sophisticated social combat system - I may opt to get it.

I was just thinking about this subject, and it occurred to me that part of the feasibility of MacAnally's is that (at least, as far as I know) Mac is the sole proprietor of the establishment: no staff of any sort (again, unless I forgot something). He cooks the food he serves, and pours the drinks he sells. He, and only he alone, needs to know about the supernatural and the Accords in order to run the place.

When someplace that caters to a decent number and variety of customers, it becomes necessary to employ others: wait staff, cleaning staff, possibly more than one chef. All of these folks would, by necessity, need to be Aware of the supernatural, at least in part. If it turns out to be some supernaturally-adjacent family, that's one thing, but all things being equal, suddenly you have a handful of randoms who need to know the particulars of the Accords and/or their latitude within them.

I opted to make my ANG a Chinatown tea house with a full kitchen and a staff that can occasionally support an ANG summit meeting, and now I'm seriously rethinking that decision.

How much Refresh does he have to play with?

Wasn't it inclusion of novels as rules which was being objected to?

If I understand it correctly, the primary objection was restricting player options based solely on setting elements from the canonical novels (SEC), with a secondary add-on objection to restricting player options based on setting elements from the DFRPG books (SER) which (though contained within the RPG books) had not been sufficiently codified as rules in a way that makes them applicable to a RAW discussion.

Anyway, please don't use the term RAW to refer to setting and background elements. The whole value of the term RAW is based off of excluding such things. The term Canon might be more useful in such a situation.

Perhaps you can, similarly, refrain from dismissing setting and story elements in the actual rulebook as "not RAW" just because they aren't where you'd prefer it to have been written.