To what degree can Mutants and Masterminds be used to run games that aren't set in a standard capes setting? Bonus points if the setting isn't modern either.
Is it flexible enough to be refluffed as like magic and shit? I don't have much experience w/ the game but I've heard good things about it being a really versatile (if easily breakable) platform for building characters with unique powers.
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You can literally take any power effect and put the Descriptor as magic. 2e had a book straight up called "warriors and warlocks" and there's an entire section on spells for this very purpose, but 3e doesn't even need it.
You can play practically anything in fact, the system is universal. In fact, a few people use it to replace 3.5.
Yes and No. Playing at low PL (PL 5 or less) can get frustrating, but that it.
Second edition. Yes.
Third edition. No.
The M&M system is incredibly flexible, user. It can be used for nearly anything--and this is coming from someone who has been using it since 2nd ed came out.
My only problem with the system is that while flexible, it's not exactly "flavorful" for every game type. For example, I ran a Persona-style game using the system, but there wasn't really enough there to distinguish the abilities and skills of the players from the abilities and skills of the summoned Persona... while it worked mechanically, controlling their Personas didn't feel substantially different from controlling their characters.
So while it CAN do a lot, it's not exactly INTERESTING to run a campaign with.
Agreed, treating Mutants and Masterminds PCs the same way as DnD PCs when it comes to levels isn't a good idea. Of course, even early level DnD is shit to begin with. Instead, characters have enough customization and options are really cheap to where your character will have a very wide selection of things to do at the beginning rather than having to slowly build your character options session by session. And even if you don't have that many Alternate effects to a power, you can straight up just Power Stunt as long as you're up for using a finite resource.
This makes the character creation rather intimidating at first if you're not using the prebuilt powers as reference. However, what freedom it brings is what makes it worth learning. Especially if you want a system which Strength, grappling and martial ability is worth a damn. And even if you don't like the herculean fighter types, there's even a Talents and some of the Martial Artist section which you can make power effects that technically aren't "powers thematically".
There are literally multiple pages on magic in 3e and just about everything fantasy.
james
recommendations for limited super power settings PL10 where your players put more points into skills and attributes?
I really want to know this as well. Would be interested in running such a campaign.
2ed has 'powers as feats' which allows a modest superpower to be used, 1 or 2 ranks, usually with a limitation. 1 rank of super strength, concentration, distracting. 2 ranks superspeed 25 mph. etc
And/or you can let them have 5 or 10 points of powers and sit with them and veto anything that is outside your game concept.
Agents of Freedom has a bit about agents with a smattering of Power, might be what you are looking for.
I ran a game that used d20 Modern as a template, the spells from that were recreated in M&M 2e. It made a very effective game
neat.
and for 3e?
There are stories of people who converted their high-level D&D campaign into M&M. Everyone was relatively balanced, and the fighter actually felt like a god of war for once.
You can easily just allot a "pool" of PP they can use for powers if they want. There's no pressing need for mechanical support.
You can have convincing characters who are almost nothing but attributes, skills and a big ol' pile of Feats and Advantages. Equipment, maybe, but some characters can get away even without those. These are your typical "badass normal" humans who, even if they don't have powers in the typical sense, are still dangerous and worth taking seriously in their own way.
For point of comparison, a PL0 character (literally 0 in everything) is the most average human in the world, with literally nothing special going for him. He is the faceless citizen.
Not *everything*.
You can have up to +10 in a skill, because its PL+10 for skills.
That said, yes, you can totally rig the system to run just about anything, although not everything is a great idea. It doesn't do gritty at all, frankly, and there's other genres where just because you COULD use it, doesn't mean you SHOULD.
That said, I'd use it for D&D in a heartbeat.
>giantitp.com
I'd also use it for the more pink mowhawk brands of shadowrun.
>It doesn't do gritty at all, frankly
M&M, by RAW, is not a lethal system. You have to go out of your way to kill someone in 3e. Plus, the fights themselves are orchestrated such that they represent the slugfests you typically see in comic book fights. M&M fights are hectic, but they are not lethally short in most cases.
I like how one Advantage by itself lets you turn one PL10 character into two PL8 characters.
Shitloads of Sidekick?
There are adjustments in the GM book, but you're mostly right.
Practically speaking, yes.
It is ok for high fantasy with heroes and villains suffering wounds but rarely dying outright. On the other hand mooks are going to drop like flies.
Exactly. You can mow through grunts to allow yourself to feel powerful, and when you want real blow-by-blow fights, you get someone of roughly equal standing. There is nothing wrong with throwing waves of mooks at your players.
It can be used to play anything.
For example, on Monday Nights, My Roomates and I play a very fun Dragonball: Z game using Mutants and Masterminds 3e.
Nappa is a bitch and a half.
Honestly, one of my favorite "powers" from the Martial Artist Power Profile is the one which you can make your enemies Vulnerable or even Defenseless by essentially studying their fighting style.
I'm surprised I didn't think of it sooner.
GM guide has pretty nice and simple rules for mass combat that allow to fight against armies.
>Analyze Style
>Perception Ranged Affliction (Resisted and Overcome by Will; Vulnerable, Defenseless), Conditions Limited to Your Attacks, Limited Degree, Insidious, Subtle
>2 points + 1 point per rank
That IS a pretty sick "power," I'll admit that.
It doesn't really do loot, either, or really any sort of tangible progress in my opinion.
It also doesn't do optimization. A brain damaged chimp could break the system, and often enough just picking the vanilla options without deliberately weakening yourself is the "best" option. I've seen people make broken characters by accident, and once you have the basics of character creation down, the rest is freeforming.
It's true that M&M isn't designed for the conventional form of progression like you'd see in some other systems. The emphasis is on narrative, so any growth is subtle or handled carefully.
Yes, M&M can be easily broken, even by accident. Everyone knows this, including the game itself. The game trusts you to be mature enough to acknowledge this and build for the sake of narrative, not for the sake of "winning." Even if you do accidentally break the game, you have a GM with veto power (and the game is very explicit about reminding you of this) who can stop you and help you tweak it.
From your tone, you sound like you're arguing against me, but all the content of your post accomplishes is implying that your preferred playstyle is better.
Nothing of the sort. I don't know what YOU'RE reading into.
Not him, but that's what the rulebook quite clearly tells you about what the system is supposed to accomplish. If you go in expecting anything else it's your own fault
Anyone got anything they want statted? I have the full version of hero Lab so it shouldn't be too hard for me.
Gimme your best ninja.
Anything specific you want your ninja to have? If not I might take longer.
Can you make them your fancy ninpo-caster ninjas? Fireballs and shit?
Oh, definitely! I'm going to be starting at power level 8 for this but if you want I can bump up to power level 10.
Okay, this is a rough draft, so things might seem a little random and all over the place.
Well, you could have crazy parkour or kung fu skills for one. Utility belts also come to mind. Currently running a guy who started out as a tech based sneak, using hologram projectors, a souped up zipline, and utility grenade launcher that fires off different compounds for different afflictions and weakens.
Oh, I forgot I also made Genji too.
I also made this!
>In fact, a few people use it to replace 3.5.
And I'm never going back
M&M let's me do everything I've ever wanted to do in D&D but without the colossal amount of bullshit needed to create anything that even slightly varies from GENERIC FIGHTER/WIZARD/ROUGE/HEAL-BOT CLERIC #9874568
Just give them one or two ranks in an applicable power and use descriptors that make it "not a super power"
For example
>Mighty Thews
1-2 Ranks in Enhanced Strength Limited to Lifting
>Brilliant Deduction
Senses 4 (Postcognition) Investigation Check Required
>Second Wind
Healing,Triggered 1 (when suffering two or more degrees of damage), Limited to Self
buump
Might as well post another I've made.
>5'8"
This manlet.
Well he is a ninja so I think it is safe to assume he is Japanese
Hero Lab eh? What's that? The M&M equivalent of Chummer for Shadowrun?
wolflair.com
Lemme just link it
Worm?
Out of curiosity, has anyone tried running Worm using M&M?
Hell, try statting her.
Sorry to bother, but does anyone have an editable 3E character sheet? Been looking for one for a while.
Unfortunately it's way too late where I am at the moment for me to do anything. Just hope this thread is still around or another MnM thread comes up.
She actually uses a lot of Power Stunts. She has two main powers - ability to see through insects and a physical actions with insects array that over the course of the story starts splitting up into its corresponding powers with Taylor becoming better and better at multitasking.
Her power also should have limitations/descriptors that make it rely on the type of insects that are common for certain area. Also they need some time to get to her so at least Activation: Standard Action for the whole array.
My party is going for a Cosmic kinda game with PL14, can I get a few of your guy's Characters
I was thinking a Viltrumite from Invincible
>Her power also should have limitations/descriptors that make it rely on the type of insects that are common for certain area. Also they need some time to get to her so at least Activation: Standard Action for the whole array.
And this is why running a Worm style game in M&M would need a lot of adjustments.
M&M kind of assumes that at some point there's going to be a setpiece fight where the good guys and the bad guys duke it out on a somewhat level playing field, and when that happens no one's supposed to be completely irrelevant and/or just fucking die because they're not built to tank laser beam eyes, exploding fireballs, or whatever.
Powers in Worm are not nearly as balanced, and while each chapter does tend to end in some kind of (continuously escalating) throwdown there's a lot more prep involved since most people can't just trade fire with each other the way PL appropriate M&M characters can.
Why would you play a superhero game that isn't Wild Talents?
Any thoughts on running Digimon or Pokemon in M&M?
Well better way to model Worm will be to remove power limits as per GM guide.
But it's gonna be hardcore on the level of Dwarf Fortress. Mortality gonna skyrocket.
Still wouldn't encourage people to take really slow, situational, or unreliable powers.
Viltrumites are essentially your classic Flying Bricks. Take the Paragon archetype and scale it up to PL14, adjusting for what you think feels more right.
Hero Lab is basically Chummer for a whole shitload of systems, including 3.5, 4e, M&M and others. It has modules you can slot for whatever game you're playing. Hero Lab is honestly a godsend for M&M, since it does the math for you.
A summoning array could do it for pokemon. No good way of showing their growth towards evolution unless you houserule it, though.
As with Digimon, I'm not a big fan of the franchise but I think evolution's not permanent, so probably treat it as enhanced traits and the digimon partner himself as a sidekick.
You have to be careful, though. Summon, especially Heroic Summon (lets you summon PC-tier entities) is explicitly flagged as one of those dangerous powers that can and will break the game if misused. In particular, it mentions limiting large-scale summoning of minions to villains or NPC, and to be careful with Heroic Summon, as it can bog down combat having to keep track of those additional targets.
2E literally has a Mecha and Manga supplement that has suggests for playing a pet user a la pokemon/digimon/D&D Druids/etc.
Well, it really comes up to the GM to use a bit of fiat to say you can only have the pokemon actively fighting outside, at least while in battle. More specifically you'd have pokeballs be summoning Devices inside an array, and there's no reason for the PCs to be capable of ACTUAL summoning
But come to think of it, catching pokemon and double battles is where it really gets complicated to recreate it mechanically. It'd be insane to make them pay full price for each pokemon, so perhaps just ignore part of the Alternate Effect rules to let them release several pokemon at once, and let them freely re-allocate their points to change their team as long as they've actually catched the pokemon. If they can't currently afford a pokemon, use the optional rules to make them pay for it with any future points.
There's one build that's stopped entirely by the fact that the GM has a lot of veto: The Ritual Savant
Your primary power is Quickness (Mental and Physical, Limited to Rituals), plus Eidetic Memory and Feature: memorized entire Arcane Library, with EP spent on a huge library for Expertise: Magic.
PP spent is scalable, but I crunched the numbers for the PL10 build and found that I could design and jury rig any ritual I needed in less than a second with a reasonable chance of success, and have PP left over to buy the most commonly used ones if the GM required it.
Preeeeetty sure that's not how that works anyway. Quickness is something you can use only on things you can take Routine Checks on, and Inventing is not one of those things.
There's some ability or something that lets you take invention checks as routine actions. 1 or 2 points iirc.
Its an advantage skill mastery.
Yeah, I forgot to mention that one, I don't have my core book on me right now.
And that also specifically says you cannot use that advantage to take routine checks with skills that you normally cannot, and Inventing is one of them.
If you wanna do shit like that, just use a Variable power that has Check Required: Tech or Magic.
Here ya go!
What about the Bathroom Psychic?
You're wrong.
d20herosrd.com
alt-f routine. You can make both the design and build technology checks as routine.
I distinctly remember one of my players playing a super scientist who could use a quickened Invest skill. He was able to devise and put together a device that could nullify cold or ice powers within the span of a half-hour car ride.
IMHO it's can be ok for a game as long as GM puts some flaw on inventions/rituals. So that the fact that the solution to the problem exist doesn't completely trivializes it.
Didn´t think I would still get an answer. Thank you, user!
You can literally make anything with this system, even without buying any supplements. It's focused on superheroes by default, but you don't need to change anything to switch it to Tolkien fantasy or other shit. Modern, medieval, magic, realistic, rules support it all.
WTF is that Worm everyone keeps talking about?
Somebody already gave it a shot
roninarmy.com
Ant swarm:
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Centipede swarm:
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Spider swarm:
atomicthinktank.com
Wasp swarm:
atomicthinktank.com
M&M could do it well enough with some finagling. Wild Talents would work better. If you look into WT, pick up the Progenitor setting book. It's the most Worm-esque thing I'm aware of outside of Worm and has some 50+ example metahumans that could easily be stolen for use as NPCs in a Worm game, even in another system. The archive in has a Wild Talents folder that has the corebook and Progenitor.
Worm is an overly-long and overly-grimdark but decently-thought-out web serial about people who gain superpowers because of traumatic experiences. The main character is a teenage girl who can sense and control insects, spiders, and the like.
It's okay, but it's not nearly so great as Veeky Forums tends to hype it up to be.
If you want to read it, it's at parahumans.wordpress.com.
Actually...yeah you're right. I actually went to the book and it evens says for itself:
>In particular, note how some advantages and even powers work together. The Gadgeteer can use Quick-Thinking to speed up the process of inventing (see Inventing, page
145) and Skill Mastery (Technology) to make some inventing checks as routine. Similarly, note the Martial Artist’s Power Attack advantage, good for doing extra damage to
slow, tough, opponents, and the Skill Mastery (Acrobatics) advantage for pulling off formidable (DC 25) Acrobatics
checks as routine!
However, now that I think about it, the cost for having enough skill points to do such things is pretty comparable to having a flawed Variable power anyway. If you wanted to make something potent and convenient as a normal power, you would have to have a lot of points into both skills and the Quickness effect.
Ran an Eberron game with it pretty easily
So I'm building an attack with Damage and a linked Affliction, but I want to make it both an Area effect and Unreliable (the 5 uses version). By my understanding, I add Area to both but do I double-dip with Unreliable?
Welp, looks like someone did my job for me. I'd say it's allowed, both effects are gone when you use it fives time, and it counts as one power, so it applies to both the Affliction and the Damage. Other wise, if you only applied it to an Affliction, you could still use the Damage effect as much as you want.
Kind of like how you can have your base sword., but then you can also link an Affliction like Poison or Ice you can use a limited number of times onto it when it's active.
Well, actually, you'd probably have to have the Damage version by itself as an AE.
But either way, I think the flaw applies to both the powers in the linked effect.
To visualise it, here's what I mean:
Damage 10 (Area - Line, Unreliable - 5 uses), linked Affliction 10 (Dazed, Stunned; Area - Line, Limited Degree) [20]
So that's right? Probably just gonna ask my GM anyway, but more input is always good.
The Unreliable flaw would apply to both the Damage and the Affliction since, as I've now realized, one cannot be used without the other anyway.
Right, but only discounting the Damage, yes (so a total of -10 discount, not -20)?
No, Affliction would get discounted, it would be -20
Aces. That's a bit more discount than expected, but I can work with that.
I made this edgelord for an user a while back, anything the topic wants to add here? Perhaps even some story?
How does your character define justice?
>Protect the innocent
or
>Punish the guilty
I'd worry for your sanity if you went "MORE DISCOUNT THEN EXPECTED?! FUCK THIS SHIT!"
It's better to prevent than to repair, so Protecting the Innocent is top priority.
To further prove my point:
When a hero prioritizes saving others over getting the bad guy, the city/world/etc. is (usually) a better place to live in.
When the hero prioritizes LE SMITE JUSTICE VENGENCE RAWRGH, the place they are in charge of "protecting" is usually a grimdark shithole.
You make sure your place is worth living in, THEN you can worry about collecting a villain's moral debts. In fact, putting the end to a villain on top priority before repairs/healing will still leave you with a damaged city once you finally do "stop" the villainy.
I'd like to add that his Protection is inside the dynamic array with the rest of his powers, which is just begging for trouble.
So it is good for play. It's boring when characters can do everything at once.