Anyone up for a superhero RPG thread?

>Just because cape writers don't understand how absurdly strong their characters are doesn't mean you need to make the same mistakes.

Oh they know. And they revel in it.

atomicthinktank.com/viewtopic.php?p=706712

This guy did the work of converting 3.5's monsters to M&M.

>Unlimited PL Campaigns.jpg

The smartest way of doing it is buying the STR you want and then layering Enhanced STR(Limited to Lifting) on top of it. That gets you the necessary STR damage to hit your caps and the ability to Alternate Effect off of the STR damage to gain cheap and easy access to powers like slamming the ground and causing shockwaves.

Shit, that's pretty neat. I'll probably end up using that more often than I'd like.

On another topic, what's everyone's favourite type of setting to play in/create a campaign for? Provided we stick to "superhero", I always had a soft spot for Silver Age scenarios, where everything goes and "it's super-science" is the most long-winded explanation you'll ever need.

Otherwise, I found Sci-Fi to work quite well, too. As long as you keep the descriptors in check.

I like Exiles-esque settings where the party goes from world to world. I'm setting one up right now where the party meets an organization called the Stars.

He's sometimes a superhero, and he's sometimes a supervillian, but there's a Star in every universe. The evil Stars are led by a Star who was the last survivor of his universe following a superhero war and wants to take over the multiverse at any cost to protect it.

The Stars just contacted the PCs' world and they're trying to find their world's star before the bad guys do. That's the introductory arc. The rest of the campaign features the team traveling the multiverse helping out the good Stars and fighting the evil ones.

See this is why I like running super hero stuff more based in Marvel then DC. I don't need to worry about trying to emulate the completely stupid stuff writers have their heros doing.
I hope abberent 2e is good

>He doesn't like high power levels

It's the best thing when done right user. There's nothing like the party getting excited when they team up to pull one of their own out of a black hole.

>Marvel
>Where Sentry, Hulk, Thor and Dr. Strange live

The dials might not go up to 11 like in DC, but they do go up to 10 user.

My problem isn't with the power levels at all, I like those. It's the weird thing you get when you try to emulate certain specific characters and their feats, like superman being able to punch planets in half or some such. Math gets tricky, and putting those powers in PC hands can make things fall apart. It's typically easier to go for a lower ceiling to begin with and sidestep that kind of thing. Also why in excited to see how trinity s scaling thing handles this

Oh yeah marvel has some captial B Bullshit. It's just for some reason, maybe it isn't as prevalent or maybe people don't care or whatever, but people don't tend to think of marvel as like leveling entire portions of the city with a single blow or something

Actually, here's an old benchmarking tool.

Late bump with it, but meh.

I prefer Marvel's terrestrial stuff, but DC's cosmic/interplanetary end of the setting is a lot more fun/less fucky than Marvel's
Though personally I don't like running things in either setting.

What setting do you use?

Not him, I'm the one who posted the benchmark tool above, but I've got a few different settings I'm working on, slowly but surely - one a sort of standard kitchen sink supers setting, one that's just a singular city set apart from the rest of the world, filled with supers - think Rapture from BioShock, pre-fall, or Columbia from Infinite but without the reverence to the Founding Fathers. I did a short-lived PbP game set in the Freedom City setting, but it petered out pretty quickly as those tend to do, especially where I did it.

20 strength isn't 25,000 tons, it's 25,000 ktons, which is 25 million tons.

nevermind, i'm an illiterate retard, ignore this.

3E STR has quite a bit more effect on lifting so I'd adjust those benchmarks based on that if you're using 3E. A +10 STR modifier gets you an 8 ton carrying capacity in 2E, while 10 STR gets you 25 tons in 3E.

I'mma tell you a secret, super hero rpgs are my favorite. Shh.

Seriously, they are. My group is bringing back Marvel Super Heroes next week and I am beyond excited.

1: The best I can suggest you is to look at the DC Adventures stuff. Its all the same system. Take a look at characters you are familiar with and peep their stats to get a sense of scale. If that doesn't do it for you, take a look at skill dcs, and ten to whatever ability you're loking at, and that is what the character can do without breaking much sweat

2: I'm confused. You represent them with your words. If you are talking mechanically, for throwing in to the sun, distance thrown = strength - mass. Superman's strength is 19, regualr dude at 200lbs, mass rank 2. 17. 17 in distance is Leaping has a rule that states if you leap grateer than rank 7, the time it takes you to make the leap equal the distance leap you're making, minus 7. This roughly approximates physics. Copy that over, it would take 2 hours to travel 500 miles. Earth's atmosphere stops at about 300 miles out, so it would take over an hour to get in to proper space. However, most of what we call the atmosphere, is gone by about 10 miles up, distance 11-12. Subtract 7, you get 4-5, which means 2-4 minutes before they start suffocating, though lets be honest, they are probably dead already from the g force and I don't think you can breath 250mph air.

3: Attached is the ultimate power book for the Marvel game I mentioned. This might seem odd to you, but hear me out. Inside are a bunch of tables to roll on that give you all sorts of different character origins and powers. Roll on it, see what you get, come up with a character concept that uses those things, and then stat it up in M&M. I used those tables to roll my new character. Got the character origin of diety, a la Thor, and decided to make my guy the rebirth of Dionysus, and then came up with ways he could use each power to party harder.

Yeah. I think that that was actually made with 1e in mind, not 2e.

Now that I've gone and looked at my 2e core book, yeah. That's for 1e - notice how it mentions 2003 at the beginning? 2e wasn't released until 2005.

There's also several characters that they mention at the various benchmark levels that I think were only last seen in 1e books.

Bump.

Working on my superhero setting. Need a good name for an orbital station for superheroes to watch over the world from that isn't the Lighthouse or the Watchtower. I know one setting has one called the Panopticon, and I kind of like that, but I don't really want to use a name for a pre-existing station. I was thinking Pharos, but I'm open to suggestions.

Just call it Second star to the right.

That's actually not bad.

Call it Bable.

Avalon

Anyone have a link for the 3rd edition books?

How does this sound

>Most Heroes and Villains draw their powers from Legacies, gifts created by great acts done by their family before them
>Legacies get stronger each generation as long as the current holder puts in a good effort in carrying on the first's goals
>So a family with a strong history of military service most likely have a patriotic themed super in the family
>Besides Legacies there's Archetypes, who's power source is the collective unconscious, their powers are generally themed around Jungian archetypes
>There's always 22 of them in the world based off the Major Arcana in tarot
>They are really powerful but not reality breaking tier, a Legacy tracing its birth back far enough could take one on

rpg.rem.uz/_Collections/Super Hero Games/Mutants & Masterminds/3rd Edition/

Which of these books are the most important for players?

Only one that's really necessary is the Hero's Handbook or Hero's Handbook Deluxe. That's the core book, pictured in the OP. The rest are more suited for GMs, as they're mostly setting books.

Power Profiles and Gadget Guides might not be a bad idea for players, either. The former shows examples of how to do certain "iconic" powers from different powersets (though IIRC the math is off on some of them, the MnM subreddit went through them and dissected the powers a couple months back), and the latter is all about tech, both mundane and super, that might be employed in a superhero setting.

FASERIP is legitimately one of the best games ever made.

Thanks user.

You'd need players that wouldn't mind being part of a super family. I think it's a cool idea in theory but unless you've got a solid group it's gonna be a shitshow in practice.

>Simply murder the entire family of the opposing hero.

There probably aren't that many super murderers around, though, since you'd need multiple generations of psychopaths to establish the legacy.

Understandable, I kind of have an idea about a game featuring Legacies growing through out history

>One session is a low powered clash against occultist nazis
>Mid level game is prime Silver Age featuring the grandkids

is right, you would need a Jack The Ripper tier killer to create a Legacy and then they would have need to have kids are just as fucked up if not more so in order to ramp it up to the point where one would start getting more powerful powers. Loose idea on "tiers"

>Gen 1 the first legacy: Pretty much a normal person who can one thing really good but not supernaturally so. Something like a solider who did a really long march in order to save a ton of people. His Legacy was not passing out during that hike
>Gen 2: Powers here can go one of two ways, either an upgrade to the first ability or second ability connected to the first in some way
>Gen 3 and so on: This is where you start getting into proper superpowers, you would either get upgrades to current powers to flat out new gifts

So, I started a Superhero campaign the other week, and I too need minor bad guys for my game. So far, some of the upcoming bad guys I have are;
>Psycho escaped convict that emits radiation
>Suave but cowardly duplicator
>Master of all vehicles, literally channeling the "Spirit of Vehilces"
>Living Acid Man
>Disgraced alien warlord from a failing invasion attempt
>Sword user that channels fire into whatever he touches

I'm just glad to be running a supers game to be honest.

Thanks for posting that, user I collect FASERIP PDFs like it.

>It seems designed for fairly low power level settings though
Haha. No.
You say that, until 2-3 PL5 players who have a few levels in a damaging skill deck a PL10 entity.
Or don't if the entity specializes in defense.

Superhero systems are all over the place. Their job isn't to have game balance, and confirm low or high level games. Their job is to emulate any and all powers that exist in fiction or someone could come up with. They are mostly universal systems.

Where I'm going with this is that it is really easy to make game-breaking OP, powers on low levels as it is on high.

>Superhero systems are all over the place. Their job isn't to have game balance, and confirm low or high level games. Their job is to emulate any and all powers that exist in fiction or someone could come up with. They are mostly universal systems.

Yeah, It's why I'm liking the look of the SOTM RPG. It seems less based on 'What can your character do exactly' and more 'How important is it to your story', since it takes a bit of a meta perspective. Like their superman-style guy's highest ability (Above toughness, strength and flight) is just 'Charisma' because he's the iconic, grand hero and a pillar of the setting in universe and in the meta context of his comic book.

I remember I've been struggling first to come up with proper superhero plots and enemies. Everything was just classic fantasy, or sci-fi rehashed.
Then I realized I had to approach world building differently. I realized I'm not making some very elaborate suffle, I am making casserole, and I can throw in whatever the fuck I want, or sounds cool.

Yes, that's right, I just used a food analogy! Fight me!

I dislike running in either setting as well. Since it is very very convoluted, heroes are all over the place, and I am in the danger of having someone pull obscure knowledge about an obscure character to derail everything, and/or get mad that things aren't gong the way they imagined things.
Also, everything is more prone to stupid arguments.

So how do you make grappling work in M&M 3rd?
It seems really bad, am I missing something?
Also is the strength for grappling limited by the PL cap? It doesn't say it is from what I can tell but it seems like it should be.

You can find a lot of them if you just google. I'm pretty sure whoever has the rights is cool with it at this point. Several on the main page of classicmarvelforever.com

How about we post some super's art.
Your'e great user.

Ill post what I have.

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You can deal strength damage automatically if you've got a guy grappled, which saves you an attack roll. It also makes the target vulnerable, which sucks for them if they're using Dodge to escape the grab and makes it easier for other guys to hit them.

Improved Grab or whichever one lets you grab dudes one handed is kind of mandatory to not suffer conditions yourself. Fast Grab also lets you make a grapple check as part of an unarmed attack, and since unarmed attacks are just as good as any other close range damage effect the grapple is a nice bonus on top.

I dunno about grappling and PL but my assumption would be it's limited. One area that's really unclear to me is if you use Fast Grab and make an accurate unarmed attack it looks like you can have an attack bonus greater than the campaign's PL and then also deal strength damage greater than the PL on subsequent turns.

Finally the requires grapple 'flaw' requires, obviously, a grapple. You can make a regular (or even accurate) unarmed attack and then trigger two or three other effects automatically. The bonuses from grappling itself are

The bigger issue to me is, it is really easy to escape at higher pls, with the move action to escape against your routine strength.

Thanks for the art dump, user. Makes me want to stat up some superfolks.

Be back shortly.

Escaping is a skill check, and the skill modifier cap of PL+10 is also the cap on abilities. So PL really doesn't matter, since both modifiers have the same cap. Assuming you've grabbed a target of your own PL and they're rolling a capped skill against your capped strength, they have a 55% chance to escape the grab. That's a pretty conservative estimate, though, since we're assuming everyone you fight has a +20 acrobatics or athletics modifier when normally that won't be the case.

If they're a higher PL than you (and still capped on their escape skills) that's an additional +5% for each PL above yours, but you can take Improved Hold to more than even it out.

You can also use move-by action to grab someone and then fly straight up, burrow into the ground, or use some other exotic movement skill. Making a successful escape attempt doesn't help much if there's nowhere to go afterward (an effect to nullify movement powers with the requires grapple flaw might help here).

If you're triggering requires grapple effects with free grab attempts from fast grab you don''t really care if they break free, though, since you were probably just going to throw them and grab them again on your turn anyway.

How should I stat it if I want to enhance attacks with various weapons in various ways while keeping the stats of the weapon used as a base?

Enhance how? Simply make an attack with that weapon stronger?

Is the Str bonus to grappling capped by the AB/PL cap?

There are two ways to do this.

You can buy the extras you want and declare they apply to weapon attacks, in the same way you can buy extras for your base strength. For example, you can buy ten ranks of AoE (Cone) and the Variable Descriptor extra for your weapon attacks, and now you can make elemental attacks in a cone AoE with any weapon of damage rank 10 or less. If you want these extras to apply to both close and ranged weapons, your GM might make you take one set of extras as an alt. effect of the other for an extra 1 PP.

The other way to do it is to buy a regular str-based damage effect and give it a 1 point quirk "requires a weapon". The base stats won't matter this way, but if you wanted to bring any weapon up to the PL cap they wouldn't matter anyway.

Skill modifiers are capped at PL+10, and there are strength-based skills, so strength bonus is also capped at PL+10.

It's unclear if bonuses to the initial grapple check (from extra limbs, for example) are also capped by PL and what they'd be capped against if so. It seems like the initial grapple check should be capped against the attack roll made to start the grapple, but capping it against the grappler's base strength damage could also be justified.

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In 3rd edition you Grapple is equal to you melee attack, no more putting lots of points to grapple everything.

>In 3rd edition you Grapple is equal to you melee attack

You make an attack check to start a grab, but the resistance check is based on either your strength or a grabbing power (usually extra limbs or move object).

So your grab check is capped against your attack check, but they don't need to be equal. At PL 10 you can make an attack at +8 to hit and then force a resistance check against a +12 strength modifier, since the attack+effect is still within twice PL.

If this thread's around later today I'll see if I can write these guys up in Herloab.

Just make sure no one gets time stopping powers and The World arcana.

I'll put in a shout for Hero Machine 3. Great way of making custom artwork.

Do you guys make up your own cities or do you just use real world ones?

I picked skills and advantages somewhat arbitrarily from regular buff human soldier/martial artist kind of stuff to round out the points. I've also ignored the incredible and amazing descriptions of the explosions and armor in favor of meeting PL caps.

I always feel like I'm cheating when I use the Alternate effect in 3e, so long as the other effect is a single point cheaper than the base, it only costs you one point total.

>2. What's a good way to represent some Superman level stunts like flying a guy into orbit and leaving them there or throwing them into the sun?
Fast Grab, Move-By Action, Ultimate Effort (grapple checks), enough flight speed to reach orbit in a single action. This leaves them no chance to resist before they're there, and lets you say "fuck you this happens" when you really need it to.

2/3 of the JSA could FIGHT Superman without getting instantly gibbed, that's not the same as "could beat him."

The Numismatist, he can move coins and ONLY coins with his mind. But the longer something has been a coin the more power he has, giving him a reason to steal antiques.

>post some super's art.
Can do!

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Eagle Boy's ridiculous ability array is pretty much an example of how to not build an M&M character. All he's really got the points to do after capping his defenses is fly around and yell at people.

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>no chance to resist

You need to land the attack roll, and they also get an opposed strength check to resist the movement after you've grabbed them.

You also need enough strength to carry them, but if you're a flying brick dude you've probably got that covered.

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