Mutants and Masterminds General thread /mmm/

That knee is going to hurt when it slams into that blue building.

>it leads to combat where nothing actually hits/works until one time it does and that's it.
Ah, the Exalted combat problem. Maybe some "how-well-do-you-do-in-the-combat" gauge can be homebrewed?

Depending on the level of mook, they are or they aren't. Keep in mind that, as bizarre as it may sound, it's okay for your players to feel legitimately powerful. It's not much of a superhero game if your players don't feel very super and/or heroic. Give them their close battles with villains, but also give them their steamroll victories so that they can feel just how strong they are compared to everyone else in the world. The game can be as gritty and difficult as you want it, but it shouldn't be challenging for no good reason.

Magical Burst maybe? There is also Wild Dice one

Wild Talents

So, I'm just getting into this game, and I have a really cool character concept, but I don't know how to convert it into a balanced character for this game. His name is Zephyr. Basically, he was an inventor, before his experimentation with an infinite energy device backfired, turning him into an entity of living electricity. He can shoot lightning, travel through electrical wires, control and even "enter" machinery and computers, etc. How do I make this balanced?

Also, I plan to give him other powers, such as limited magnetic control, through mechanical augments controlled by his mastery over machines.

For fuck's sake user, now I can't unsee it.

M&M 3e is a perfectly cromulent system for running a magical girl game.

My group has used M&M for two different magical girl games. I can attest that it's quite flexible and works well for just about any "people with superpowers" genre. So if you want magical girl anime instead of four-color comics adventure, it still works just fine.

Well ,things will balance out in part by PL limits, and not having unlimited points to spend building your character. So, I'd say, start by figuring out how you want to make those powers, and what they'll likely cost. And remember that you also have the rest of your character to consider, too. Skills, attributes, and so-on.

There's a power based around turning into different states of matter/energy and one of the options is electricity.

>turning him into an entity of living electricity.
Insubstantial 3

>He can shoot lightning,
Ranged damage

>travel through electrical wires
Teleport with the medium flaw

>control and even "enter" machinery and computers
Comprehend to speak with machines, or maybe Mind Control with affects objects only. "Entering" machines can just be a quirk on the Mind Control power

>etc.
Alternate effects!

>How do I make this balanced?
Meet your PL caps. Insubstantial can be a pretty big defensive boost, but nothing you've mentioned so far sets off any major red flags.

Even if it's more Madoka than Sailor moon?

Yes. There are rules in the GM Handbook that cover "Iron Age" comics that also cover more lethal rules for combat.

Lethal Damage
The default Mutants & Masterminds rules don’t differentiate
between lethal and non-lethal damage; Damage is Damage, and it can all potentially kill, but killing a character is difficult. For those who want more an element of risk and realism in their damage, there is the option of categorizing
some Damage as Lethal. This is a +0 modifier by default, but is permanent like other modifiers, so once a Damage effect is lethal, it cannot be used for non-lethal damage. Instead, take the non-lethal version as an Alternate
Effect of the Lethal Damage. The key difference with Lethal Damage is that it inflicts additional conditions on a failed resistance check, as follows:
• Failure (three degrees): In addition to being staggered,
the target is disabled.
• Failure (four degrees): In addition to being incapacitated,
the target is dying.
193
Mutants & Masterminds Game Master’s Guide
Chapter 6: Options
All of the conditions from lethal damage also recover at a slower rate: one hour per condition rather than one minute. Effects like Healing and Regeneration speed this up normally.

>For fuck's sake user, now I can't unsee it.

Maybe he's got the right powers so it won't matter.

I've been thinking of running a mech game on mutants and masterminds. Have the players create PL 3-4 dudes and then have the mechs function as PL10+ with most models and weapons in the game being pre-built and access to most of them outside the starter stuff being obtainable from adventuring (taking a dude's gun or entire mech, for instance)

I've been having a bit of trouble with two aspects of the game, mostly related to the thought that half the player character is literally disposable and how to manage the "lol points are equipment!" nonsense. Can I just toss out all the shit that deals with points to equipment conversion without issues? Has anyone run a mecha game on this system before? Any problems they had with it?

You do realize there's an entire Mecha (& Manga) supplement for 2e, right? It even covers most of your issues.

that doesn't translate well to 3e though.

d20herosrd.com/7-gadgets-gear/mecha

Ahem.

It's useless garbage. All it does is say obvious shit like "You can refluff this junk as this other junk!". Might as well have nothing.

I mean, if you expected something with massive depth, you're looking at the wrong game here. The system is effect based - Superman's heat vision is Ranged Damage, as are Batman's batarangs; the only difference is description and rank.

To think that this wouldn't carry over into creating mecha is... kind of absurd, user.

In superhero worlds it's fairly common for 'ordinary people' to have what's essentially a super power in the form of "training", an example of this is Batman or, more blatantly, Batgirl (Cassandra Cain) who is shown dancing between bullets, shattering steel reinforced concrete, bullet-resistant glass, and one-arming rather large men. Supposedly without having any actual powers.

There are, in fact, different grades of mook, some of them are street thugs, some of them are guys with super powered death lasers that can kill tanks and enough training to be able to hit most supers beneath a certain speed.

Champions has more depth to it, in a lot of regards. while still being relatively simple to run. Building a character in Champions is the hard part.

thank you very much for listing the book and page number sir.

No, I'm expecting answers to the questions I asked. Which, you have been incredibly good at deflecting.

I want to know shit like how to manage equipment points when the campaign is supposed to have flowing equipment that can and will change as the players play.

>On a more serious note. I am looking to run a magical girl game for some friends and one of the systems they suggested for running it was Mutants and Masterminds 3e.
>Others were Exalted 3e, and scion 2e.
>I'm still working out what kind of tone this game is going to have but as far as super systems go how adaptable is M&M?

>M&M 3e is a perfectly cromulent system for running a magical girl game.

>My group has used M&M for two different magical girl games. I can attest that it's quite flexible and works well for just about any "people with superpowers" genre. So if you want magical girl anime instead of four-color comics adventure, it still works just fine.

Yall mothafuckas need GURPS.

M&M is pretty much non-simulationist GURPS, dummy.

This sounds cool.
I have no idea how to help you make it work with M&M though.
Sorry.

GURPS supers is fucking trash.

That's covered in the Mecha & Manga supplement. And yes, it does in fact translate well enough to 3e. Things didn't change that drastically between editions, and there's even official conversion guides out there.

Maybe you should, I dunno, actually READ the thing before you start spouting nonsense about it?

The only real contention is the fact that 3e cut out the Device power and put the Removable flaw in its place, which makes things a bit more drastic.

Champions is a whole nother ball game, which admittedly I have very little (read, none whatsoever) experience with outside of the MMO - which is almost definitely nothing at all like the actual system.

One of those magical girl games I was in was very Madoka based. It'll work.

I know how to make most of it work, for the worst part.

For example, a weapon is just a power profile you can pick up and use. It's worth blah blah points and does whatever. Similarly, the mech itself is just a character with only the powers proper to it's onboard systems and it's worth blah blah points and has this and that stat.

What worries me is possible problems with the way the engine is balanced around spending point on points. So, I have these secondary characters who can be replaced by new characters with different point costs, and whose powers can change at any time for powers worth different costs. So, what do I do to get this aspect working withing the engine? It assumes permanence of your shit, so do I have my players spend whatever arbitrary amount of points on equipment and then limit what they can drive and equip based on that? Do I just wave this aspect off?

My players won't have a single signature mech that defines them and always has the same shit, they will be trading in stuff from adventure arc to adventure arc. More Front Mission than Gundam.

I have no idea what you just said, since none of that has ever been a problem with any of this.

It is indeed. There's a handful of similarities, but it doesn't suffer from the D20 'the die is more important than your stats' issue. It uses a similar rolling system to GURPS but the combat has more depth and you can't papercut the heroes to death. I'm talking literally, if a papercut registers as a single point of damage, it will never kill a Champions hero, but it will eventually wear down a GURPS hero. You can still be picked apart bit by bit, but it has to beat your defenses.

Superman does not get gunned down in a hail of fire in Champions.

Okay. So, in 2e you can build mecha in two ways.

1. With Equipment points, wherein they'd be built very similar to how you build vehicles. These are things that would be mass-produced. A good example would be things like the Zaku or 008 MS Team, cars, tanks, et cetera. These are a bit more replaceable.

Equipment can be taken away, but you should pretty much always have access to material equal in value to Equipment points that you have, even if it's not necessarily the same thing you bought originally.

2. You can build the mecha as its own separate character, gaining powers as appropriate and spending immunities as appropriate for a construct.

If you're doing it the second way, the mecha will at best be temporarily unavailable to you, but unless you're spending points to change up its abilities (which isn't really a common thing for the mecha genre anyway, least not the Super Robot stuff), it's not going to need to have constantly changing statlines. Upgrades for new stuff while keeping the old is done exactly like it is for regular superhero play.

A third way to build mecha would be something like how you make superheroes with power armor, and works exactly like how that works when building a regular superhero.

Now we're talking about the same thing. Fucking finally. The problem is that those rules don't exactly click for me. I'm not playing anime, your shit is going to change, you will find a rifle that has a grenade launcher attack attached to it and a rifle with a bonus to your accuracy with it and you will have to choose (Because they are fuckhuge and your mech has no storage). The rules treat equipment as permanently this amount, but I don't wish to use this. If the power cost on the found equipment is different from what they had, then that should be fine.

>not putting the grenade launcher on to the accurate rifle

Part of me wants to suggest the non-answer of just handwaving it. I do realize that is, indeed, not a very useful answer. But, if most things are in the equipment, and it changes often, maybe don't worry too much about if things are all 100% points-balanced, as long as the overall effect ranks are in proper limits. If mecha A switches out one of its weapons to one that changes its overall point value, that's just how it is.

Basically, the PCs are, purely, statted at PL for their characters on foot. Their mecha can be equipment or however you want to set them up, but they pay no points for them out of their own character resources. So if shit gets broken, or stolen, or swapped out or whatever? That just happens. Not like the player's deprived of resources they should have because they never paid for any of that in the first place.

Technically, it's perfectly legit to play without a point limit, but WITH a PL limit. It's even mentioned in the books, I believe, at least in 2e. Admittedly I'm not AS familiar with 3e as I am with 2e.

> they pay no points for them out of their own character resources

I believe that's even how it's supposed to be.

What I'm thinking of is that mecha equipment is not modular by default. Combining attributes from various rifles would be some ghetto "I take this rifle, slice it in half and super glue it to the other rifle's butt!" shit that would just make it underperform. Rather, the mech itself is modular. Think of a military vehicle, you can't just combine aspects from different guns and missiles, but you can load guns and missiles with different attributes.

I see.

Depends on how you or your GM want to run it. If you want to have a recurring villain throughout power levels, it's easy to have a villain who is designing tech and gives his mooks some devices he needs field tested on Supers. At one point or another, bullets will stop working. But depending on your players and how they build their characters. Even a PL4 Mind Control power can completely dominate a PL10 character if they haven't bothered with their Will defense.

>Depends on how you or your GM want to run it

I am the GM.

>it's easy to have a villain who is designing tech and gives his mooks some devices he needs field tested on Supers. At one point or another, bullets will stop working. But depending on your players and how they build their characters.
>Even a PL4 Mind Control power can completely dominate a PL10 character if they haven't bothered with their Will defense.

Please tell me more.

I double-checked, and it IS perfectly acceptable in the rules (via 2e's Mastermind's Manual) to have a game that does away with power point limits. However, it is something that really shouldn't be done unless your group is really experienced with the system, as it can lead to even greater imbalance than the system already has.

Mind Control works off of Will defense. Someone doesn't build it up (which not all concepts really need a high Will), then because of how swingy d20 can be, it's entirely possible for a PL10 character with a low Will Defense score to lose a power check against a character with Mind Control at rank 4.

>So if shit gets broken, or stolen, or swapped out or whatever? That just happens. Not like the player's deprived of resources they should have because they never paid for any of that in the first place.
Except they should be paying it, and that is what the Power Loss complication is for.

Mech Pilots are built to pilot Mechs. They take advantages and skills that would assist in that. Using either the Equipment or Sidekick advantage, you still have PLx10 to work with character development wise. It's not enough for a lot of attributes, yes. But isn't that why they're piloting Mechs to begin with? PLx10 leaves you plenty of room to make some full-body armor as a Device to cover the attribute loss, and add in some Easily Removable Devices for stuff like guns or other weaponry, in the off-chance the mech is disabled or destroyed.

So, one player has asked for his power to be "redirection". When I inquired as to what he redirects he said "everything". How would I stat out his power, how would I balance it without nerfing it to uselessness, and how much would it cost per rank?

Just use Deflect power with Reflect and then Redirect. Of course AoEs and other non attack roll powers would not be effected unless he also took a Variable Immunity with the two above modifiers as well (although that might end up a bit broken, although for him to actually use it against a power immediately, the variable would have a very high cost).

One of my players has played 2e before and hated it.

So if we are doing M&M it will be 3e.

Are you advising me based on 2e like you are the GM asking for advice related to running a mecha game?

No. And really, 2e and 3e aren't that far off in gameplay - if the player didn't like 2e, it's likely that they're not going to like 3e very much either.

3e's Gamemaster's Guide also has the unlimited power points rule, by the way, with all the same caveats as mentioned for 2e.

Depends on what they didn't like about 2e...

Not that other faggot but I don't know ANYONE who prefers 3e to 2e.

Honestly there's not THAT huge of a difference between the two. Most of the changes between editions were minor tweaks to costs, or the splitting of attack and defense to melee/ranged.

The official conversion guide is only 9 pages total, and that's INCLUDING all the comparisons between individual powers and skills and feats/advantages.

>magical girl game

Use the TriStat system, they even published a licensed Sailor Moon rpg

they said the thing they didn't like about 2e was that it had a lot of "baggage" from DnD and that 3e had less.

Why is he called Zephyr if he's an electricity monster? God damn I wish I could track you down and murder you.

It's perfectly feasible to use M&M to stat the different mech components and then completely throw out the rest of the character generation and advancement rules, if that makes more sense for the game.

Maybe players can build their pilots like regular, unpowered lower PL characters, but all the mech components are designed by the GM and are made available through purchasing or scavenging.

Then give each part some sort of slot requirement so you can't just throw on a million cheap pieces of armor and go to town.

It does have "less", in that "feats" are now renamed "Advantages" and it renamed several of the ability scores from the standard Intelligence (Intellect), Constitution (Stamina), Wisdom (Awareness), Charisma (Presence).

But it's still still a d20 system game at its heart. If he doesn't like 2e because it's too similar to D&D, then he's probably not going to like 3e either.

3e only appears to have less, it's actually very similar with some really stupid additions. For instance the stats in 3e are stripped down to just the modifier, so an average stat is a 0. But they work the same as in 2e or D&D, only without the need to calculate the modifier for your stats (because the modifier IS the stat)

Summon and Variable Power had completely, ridiculously broken PP costs and the 2E abilities were basically just imported from D&D, stupid score + modifier system and all.

Other than that and a couple power modifiers that didn't make the transition (we miss you, Independent), 3E is pretty much a tidier version of the same game.

If you wanted to do that, they can build their characters as constructs for the mechs and dump 3 points into Sidekick for the pilots.

What I really hated was the fighting stat. You already have stats for shit like agility and strength, and of course skills for fighting styles, so wtf does the fighting stat represent? It just seems to exist as a points sink for fighty type characters.

Power copiers:
>Good interpretations?
>Horrible interpretations?
>Ones you've seen at the table?

Fighting is kinda bad, yeah, since usually it's cheaper to buy your parry defense and a close combat skill separately. I honestly think Fighting/Parry only exist because otherwise giving it's roll to Dex or Agl would make them worth more than 2 PP per rank.

If you want to be simultaneously accurate with two kinds of melee attacks for some reason it breaks even, though, and for everyone else it's easy to just ignore it.

But then you're building the mechs with the default rules, which is explicitly not what we want to do if parts are going to be frequently blown up or upgraded, or if parts are going to be balanced against competitors in their slot instead of by overall point cost and PL.

Then have each limb of the mech be it's own separate device. External weaponry attached to the mech? Device. External weaponry that's wielded, like a big ass gun or giant power sword? Easily removable device. Just don't let them take indestructable.

It's a nice character concept. Powerful but you can see from the get go what things can be used to counter him.

That still puts the responsibility for designing each part with the player, and ties mech upgrades to regular character advancement, which are things we're explicitly trying to avoid.

It just seems way easier to separate the mechs from the characters, so without a compelling reason not to do it that way it's what I'd recommend.

>One of those magical girl games I was in was very Madoka based.

Please tell me more about this game you played.

aperture science supers

>Others were Exalted 3e, and scion 2e.
Scion system is pretty fucked up and exalted is a giant pain in the ass to adapt to anything that isn't exalted.

>but it leads to combat where nothing actually hits/works until one time it does and that's it.
That's a problem with descriptions. Every -1 is the character getting roughed up a little bit. They don't stand pristine and shiny after the end of the brawl.

>Please tell me more.
In order to one-shot mindfuck somebody, they need to fail the roll by over 1. Difficulty from PL4 mindfuck is 14, save is Will+1d20.
So if somebody has 1-2 Will and rolls 1-2 on the d20...

*by over 10
oops typo

Huh. This is eerie - madscientist turned living lightning is a concept I was thinking for some superhero games to join with.

Although I wasn't going for the control of machinery, just speed and quickness for inventing shit faster, with magnetic control assisting in assembly (mostly fluff).

And rather than travel through wires, I'd have her teleport through natural thunderstorms - bigger range, but I was going to ask for a bigger flaw discount.

>To think that this wouldn't carry over into creating mecha is... kind of absurd, user.
Honestly the only advice needed for a mecha game is "make mechas like four-five PLs higher than on the ground characters", i.e. if they are already heroes that summon mechas on top (MMPR) then they are pl 8-10 and mecha are 12-15, if they're regular guys, then it's PL5 to PL10 in the robot.

And I don't know if the mechamanga book even has it.
2e's supplements were kinda shit.

Well yes you obviously discard the permanence. Or at least partially discard.

So it's like
>character starts with Mecha worth X points, wielding a Gun worth Y points, and himself has Z points.
>he loots gun worth Y+5. He equips it, putting the old gun out into the storage. His chartotal is now five points higher.
>if he loses the new gun, he can take out the old one. Or he can bring it back situationally if it's a different kind of gun.
>if they have some R&D department, maybe they can upgrade his old gun to Y+5 too
>if he can carry two guns, then you still limit him to using one at a time and the two guns are just Alternate Effect of each other, it costs as much as the best gun does plus 1 for AE.
>If a guy has shtick for carrying a lot of different guns, that's cheap for more AE points. If a guy wants to shoot two guns at once, that's a lot of points, you just double the cost of the base gun.

Same for the robots.
You can have them try to cannibalise systems from looted shit to upgrade their old stuff even when not just picking it up.

Mostly what you need to discard is the concept of strict point equality. It's okay to have a guy temporarily higher in points than others, you just need to plan to give them some upgrades in the next raid.

>Technically, it's perfectly legit to play without a point limit, but WITH a PL limit. It's even mentioned in the books, I believe, at least in 2e. Admittedly I'm not AS familiar with 3e as I am with 2e.
3e too. It's in somewhere in the GM section. It just urges you to be careful, but with the mecha guy, he will he handing out the powerblocks himself anyway

>Fighting is kinda bad, yeah, since usually it's cheaper to buy your parry defense and a close combat skill separately.
It's 1.5 pp per rank and you are limited to fighting with just your one things vs vs 2pp per rank and you can close combat slug out with anything you can get your hands on.

If you buy parry and close attack advantage, it's functionally identical to buying fighting and costs equal to it too.

I had an idea for a character with arms like this Except the arms were able to detach and levitate around to do things.
The 2e -> 3e conversion thing says anatomy separation is now a variation of summoning magic, but it takes a shit-ton of points to level.

Would it be better just to treat it as a variation of elongation?

If I want to GM a magical girl game with simulationist combat and powers that at least follow their own consistent logic what should I do?

>Would it be better just to treat it as a variation of elongation?
Sure, that works.

>a magical girl game with simulationist combat

Gives a whole new meaning to child soldiers.

It does have that advice, actually.

And I disagree with your opinion on the 2e supplements - they're actually pretty solid genre books. Not perfect by any means, but they generally give a solid overview for what they cover and some decent ideas for how to run games in those genres.

Quick, Veeky Forums! The government is controlled by a secret demon-worshipping cult that rapes and ritualistically sacrifices children, and they're about to start a war with Russia, now that they've lost the election to an outsider, and are afraid of losing power and being put in prison!

What do your superheroes do?!

There is only one solution. The one every superhero plot falls back on in the end.

Punch everyone in the face.

Extra Limbs 2 with the projection extra, and then however many ranks of Elongation as you'd like limited to your extra limbs. Now you've got detachable robo-gloves.

If you don't want to have regular arms when the robo-arms are in action I'd still stat it using Extra Limbs and just add a quirk, since otherwise it's not clear what projection should modify or how many ranks you'd need. I can see a case for buying two ranks of projection as a strength effect (since each rank of projection should apply to one limb), but you'd need to argue your case with your GM.

Fighting is okay
Presence and Dexterity are fucked beyond recognition

Int is pretty crap too. Honesty Stamina, Agility, and Awareness are kind of the only stats worth buying. Even strength isn't that hot.

>Int is pretty crap too
How so? There's a ton of expertises that pull on it.

Do you often have characters with four or more expertise skills though?

You can also swing putting different expertise skills into an array with some character concepts (skillchips!), but the benefits from Sta, Agl, and Awe are all things you want to have simultaneously active.

If I want the power to project psychicc aoe fields that mimic the effects of various mind altering drugs. (hallucinogens, tranquilizers, stimulants, dissociatives, and so on)

and or the ability to shoot beams that cause the same effects and are variably effected by gravity.

How would I do that?

>If I want the power to project psychicc aoe fields that mimic the effects of various mind altering drugs. (hallucinogens, tranquilizers, stimulants, dissociatives, and so on)