Mutants & Masterminds

Villains & Vigilantes

Yeah, I agree. Although it's also an important skill for players to learn, both mechanically and thematically. Make a character who is appropriate to the premise of the game. Give them a reason to be there and abilities that are appropriate in the given context.

>Bathroom Sniper
can you elaborate?

Yeah one of my players wants to make drugs in his spare time and im not sure if i should let him

>Bathroom Sniper
A character with perception ranged powers and remote sensing, so they can blast away from inside a locked bathroom in a motel in another state. Basically scry-and-die.

Related to the Bathroom Mentalist that uses mind control or other afflictions instead of blasting, and the Orbital Laser Man who does his thing from outer space instead of just really far away on the same planet.

Make him build a power and pay the points for it, and then just let him give up since M&M 3E doesn't do independent effects very well without a little houseruling.

I really like how well the game can be adjusted to other genres; modern cops, anime, fantasy. It is easy to make it more lethal with minor adjustments. Herolab had a nice character generator for both 2nd and 3rd. the demo is free, it really helps since powers are so customize-able.

This could work i was thinking i let it go for a few games while warning him, then it leads to a drug bust on the heroes' headquarters, maybe even tarnishing their rep with civilains and other heroes

Wait what kind of superhero sells drugs? I figured you were doing some other kind of powers-based campaign using M&M, since drug dealing is pretty much the opposite of super heroic.

Let him try but give the other players or supporting NPCs a chance to find out, and maybe talk him out of it. If that doesn't work have his reputation go straight down the toilet when it's revealed that a superhero is using their powers to manufacture and distribute drugs. That's a huge, career ending scandal.

Thats exactly what i was thinking, basically his character ends up in prison, he rolls a new hero, and the group still catches flak for it years later.

"Hey aren't you the guys who were selling drugs to orphans or something?"

It used Perception rage attacks, an extra that can be added to any source of damage. It removes the need for an attack roll, if you can perceive it, you hit it automatically.

Then, add remote viewing powers with enough range to let you see anywhere on the planet an through any form of concealment.

Finally, Indirect attack powers, letting you use a damage ability without line of effect. Combined with the other two, you can auto-hit anywhere, and you can see everywhere.

Yes, but does it do enough damage?

It does as much damage as the power level of the game allows. The PL is a semi-hard cap that determines how high your damage, attack bonus, saves, ability scores, and skill ranks can be.

Are buyoffs still a thing in 3e? In 2e they were always fucking broken, assholes buying off defence to take impermeable toughness at twice the usual value and basically becoming entirely invulnerable.

M&M is really fun. The system is a bliss for improvization and there are lots of stuff to do apart from good ol capeshitting. As for problems..
Fucking Duplication.
Dupes ruined 5 games I was part of simply becouse DMs were too mentally challenged to spot OPshit and did nothing bout it.
Take my first gane: Tanky hero called "Sentinel" gets duplication. IMMEDIATLY sinks all his skills in favour of 10 dupes. The party now has 10 disposable tanky guys and they could all use Interpose, enhaced defense, Uncanny Dodge and Imperv toughness. Literally no way to get past The Wall of Sentinel

Marvel Heroic Roleplaying and the Sentinel Comics RPG are pretty much the best superhero games out there, but the first is out of print and the second is only available as a starter set right now. The full version of SCRPG is coming out later this year, and a generic version of MHR is due out in a month or two, so there's hope.

I'm not sure you can call the Sentinels RPG 'best' yet. The starter set has potential, but they need a really robust chargen that's both balanced and flexible or they're really going to miss the mark, IMO. The G2G guys are pretty good at their shit though, so hopefully they'll make it work.

I like the setting but don't care much for the system anymore. There are lots of better superhero RPGs out there, like Marvel Heroic, Icons, and Sentinel Comics.

...

But you usually have to pick a sense that'd benefit from remote sensing. Thus certain senses have limits unless you also start adding enhanced stuff like Detect or Accurate.

There's also, like someone else said, so much damage you can do with a budget to cover all the grounds. Sure, beating mooks is easy with it, but there's only so much you can get away with before someone big and bad enough to shrug off your shit will find you and beat your ass down.

Impenetrable in 3E has only half the effect of 2E impenetrable, so trading off for impenetrable toughness isn't as ridiculous.

You can still make all-out power attacks to effectively trade off defense for offensive effect rank; and that's still really good if you've got huge toughness, intangibility, instant regen, or other non-dodge/parry defenses.

The cost of summoning more than one thing got vastly increased in 3E. It's still really strong, but at least there's no more summoning dozens of dudes to break open the team attack rules.

Beating cover, concealment, and illusions costs 11 points total and extended scales by factors of 10. For 20 points you can see up to one hundred billion feet before you start taking penalties. Then for another 30 points you can buy a rank ten perception ranged damage effect.

That's just a third of a PL 10 character's budget, so you've still got room to cap your defenses, buy notice or other skills, take some kind of concealment for yourself, buy alt. effects for your blast to deal with weird defenses, or tack on more gimmicks like rapid and analytic to your vision (or mental quickness, if you think attention should be an issue with that much sensory power).

If you really want to be a dick you can make your vision interdimensional and then buy dimension travel yourself so you can blast dudes from the dimension of hookers and blow. They're gonna need some fancy stuff to even get there, and there's no reason you wouldn't literally see them coming.

Not every bathroom sniper is broken, and there are ways to make it a legitimate concept, but there's also ways to build it that definitely deserve a veto.

HERO System if you want really nice rewarding gameplay once you get past the complexity.
Bricks are just devastating not only to anyone, but to their local environment, especially with certain builds.
>Get Naked advantage to apply AOE to your strength value
>Apply megascale advantage so each punch has an AOE of 1km
>Level entire city block with single punch
>Mfw

Prowlers and Paragons is fun. It has a cool system to customize powers essentially letting you make your pwn powers easily

I want to run a My Hero Academia game. How does M&M handle everyone having one low-level power which they have to use creatively?

For that I'd honestly suggest Masks. It's a game all about young heroes figuring out their identities and finding their place in the larger world.

It appears you are definitely correct on that front.

However, this also emphasizes the reason for GMs to have challenges other than "beat the bad guy up".

Am I the only one that has never run anything like a typical superhero game in this system?

Also, am I the only one that finds the whole Energizing extra on Healing a bit obnoxious to try and base recovery powers on? I mean, in the power profiles, you have things like Sleep Immunity being statted as Energizing Only Healing, but yet you can heal severe injuring without the automatic Empathetic flaw attached to them.

There's also the fact that there's a Total Self Healing and Psychic Vapirism power statted which both use both Energizing and Self Only despite what the rules say. On top of that, you have an Absorption power that has a new extra all together that ignores the Energizing rules and just says Custom: it can remove the fatigue from extra effort.

Speaking of M&M, I'm running a game in the DC universe soon if anyone here is interested.

app.roll20.net/campaigns/details/2916206/dc-adventures-in-earth-30

I have only done one Supers game and that was a two-fisted Pulp adventure game with ace pilot, mad scientists, occult detective, werewolf, and one budget Supergirl clone- set in 1938. The supergirl was the only one with a secret Identity and a costume, and even she snuck around avoiding being discovered. I planned on her being the first one photographed and in the papers.

Others were a modern secret society in real World with modest sorcerer abilities, and a Firefly campaign with no psychic characters.

I worked on a few others that have not been played. Shadowrun, Western, and slightly odd Fantasy. PL 5 standard, PL 8 For the Golden Heroes. I pre-build characters for the players to choose from then sit with each player and tweak them as they desire. Herolab makes it easy to do.

Honestly, just tempted to have it as a one use per hour thing.

GM needs to have a strong handle on his players, you need to be able to say "no" to run M&M, and you just need players who aren't assholes in general.

If you have shitty players and you let them run rampant they will pull the game out of it's own asshole and then sit there with a smug smile as though breaking the system was some sort of accomplishment.

Bump for a great game system to fight the spamming of idiotic repeat threads.

What is the highest PL anyone has run or played?
I was in a game that started at PL10 and ended at PL14 when we defeated an alien armada.

I ran one that went as high as PL 15, but that's because I made the horrific mistake of leveling the solo player way too fast.

I run at PL12s. Strong enough that the players can fully live out the superhero fantasy, but not to the point that they destabilize the setting itself.

Little late but it says not authorized for me

The weird thing about M&M, in my experience, is that increasing PL just isn't very interesting. It basically forces you to spend points to increase all your numbers to the new cap, rather than spending them on new powers or variations. I've had more fun in games that stick to a static PL but slowly trickle you more points, letting you broaden your capabilities rather than just having the same things but with higher numbers.

I agree. Capping the PL has real value. Your Bruce Lee campaign goes away, and now you are playing Dragonball.
Both ways are good, just makes for different campaigns.

>DnD players will never know the joys of playing a knight who's punches are power by both boulder breaking strength and explosive, adamantium-melting fists.
>DnD players will never know the joys having their own invisible mega truck
>DnD players will never know the joys of paralyzing an earth-rending golem with sticky plant titty juice

>that third one
elaborate

Yes and no. You have different stats that, when paired together, can't exceed the PLx2. Attack and effect, toughness and parry, fortitude and will, etc. This means if you want to go nuts and make one stat higher, it costs you somewhere else.

> someone big and bad enough to shrug off your shit will find you and beat your ass down
Not if you buy Penetrating, linked powers and take the -5/+5 attack damage tradeoff. You don't need an attack bonus, you have Perception range, so why not have a damage limit 5 ranks higher? They might survive one attack, but unless they're built to specifically counter you (which become nearly impossible with Subtle 2) they can't get to you in time before you keep hitting them.

>Not if you buy Penetrating, linked powers and take the -5/+5 attack damage tradeoff.

Okay, one, Penetrating has never been that good in 3e. You either have enough to bypass the impervious with enough ranks in a damage ability most of the time, or the enemy has enough in a defense that they'll be able to resist it 75% of the time, and if they don't, take a bruise at most. If you really wanna fuck with an enemy, take Alternate Resistance and bypass any Impervious ranks completely by attacking a way weaker save.

And of course there's two, which is if the power has no attack roll, you cannot benefit from trade offs like power attack. To say that you could just gain +5 to an effect for free would be ridiculous.

My ERP game has a shapeshifting plant girl

You're running a lewd mutants and masterminds game too?

Mine has a slime girl, a cartoon character, a shortstack alien, and a sheep person.

Hi Liam.

>HERO system

I've looked at this and it seems like all the same problems as more modern systems with none of the modernity.

I do like the endurance system, though. Houseruling in something like that might rein in some of the bullshit in M&M.

discord.gg/pCRnW92

Give yourself the mutants and masterminds role. I have a listing there as well.

My cast consists of a psionic skeleton, a hermaphrodite orc, the plant girl, the half dragon, and a robot that used to be a demon (it's a long story).

Of the five M&M games I've run only two have been Supers and of those two one was a Pulp/Golden Age game inspired in equal parts by The Shadow and Doc Savage as it was by Lovecraft and Mignola which only kinda counts
The other 3 were
>A straight up D&D style fantasy game
>A half planetary romance half space opera game
>A game based off of Street Fighter and KoF where almost everyone was was fluffed as a Martial Artist regardless of powerset

>a hermaphrodite orc
..in a suit of power armor, dont forget the power armor.

bump

>2nd edition
>Never

Tell me more.

Honestly, I think it's really mechanically weak. The combat is really tedious and unfun for my group. It could be a matter of balancing encounters properly, but it seems like either the enemy never goes down or goes down in a flash. The progressive penalties model is really just not that enjoyable imo. I like that it isn't just meatpoints, but I feel like it isn't really better, just different.

New to the system here, I had a similar experience. All of my players rolled fairly straightforward brawlers and ranged nukers that just kinda don't have much to do other than "d20 to see if you blast or not", so the combat hasn't been all that riveting. Maybe we're doing it wrong.

How do other better combat systems usually handle this? Because I've played DnD, and there's either attack rolls and saving throws just the same. I've played FATE, which is all rolled with a single roll of 4d6...and the fight literally could not progress because both were immune to the other's attack thanks to Super Toughness.

Even using 3d6 with MnM's alternate rules I've heard people complaining about how it essentially gives everyone effective Impervious rolls.

>Made a strength, speed and durable superhero
>Been sitting here for the last hour or so thinking about what to name him

All the names I've thought of are already taken by either a DC or Marvel hero. It seems like a bit of a pointless hangup, but I want to name him something that hasn't been used before.

Does he have any gimmicks or themes other than his powers?

Whelp, that's a good point. Maybe I should just throw him out and start over.

>Penetrating has never been that good in 3e
I was talking about the second (superior) edition, friendo. Besides, Pen being useless in 3e has everything to do with Impervious being a waste of time in that edition.

Actually, what they were complaining about is a strength of the system, not a drawback. MnM lets you make a simple brute/blaster and he'll do just fine, but it also lets you make complex multi-array characters that require a deep understaning of the rules to play. If you want to expand your group's horizon, have them play those simple characters in a game with a complex one, so they can see the difference.

What are his complications?

Penetrating in 3e is only good if you use 2e Impervious rules
I think the power profiles book has a sidebar that talks about doing just that

There's evidence in this very thread that proves 2e is far from superior. Right here actually:
With that being said, just reading the Q and A for 2nd edition alone tells me there are some rules that REALLY should have carried over. Then again, there's nothing stopping anyone from just taking what 2e did right and carrying it over in this case (such as Constructs getting a toughness save against effects that should have a any sort of save and not fucking instant max failure. Not to mention the stupidity of how the handbook describes anything without stamina being unable to use extra effort, a major mechanic in the game).

Becouse, surprise surprise, people BARELY use all the bullshit advantages and debuffs M&M gives you. TAUNTING lone can melt bosses and trip+team checks usually ends in insta death.
But your Batwank edgy fag doesnt know that. Too busy trying to land affliction or other pointless shit. Christ

>when you're so pro at M&M you take Multiattack as an extra for your Deception skill so you can feint two dudes at the same time.

What is his motivation? What is his origin story?
Wonder Woman isn't named Really Strong Wench. Batman could have been Night Viper or El Tigre.

and
poster here.

Someone asked a while ago about a Pulp type Space Soldier and I put together some doodads
for 2ed. I thought it might be interesting to look at.
I have a full version of Herolab for 2ed, and I enjoy making devices and powers. I could make a couple of things on request, but I do have a ton of IRL going on. I will post previously built things if people are interested. I am not not a Herolab shill. They ought to pay me, I tell everyone about how much I like their product, but they don't.

Does Herolab let you specify if an area attack is regular or targeted? Taking accurate on the area attacks suggests the latter, but I would've thought there'd be an option for it.

Yes, you can put Accurate on general or targeted. There are some things that the software does not exclude from happening.
Another one is that you can build a device that has a device. Since the GM needs to be involved in character builds to fit their specific game this is not that big of a deal.

>Really Strong Wench

So how bullshit is this?

It's certainly bullshit, as Second Chance only applies to either a hazard or a skill that has consequence for failing, keyword "Skill".

Healing is not a skill. But even if you were actually allowed to use this, this wouldn't stop you from rolling two low numbers and having to wait the normal period to reuse.

>Not taking Check Required: Deception and getting Max rank Afflictions for almost free.

>not using Attractive and/or Favored Foe for circumstance bonuses unavailable to regular afflictions

How is the skeleton a psion without a brain?

Honestly it's really just magic but he's got mind control, telekinesis, and the like

Also he has a zombie clown summon named Bozo.

Why not both?

This is an experimental character I built to see how well I could run a Shadowrun game with M&M. I built the character first with Shadowrun rules then made this version. I think it would be fun to play, but wouldn't feel exactly like 'pure' Shadowrun. I might do it someday anyway.
Pixies are a very minor race in Shadowrun, but I geared it for a woman I game with that likes to play halflings and winged characters.

...

When you use Multiattack to give cover fire, is it partial or total cover?

We're playing Supers Revised Edition right now, and it's pretty fun. The art in the rulebook is atrocious, like high school Deviantart bad, but the rules are neat and we enjoy it.

I assume that it basically works as "if anyone in range tries to shoot at the person you're covering, they get attacked". Otherwise, they can't attack unless they can get around cover.

I think it means whoever you're covering gets the cover bonus, but the attacker can ignore it by getting hit. So they can still attack the person you're covering and not get hit, just with the cover penalty.

Hmm, thing is that it doesn't say anything about a bonus. The only thing I can think of that doesn't include a bonus of any kind is total cover, which basically says you cannot hit them

hey Veeky Forums, Im playing 3e with a few friends and trying to build out a new character using some of the rules I ignored in my first character and hoping for some advice

I don't quite understand how linked skills work, Im trying to build an affliction based character with cumulative. Does the skill being linked build into the combination power or does it exist separately and can be linked to multiple skills? I understand once you link them they become a set package but I want to know if I can put a 20 pt affliction on two separate powers for a total of 22 points vs building it for each power and having to spend 42?

The second question involves building a reactionary skill that also uses that same affliction whenever I take damage. Is it possible to build a character with low parry and trigger a reaction to that affliction every time im hit. The idea is the character is electrically charged and the affliction is just a taser effect from coming into contact

The idea behind the character is to try and 3 stack afflictions as quickly as possible. In my limited experience it seems easier than trying to knock someone around for stacks of damage until you can reliably put them in 3 degrees of failure

By skills, do you mean power effects?

My apologies. I did say skills, but I do mean Power Effects

Linked powers means that they must be both activated at once, but a set of alternate effects do technically count as one power.

As long as you're paying for both the cost of both the singular power and the two other powers they're linked to.

For example, a mage knight has the base weapon with a manifested sword that represents his base Damage power. But he may have an Array which has additional debilitating spells linked to the sword's strikes. So he pays for the combined total of the magic sword and the array of spells connected to the strikes.

So, he pays for Damage rank say, 3, then pays about 20 points for an affliction+2 for the alternate uses of said linked affliction.

If you want to stack three different afflictions, you'd have to use one affliction at a time with the array build and stack the conditions bit by bit. But if you want to have all the afflictions happen in a single turn via Linked, you'd have to pay for the combined total of all the afflictions you want. Also keep in mind that Damage cannot be linked with Damage.