M&M 3e

Game wise the GM Guide has some prebuilt mooks and some optional rules which you really don't need. That's about it.

Can't the whole "All attacks are the same" apply to a lot of systems? I mean, in DnD all weapon attacks and damage spells are just damage dice with different descriptors and modifiers to them. I mean, there might be more system that have all these different rules for simulation, but is that necessarily a good thing for a superhero system?

And descriptors in MnM 3e have functions outside of their mechanical power effects. I mean, you can use heat vision to damage someone, but you can also use it for things such as melting a metal door shut or lighting a fire if you're in a situation where its damn cold and you're low on supplies.

I mean, I was in a DC Adventure game which our party's speedster dropped a catwalk onto Parasite by using Plastic Man as a chainsaw.

The Optional Rules are pretty good, I've definitely gotten use out of the mass combat and wealth rules for one.

>Can't the whole "All attacks are the same" apply to a lot of systems?
Yes, and that's why I consider people that make that argument totally fucking retarded. Unified mechanics do not make you play the same way.

's great. Flat out my favorite system in general.

Yarrrr.
mediafire.com/folder/026war1l4oo42/Mutants_and_Masterminds

Attack powers are samey if players make optimized characters instead of interesting ones, because the game gives you very little mechanical incentive to build interesting powers.

There are lots of tools that allow you to build really cool stuff, but you also have more than enough points to just build a win button instead.

And the book explicitly tells DMs to slap a bitch if they do that.

Funny, its almost as if the designers knew that giving someone all the tools to make a full on superhero would cause some trouble for people with shitty munchkins and wanted to explicitly empower the DM to tell'm to fuck off!

I literally can't play any other garbage systems after this.

No matter the setting, M&M is best.

I just finished playing in a campaign of this actually, It was super fun. The character creation is amazing, we had anime characters, western superheroes and angsty goth teens all playing in the same game and everybody at the table could make exactly the character they envisioned in their head.

However, with this freedom comes a whole host of problems with encounter creation, mainly that villains are very hard to balance and the game doesn't offer the GM much help in balancing them. Due to the power level balancing out defence and offence every villain will either have one very prominent weakness, or not have any majorly powerful offensive abilities. A balanced party probably has a powerful attack targeting each, or at least most, of the 5 defences and due to the way the conditions work it only takes one bad roll to completely neuter most villains. Hell, if they fail by three degrees on most effects the fight is essentially over, which lead to a lot of extremely unsatisfying fights.

Maybe this was because we were inexperienced with the system, but we played this campaign for 6 months and we still had problems with fights being hard to balance. Maybe it was our GMs fault but I doubt it, because they are amazingly good at making tight, challenging and exciting combat encounters in every other system we've played, and we've played quite a few. Maybe it just wasn't the system for us, the campaign in general was still great so at least it didn't get in the way of a good time, which is something to be thankful for.

Running second campaign of it, this one's going a lot better - it's a great system, IMO after houseruling in HP rules in place of the frustrating as hell toughness roll system. Works better now that I'm not running it like a dugeon crawl.

I'm not even running a proper superhero game with it, pic related.

Only other edition I've played is 1e, which it's certainly an enormous step up over.

>after houseruling in HP rules in place of the frustrating as hell toughness roll system
Any chance you could write those up and post them?

And what's so frustrating about them? I find the Toughness rules one of the best things about the system. Probably my favorite damage system around. It does big damn heroic knockdowns great, far better then HP ever could.

Not that guy but my main problem is how random it can be, no hero or villain should go down like a chump in one hit due to a bad roll.

Also, and before I say this I fully admit it's kinda dumb, but as a player it's much more satisfying to get a huge a hit because you rolled high rather than because they rolled low. If you succeed because you rolled a natural 20 it's like "I won because I did something exceptional" but if you succeed because they rolled a natural 1 it's more like "I won because they fucked up"

You know how hard it is to actually go down on one bad roll? Its not easy. Like, at all.

And they do get Luck rerolls and shit too. Hell, that's how villains work. They get a reroll, you get an HP.

Beating them down, and then managing to land that killshot because both you got big damage, and they got a low roll, is great, and I seriously have no idea what you're on about.

It might be a skewed experience because our GM was rolling in front of the screen, and my character was a powerhouse that had some pretty nasty damage, but our villains went down pretty damn fast. It also might have been because our campaign was PL8 so the badguys couldn't have nuts toughness scores, but the last villain was a PL14 character with super tough minions and he still went down in 2 and a half rounds.

The thing is any character only needs to fail a check by 11 twice to go down, with a variance of 1-20, even with a significant bonus that's not that rare. None of our villains had the luck advantage, maybe that was the problem, but if so the gms portion of the book should stress the importance of that advantage way more. Honestly, toughness was the least of our villains problems, the fact that any defence check other than toughness only needs to be failed by 11 once to effectively end the fight led to more anti climaxes than the problems with toughness.

Also just as a corollary I totally agree with you that when the system works, and after an exciting battle you land that miracle shot and smack the shit out of the villain it feels great, just like a scene out of a golden age comic. It's just that in my experience at least, the system lead to just as many disappointing anticlimaxes as it did amazing heroic moments.

Pretty much what said; it kept happening in the first campaign I ran. All. The damn. Time. The inverse too, with a minion with only a slightly decent Toughness save rolling fantastically for several attacks straight, bringing the game to a screeching halt. Meanwhile, the majority of the major villains/heroes fought went down like chumps on a bad roll.

Now, I realise if I did this campaign again, I'd a) be rolling behind a screen so I could fudge things, and b) Using rerolls more on villains, not to mention c) putting less focus on combat so it wasn't as apparent. But for the game I'm running now it was always going to be very combat orientated, and a HP system works a lot better within the setting I'm using for in-universe reasons.

is also correct in noting that player rolling just feels more "fun" than GM rolling for those sorta things. It's exactly the same, yes, but it does feel different; having played on both sides of it, it really does feel frustrating to just have to sit and wait for the GM to tell you whether your attack worked, rather than being able to see high number, that's good. Personally if I were to run a game using the Toughness roll system again I'd be doing it so that it's nearly always players rolling, just have it be assymetric so they both roll Toughness against incoming damage and roll Damage when hitting opponents.

It's still in rough stages but sure. I'm in a bit of a rush so I just copied and pasted it for the campaign I'm running, which means there is some specific stuff in there which is only for RWBY games, and a few bits are missing, but it should be enough to get the gist of it. Might do a more tidy write up later if people are interested.

Honestly, it just sounds like your GM was shit at building villains. I've never had that experience, outside of once when I prepped hard and got a full power attack crit on a speedester who didn't know I was there.

Also, if its 1 villain against a group, no wonder, of course they'll get their shit kicked in royally. The action economy is just so hard against them there's fuckall they can do.

>All. The damn. Time. The inverse too, with a minion with only a slightly decent Toughness save rolling fantastically for several attacks straight, bringing the game to a screeching halt. Meanwhile, the majority of the major villains/heroes fought went down like chumps on a bad roll.
So just...stupid luck. HP doesn't really help with that, but if it works for you, enjoy I suppose.

>Also, if its 1 villain against a group, no wonder, of course they'll get their shit kicked in royally
The villains had minions, I mentioned them in my example, mate.

>It just sounds like your GM was shit at building villains
Here's the thing though, if they have such a high toughness that them being eliminated outright due to bad luck is off the table or super unlikely, their other defences will will suffer as a result due to the power level system, and remember the villain has to only suffer one bad roll on any of their defences to essentially be out of the fight. If they have balanced defences they still have a chance of failing against one attack badly and the fight ending pretty much immediately and their balanced stats mean that they probably don't have very powerful offensive abilities to bring to the table. Maybe campaign PL+6 or something similarly ridiculous is the base level villains should be built at, but if so the book should mention that. Also if the expectation is that the players supposed to go up against villain teams so that one bad dice roll isn't essentially a fight ender, the book should encourage that. As it is now, the main thing that GMs should know about encounters is to roll behind a screen.

You should find a way to give everyone something different to do to keep them busy and not immediately neuter a single fight.

>GM
>Building villains purely to PL and not to actually properly challenge the group

As I said. Shit at building.

My point was the game gives him no advice to get better at building villains, theirs no good equivalent to a challenge rating system, and the advice that it gives GM often leads to unsatisfying encounters. By saying that he's shit because he doesn't break the PL rules are you suggesting that he break the rules of the game to make the game work?

Maybe I'm misinterpreting you but it sounds like your point is "git gud", which really isn't an endorsement of of the games systems in my view.

...seems like toughness would work better than HP to represent that setting.

Aura and all that.

Let's be honest though, even in DnD CR does not do much to explain what truly is and isn't challenging for your party. (pic related). If you have an enemy that is immune to toughness checks with characters that exclusively affect toughness, you're going to have a rough fight on your hands for them.

Although if you want some sort of guideline, there's something for you here: myth-weavers.com/showthread.php?t=198752

Aura's literally quantifiable as a percentage scale; having a flat total from which to calculate fits *much* better than RAW for representing it.

I think it's horrendously broken and over complicated. And when somebody knows what they're doing and makes a power house character, it's impossible for the other players to have fun since they just become spectators.

But this is a problem with lots of point build and super hero systems.

I think statting out superheroes is missing the point of comic books.

However, it's still an okay point-buy system for people who are into that.

Super heroes are just a context for indulging in your minmaxing and making your perfect e-penis sheet of super powers.

I don't like how a specialist character can't surpass a peak-built generalist, and is simply choosing to be worse in the other aspects of their character without benefit.

It leads to players never building them.

Have you ever wanted to play D&D but with dumb superhero powers? Then M&M 3E is for you.

Have you ever noticed that D&D-type adventures lack most of the hallmarks of superhero stories? Don't worry, M&M didn't notice either.

The powers system is needlessly complicated and, for some fucking reason, vacillates between linear and logarithmic scaling.

The system math puts 4E to shame for its hamster wheeling.

Arrays are simultaneously a clever way to handle creative use of powers and a game design abortion.

The actual problem with superhero RPGs is that they insist on being action-oriented, when in reality, 99% of superhero action is INCREDIBLY DULL. Superheroes play rock, paper, scissors and it's always deus ex bullshit that adds the note of drama. Superheroes RPGs were made for LARPs, because talking about what a superhero would do is way better than actually doing it.

Just player a lighter, more narrative system like FATE if you want to play superheroes. I've also had fun (FAR more fun) with Cypher System, though that's not a product of a great system but rather of a great group and GM.

>Just play an awful, non-game system like FATE if you want to play superheroes. Why would you want to have a pesky game get in the way of your hippie storytelling time?

Specialist? Generalist? Powerhouse? Are you sure your guys aren't playing with bad or at least inexperienced GMs? Because I think a good GM who bothered to read the book would make sure everyone gets help in creating their characters so no one is jobbing or being put in the backseat. Also, depending on what you mean by powerhouse, that's very situational in effectiveness unless your GM does nothing but combat.

Yeah, the thing about M&M is that it needs a very involved, aware GM who's willing to tailor every encounter very specifically to the heroes and ensure they all get chances to shine.

Also, vetos.

You're allowed to not like systems, user.

But you don't need to be a cunt.

People seem to love it for some reason even though at the mention of literally any other d20 system they foam at the mouth in autistic rage.

I don't understand this place sometimes.

What other d20 systems? At least other than DnD.

Nobody really hates 5e.
Nobody really cares about 4e anymore, not even the trolls.
AD&D is still loved. OD&D has the entire OSR movement to support it.
There are a number of heartbreakers that get often recommended (FantasyCraft and Legend).

It's only 3.PF, mate.

Probably because it's a substantial departure from other d20 games.

I haven't actually played it, but I read it and it just seems like 3.5 with some extra bits stapled on.

I mean, I don't really care. I don't think that's intrinsically bad. I just don't like the d20 system that much.

It just seems like people here mostly hate 3.pf but have nothing but praise for what is essential a derivative game using mostly the same system. Am I just missing something?

>I haven't actually played it
Oh, I almost completely forgot that power effects antithesis to each other in descriptor, including Damage powers, can also be used to counter each one another. So that's even less reason to say that all powers are exactly the same.

People hate how many trap options are in PF.

In M&M the math is laid out plain as day, and the mechanics are so unified that there can be no confusion, so you can immediately see when building your character how competent they will be, before they even see play.

Power Caps are the same regardless of whether you build a strong "I punch stuff" generalist or a "I specialize in rapier swordfighting" specialist, and as a result, what specialist *really* means is "I'm no better than the other PCs at anything they focused on, but I'm much worse than them in most other areas."

>INB4 "Not building to caps"
IIRC All the prebuilt characters are built to caps, and any PC with even half a brain is going to do so.

Okay, so from what you're saying about the rapier specialist, is that guessing they've put a lot of skill points into attacking with a rapier and even some combat advantages fitting to the character. That still should leave you with plenty of points to put into other things even excluding the obligatory point put into defenses/abilities. Where are all the rest of those other points going?

The point, is that they'd have been much better off building a punching dude.

They lose their weapon they're totally boned, and they don't get much to compensate. the difference in point costs wasn't sufficient when I saw it happen (I dont have the book or examples in front of me, unfortunately) to make up for that.

So, the character's player isn't using the significant discount they get from using a weapon rather than their fists to get the additional utility? Also, how powerful is the rapier?

Once again, I don't understand what's this whole thing with building a specialist. You can build a guy who uses a rapier, but that doesn't mean you have to solely make attack checks. What about Close Ranged Deflect with Reflect modifiers to simulate outsmarting someone and using the momentum of their own charge to drive your super durable rapier deep into them or simply a parry/counterstrike?

Same thing could be done with Reaction Strength Damage for Countering. Or how about someone who's so skilled at fighting that they can read their opponents so well that hitting them does not take anything more than a routine check (Affliction Perception Vulnerable/Defenseless with check required: Close Combat resisting with either Will to avoid showing weakness or Parry to test the opponent's proficiency in close range defense)? What about a multiattack o Strength damage?

A guy with a rapier doesn't have to be JUST a guy that uses their attack action and nothing else. The only thing you have to worry about is getting disarmed, which is far from a guarantee and you should still have Skills to help trick the opponents via Feint among other creative approaches (Especially since, once again, your easily removable power is a lot cheaper than the guy who's going full Strength).

this is some bad bait

2e had actual rules for an HP system in its Mastermind's Manual, by the way.

That's fair and makes sense. Perhaps I'll give it a reread. I still doubt I'll like it though since d20 is just not my cup of tea, but I would like to have a better understanding of it.

No worries if you prefer other things, user. Everyone has different tastes after all.
Big ups for being willing to revisit it, though, that's more than a lot of folks on Veeky Forums would be willing to do.

It fixes like 80% of 3.pf's flaws, including all the worst ones.

It's very fun, ran it for a short while between campaigns.

The rules are quite intuitive

There is actually some advices in a GM guide. Though you do still need some DMing experience.

If you want something somewhat similar, Kenson also created ICONs, which is basically M&M with a narrativist 2d6 mechanic instead of d20 and some randomness thrown into creation (though it's optional, and can be replaced with point-based choices too).

This is a prime example of where theorycraft runs face-first into the brick wall of player experience.

The rapier being easily removable, and thus allowing for additional points and powers, only matters if the GM is willing to see that obvious weakness that you've chosen and keep hitting it until it breaks you. When he does that, the extra points you have had better make up for that hard counter. In reality, in M&M, the hard counter against a specialist is not fun for either the player (who can't do his cool thing he got at a discount) or the GM (who feels like he's just denying fun).

Ironically, that hard-counter-a-hero-to-death experience is one of the few iconic superhero stories the game models well, though it seems to be entirely by coincidence. The problem is, it's the least conducive to players having fun, especially in a game that places such an emphasis on mechanizing the cool things your hero does.

I have had tons of fun with it.

Hmm, I think a good idea will be to have abilities a little less specialised than "rapier only" but more than "any weapon" (though that can work too).

There is enough rapier like objects that can be used. A stick with the right length can be declared a "training rapier". It is easier to break and you'll ned to have a variable descriptor on the power but it should model swashbuckling character good enough. Someone who can use anything that even resembles his weapon long enough to swing on a rope to his blade that was stuck in a wall.

It needs to have a new edition and accompanying miniature game

Not sure if bulge or unfortunate shading attempt.

My only complaints are that the character sheet seems confusing for first-time players, the arrays are barely explained, and there's a real downer when you realize being able to throw a building at someone could be completely negated while a 2 STR baseball player can knock out the same villian because they rolled a 1 for toughness.

Bulge.

Can someone please explain arrays to me. Are they a cost-reductive thing or is it just a way to organize powers on a sheet?

Both. A standard array lets you set up multiple powers in a single set of powers with the condition that you can only use ONE power in an array at a time. For example, you can have an array of different vision powers, like heat vision, cold vision and X-ray vision; you can only use one of those visions at a time, but you can freely switch between them at no cost. An array's cost is the cost of the most expensive power in the array + 1 PP for every additional power you add to the array.

There's also dynamic arrays, which let you use multiple powers at the same time, but only for however many points you have available in that array split between your abilities of your choice.

Arrays are very efficient, but like everything else in your character, they should make sense and avoid being abused.

Cost-reductive. Literally just read the book, its fully laid out on page 136-138, clear as day.

Too easy to break. Hard to balance. Unless you make a conscious effort to ensure your entire party is at the same level, some will build noticeably more useful characters than others.

Best superhero system out there, though. Only one close is GURPs, and I swear to christ if I have to help my players calculate skills in GURPs one more goddamn time I'm gonna kill someone.

Thanks. I guess I skimmed over it during my read through.

It happens, it just frustrates me when people claim something isn't clear, when the book lays it out pretty clearly.

Wait a minute, do natural 1s even affect resistance checks in MnM3e? But even then, if a building doesn't hurt a villain but a dude with a baseball does, that might be a failure on statting the villain.

They don't, outside of the fact you just rolled a 1.

While Nat 20s effect skill rolls, and resistance rolls, natural 1s only effect attack rolls, and even then it's just a MISS, nothing worse.

Well a 1+9 toughness vs a 18 (roll)+2 STR+2 Skill is a knockout while a 16+9 toughness vs 3+12 STR+4 (building) is a tickle

>M&M is best, no matter the setting
It's all I use for fantasy these days

>Decent balance between martials and casters
>The fighter actually feels like a god of war

Indeed.
>giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?279503-D-amp-D-in-M-amp-M-a-new-approach-to-rebalancing-3-5-PF

What the fuck are you on about? Attack rolls do nothing to add to it unless they crit, and then its only a +5 to damage.

That's what I was guessing.

I don't understand. You have 150 points (give or take 30 points depending on the campaign) to spend, you should have enough for your character to adapt to a situation. I am honestly tempted to make a rapier user and then find a one shot to run them through to prove my point.

Also, this argument is heavily leaning on a GM that is going to have a Death Star made out of your character's Kryptonite descending upon the earth every session. I have played Mutants and Masterminds, and the only time a player has ended up "ineffective" was because the GM was not doing their job helping in character creation or not giving player characters opportunities to shine.

Same. The mindset that guy up there about 'theorycrafting' is utterly alien to me. The game is made so it NEEDs the ST to work with you, and you with him so everyone has fun.

If you are being constantly hard-countered, something's wrong.

You're a fucking hero, it is ok to be powerful and kick conspicuous amounts of ass.

BT is my waifu

Its horrendously unbalanced. You basically have to go out of your way to not break the game, but its pretty fun.

>Read on Veeky Forums that this system works fine for magical girl and mecha games
>Read the core rules
>Get lost the moment they start explaining powers

I might be too stupid to use this system.

Maybe we can help.

What's giving you trouble?

>Herolab

It amazes me nobody has managed to crack it. I played about with the trial and it seems pretty good but it's not $30+ good.

Yeah, I jus thave no idea. Its on sale right now...I actually went ahead and bought it for a friend for a combination birthday/Christmas present. 23 bucks at the moment.

Still, the pricing is gouging absurd.

>new addition
id like to see them ditch attributes entirely, and just "buy what you want".

i once saw (at a table) a character whos shtick was the muscle memory thing combined with eidetic memory.

loaded various combat styles into an array such that he switched between them, and also loaded most of his noncombat skills into a similar array, so when he was fighting he was incapable of answering questions about history and such unless he stopped concentrating om the fight.

it was weird, but it made sense, and was certainly an efficient use of points.

Alright, I forgot what exactly I tried to create when trying out the system, but let's go with a Nanoha knock-off.

Concept is pretty simple: she has a magitech staff that shoots essentially long-range magical laser. It can be your regular laser or she can charge it up to make it a fuckhuge beam. She can also shoot barrages of smaller shots that track her opponent. Also putting up barriers, flying and some binds to make sure people actually get hit.

I assume shooting in general would be Blast, right? And then the other things like the charged attack would be part of an array through the Alternate Effect extra, I believe. She'd have an, I guess, Increased or Extended Range or Area plus some way to also increase the damage of the attack with a "needs charging" flaw and then the Homing plus Multiattack variant, right? Is it even possible to combine extras for a single (alternate) power? How the fuck do I actually increase damage? Counting it as putting more ranks into the Blast power?

Then there's the question of ranks. What does rank actually represent? What is the difference in rank between "can hurt people" and "can destroy buildings"? How many points should I put into the stats and how many should I distribute to the different powers to match my concept, and not making it too weak or too unnecessarily strong?

I'm not sure if I'm explaining myself properly in like half the post, but oh well, I'm trying.

Hey user, NPC's don't need to follow power level guidelines. Instead, you stat them however you want and give them a power level based on whatever you end up with.

Also, two characters of power level X are roughly equal to one character of power level X+2. Villains generally need to be well above the heroes power level or fight with a gaggle of minions.

Sounds like you want a number of Blasts with some various modifiers, mixed up with some AoE effects, in an array slapped into a Device.

Also, there is no rank difference between "Can hurt" and "Can Ice a building". ALL damage is non-lethal unless you declare killing intent.

But let me go point by point and pull your shit apart and try to help better:

>I assume shooting in general would be Blast, right?
Yes.

>And then the other things like the charged attack would be part of an array through the Alternate Effect extra, I believe.
Also yes.

>She'd have an, I guess, Increased or Extended Range or Area plus some way to also increase the damage of the attack with a "needs charging" flaw and then the Homing plus Multiattack variant, right?
Here's where shit gets confusing, so let me try to break it into parts. This part IS tricky, so its no knock against you for not grasping it right away. M&M is a beast to learn, but once you do, it becomes a lot more easy.

So, Charges can be done a few ways. Upped damage is one, changing it out to an AoE is another. You'd probably want to apply a Limited: Needs a round to build or something. A Limited should apply around roughly half the time, and having to drop a whole turn to charge it up sounds about right. That gives you a -1 PP per Rank pointbreak, which can help.

Homing...you could give or take, depends on just what you're trying to do. And Multi-attack could work, depending again on just what you're trying to do. For "Seeker/many targets"? Yeah.

>Is it even possible to combine extras for a single (alternate) power?
Your array's cost is the most expensive part of it as your base. So if you have 3 powers that have 10 point costs, but one that has a 15 point cost? That 15 point is your base.

>Cont

>How the fuck do I actually increase damage? Counting it as putting more ranks into the Blast power?
Two ways. Just putting more shit into Blast is one(An important thing to note. The scaling for the system is rather intresting. A raise in rank is roughly DOUBLED per rank. So while D2 is D1x2, D3 is NOT 3 time stronger then D1.

It can help give a grasp, without having to just jack numbers to infinity, its a little quirk of the system I'm found of.

Way 2 to boost damage is Power Attack. You drop ranks of Attack to Hit, to gain damage on a 1 for 1 basis.

>How many points should I put into the stats and how many should I distribute to the different powers to match my concept, and not making it too weak or too unnecessarily strong?
This is purely a personal thing. I tend to put a lot more into raw attrabutes then other people I play with, for example. I suggest looking at pages like atomicthinktank.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=37545 to get a feel for it. Using iconic characters can help you feel for just where things should go.

Also, look at the skill benchmarks in the book itself, its important to keep in mind shit like that. Most people are at 0. +5? You're a solid pro. +10 in a skill? Fucking world class.

One of the biggest rules of thumb I work by with the system is really simple, though. Just because you CAN, doesn't mean you SHOULD. Create the idea you want, and then build to it. I mean, sure, you could add regen, or immunity(critical hits). But does it fit the concept?
If you have more questions, I'm more then happy to try and help. This is flat out one of my favorite systems, and I'm glad to try and help other people enjoy something that's brought me and my friends so much fun.

Actually, looks like you've already considered all this. My bad.

One subtle way the system is broken that might be causing some the problem is that Damage is way stronger than accuracy. People have run the numbers and found that Damage is roughly twice as influential on whether you win a fight than accuracy, so Damage shifted character actually hit well above their powerlevel.

How would you stat a power that basically stores energy or absorbes attacks and releases them at will?

Got a source for that theorycrafting?