When should your RPG be point buy instead of class based?

[hogarth]

As a point in favour of Frank's soft classes idea, M&M has it explicitly stated in the rules that every campaign has a Power Level, and that if any of your Accuracy + Damage for an attack, Toughness Defense + Evasion Defenses, or Willpower Defense + Fortitude Defense is higher than twice the Power Level, your character is numerically inappropriate for that campaign. Also, if you show up with any of those pairings having one number more than 1.5x the other number, the DM should make you change it unless you have a very, very good reason why it should be allowed.

M&M does have trade-offs, but it doesn't say that if your Attack is high then your Defense must be low, as Frank was suggesting.

[tussock]

Why are there 2000 feats when you can only really have 5 or 10? Why are there 40 base classes when it takes over a year to play one of them with just one of their option sets?

I'm guessing it's because that stuff fills books which sell. If you mean "what use is it" or "why does it sell", there's probably something about feeling like you're a special snowflake and not just Fighter #3. So you can modify the modifier to your penalty to sticky explosive fire beam pods because probably no one else is going to do that for as long as you play the game.

[kzt]

If most people think 6 or 8 or 10 is sufficient, a martial artist could accidentally show up with like, 15+ with even trivial expenditure of points and never miss his or her opponents, which is obvious problematic.

Hero is a game where you could have a viable character whose thing was that they never miss. They just have to have their ability to damage opponents set at a fairly low level.

[CaptPike]

Why are there 2000 feats when you can only really have 5 or 10? Why are there 40 base classes when it takes over a year to play one of them with just one of their option sets?

I'm guessing it's because that stuff fills books which sell. If you mean "what use is it" or "why does it sell", there's probably something about feeling like you're a special snowflake and not just Fighter #3. So you can modify the modifier to your penalty to sticky explosive fire beam pods because probably no one else is going to do that for as long as you play the game.

its not like everyone will use everything equaly. some players will never use casters so those sections of the books are worthless to them, some will never play anything but healers ect.

[OgreBattle]

If you have a flexible and scalable enough superhero class system that kets you make giant tough guys and strange wizards alike, isn't that basically a 'monster creation' system you could port over to a D&D style class based RPG? The classifications of being a 'brick', 'speedster', 'gadgeteer', and so on remind me a lot of the 'monster roles/class' threads.

[Grek]

No, because D&D and HERO/M&M don't use the same engine. It'd be like porting an After Sundown Troll into Shadowrun game when you need a Troll Bodyguard and expecting that to give good results.

[Insomniac]

If you have a flexible and scalable enough superhero class system that kets you make giant tough guys and strange wizards alike, isn't that basically a 'monster creation' system you could port over to a D&D style class based RPG? The classifications of being a 'brick', 'speedster', 'gadgeteer', and so on remind me a lot of the 'monster roles/class' threads.

Yeah, the monsters and foes you fight will have about a 1 to 1 correlation with how the players build their characters, which is nice. It is pretty easy to put out a Villain book to go against the Superheroes, for instance. And you can look them over, see which ones would be too strong or too weak for your party. There are all sorts of different classifications. Joke characters, supervillain teams and groups and even things that are like Atom Bomb level threats to the entire world all by themselves.

For instance, your characters might be built on 300 to 500 points, with 400 being the norm, but a "Cosmically Powerful" foe could be built on something like 800 or a 1000 and threaten the whole world.

[Username17]

Foes and player characters are wildly different things. A player character has to be pretty well rounded. A foe just has to be interesting as a challenge. It doesn't even have to be interesting as a solo challenge.

So it's OK for enemies to go down in one hit. Or be completely unable to move. Or have all kinds of totally crippling disadvantages that no PC would ever be OK with having. A Speedster character gets hit less often and takes less hits to go down than a Brick character. But it's still not OK for a mall cop or thug #3 to fire a pistol and fucking kill the Speedster if he hits. But it's totally OK if Evil Fairy #7 winks out of existence the moment you get in a single good hit.

PC classes and monster classes are necessarily different from each other. And a hypothetical super hero player character class set would be a shitty set of monster templates. For exactly the same reason as the D&D adventurer PC class set is a shitty set of monster templates.

Sure, it's important that some of your NPCs are mirror matches for the PCs and use PC classes, but a lot of them are minions or puzzle monsters or whatever and they just fucking aren't going to be made with PC classes. It's totally ridiculous to suggest that the Tigron you have to fight in the pit is made out of a character class that spits out playable characters. Tigrons aren't playable characters. Outside of a pit trap, they aren't even really a threat.

-Username17

[Insomniac]

You would likely design the foes different than the characters but at least it seems more of a "science" to what a monster or foe would be than 3.5. It is especially more pronounced with a point buy system than 4E or 5E where there is zero rules interaction almost and the monsters and opponents are designed almost entirely differently than the PCs.

[CaptPike]

Foes and player characters are wildly different things. A player character has to be pretty well rounded. A foe just has to be interesting as a challenge. It doesn't even have to be interesting as a solo challenge.

So it's OK for enemies to go down in one hit. Or be completely unable to move. Or have all kinds of totally crippling disadvantages that no PC would ever be OK with having. A Speedster character gets hit less often and takes less hits to go down than a Brick character. But it's still not OK for a mall cop or thug #3 to fire a pistol and fucking kill the Speedster if he hits. But it's totally OK if Evil Fairy #7 winks out of existence the moment you get in a single good hit.

PC classes and monster classes are necessarily different from each other. And a hypothetical super hero player character class set would be a shitty set of monster templates. For exactly the same reason as the D&D adventurer PC class set is a shitty set of monster templates.

Sure, it's important that some of your NPCs are mirror matches for the PCs and use PC classes, but a lot of them are minions or puzzle monsters or whatever and they just fucking aren't going to be made with PC classes. It's totally ridiculous to suggest that the Tigron you have to fight in the pit is made out of a character class that spits out playable characters. Tigrons aren't playable characters. Outside of a pit trap, they aren't even really a threat.

-Username17

also its ok if it takes hours to make a mid to high level PC, taking more then 10min to do that for a mid to high level mook is not ok.

[hogarth]

If you have a flexible and scalable enough superhero class system that lets you make giant tough guys and strange wizards alike, isn't that basically a 'monster creation' system you could port over to a D&D style class based RPG? The classifications of being a 'brick', 'speedster', 'gadgeteer', and so on remind me a lot of the 'monster roles/class' threads.

There's no particular difference between describing NPCs as 'bricks', 'energy projectors' or 'egoists' than describing them as 'melee fighters', 'archers' or 'spellcasters who target Will saves'. They aren't roles or classes, just brief descriptions.

On a side note, point-based superhero systems usually do a pretty poor job describing things that aren't superheroes.

For instance, how many points should access to an automobile cost? Zero points (because many people have access to one in real life and it's no big deal) or the same number of points that it costs to have Super-Running at car speeds, or somewhere in the middle?

As another example, in a game where Shrinking is a superpower you can end up with the situation where a housefly would require a silly number of power points to build. But what advantage is there in describing a housefly in terms of power points in the first place?

[Foxwarrior]

Mutants & Masterminds (2e) makes mundane equipment generally pretty cheap. The relevance of mundane equipment and the size of the boats (or other object) you can teleport with you are the two biggest ways the game is affected by a different choice of Power Level.

[tussock]

Pure points games you can just buy "having a car" as a power. GURPS buys gear with money and licences (which are bought with points), but you could also build the car as a robot and take it as an Ally that often doesn't show up in adventures if that was more suitable.

Most point games tell you not to bother with points for unallied NPCs though (like houseflies). You give them some defences and target numbers and don't care about the costs at all, because it's a point-based game and most combinations are possible somehow or another. Houseflies conceivably being expensive only comes up if a PC can become a human-minded housefly, or have one as an intelligent and loyal ally on spy missions or something. They can be described with points so they can be PCs.

[Nebuchadnezzar]

In M&M3E an average car would cost 10 Equipment points, which is 2 Character Points. Considering the disparity of equipment costs between standard items and, say, headquarters, I've found it best to either throw a few freebie points at a group for things like comlinks and sedans, or work boring items in as Alternate Equipment.

The cost of a housefly having Shrinking 20 (Innate, Permanent) and Flight 1 (Winged) would be offset by a statline of mostly -5s. While it's perhaps better left unspoken that statting up bugs is fairly goofy, it does allow for a fun little invention: the 1 point no mess fly swatter (applies Atomic extra to applicable Shrinking effects) lets one dispose of insects by shunting them to the Microverse.

[Shady314]

In M&M3E an average car would cost 10 Equipment points, which is 2 Character Points. Considering the disparity of equipment costs between standard items and, say, headquarters, I've found it best to either throw a few freebie points at a group for things like comlinks and sedans, or work boring items in as Alternate Equipment.

Sure a car costs 2 pp but a battleship or an Apache costs 10 pp (with equipment points left over) so equipment is really really cheap (as default is 150). 2 pp gets you a Sedan and 3 com-links and can be split among 2 characters for 1 pp each.

You also only pay for that car if it's used by the character for something beyond cosmetics. Everyone can be assumed to have a car they use to travel around the city and get from point A to B. You only pay for the car if you want to have it as part of your crime fighting shtick. Same reason you don't have to pay for an HQ just to say you own a house. Buying it with points also means that if they are lost you can quickly replace them in-game.

What disparity did you mean? HQs follow equipment point costs like standard items.

[Nebuchadnezzar]

Equipment is quite cheap, once one gets past 1-2 point low-budget utility belt crap like flashlights and cell phones, and items not intended to interact with the game engine should indeed be generally handwaved. That said, if nothing else listing a car on a character's sheet can encourage a desperate chase, or driving it into a opponent, and since most players don't want to take anything out of their character's powers for the sake of mundane follies, a smidgen of free equipment for lower PL games tends to go over well.

As for Headquarters, the value disparity as compared to other equipment is found in Features. For the same cost as the above sedan a character could easily have an interdimensional bolthole, and an Apache could instead get Avengers Arena's Murderworld. It's so unequivocally the best bang for one's buck that it makes me wonder what PL Marvel's Arcade would have to be to keep screwing up so badly.

[Shady314]

As for Headquarters, the value disparity as compared to other equipment is found in Features. For the same cost as the above sedan a character could easily have an interdimensional bolthole, and an Apache could instead get Avengers Arena's Murderworld. It's so unequivocally the best bang for one's buck that it makes me wonder what PL Marvel's Arcade would have to be to keep screwing up so badly.

Ive not found HQs to be very impressive as they are stationary and cant really affect anything not immediately external to them. While cheap they are limited by PL so can't hit any harder than any other character.

You could give them abilities that remove their lack of mobility through effects but that explicitly requires GM approval. I suppose a defense system with a perception range attack is possible but likely to be disallowed. Or use of teleport attacks to bring them inside your HQ but well teleport attacks. Always a problem if allowed.
Temporal Limbo with Ritualist or similar was the only other abuse Ive come up with for them.

What's been your experience using them?

For low PL when appropriate I usually give all the players a free Variable Continuous power limited to equipment. Like if they all want to be Agents of SHIELD obviously they can requisition all kinds of toys that change from mission to mission.

[kzt]

There a few abusive HERO character designs that use a headquarters as the trick. The Landlord is the one that springs to mind, where you have entire surface of the earth as your base.

[Nebuchadnezzar]

What's been your experience using them?

My experience is that a 1 EP Feature granting stackable 2PL points towards effects of rank PL would be babytown frolics. Any game I've taken part in that used a HQ involved most-to-all characters donating no more than 1 PP/ea., with no one being abusive with it. That said, Enhance Trait effects could work as an OMAC style power up for proxies in the field, if perception range attacks and teleport shenanigans are both out. The only way I'd likely ever take advantage of this would be something akin to a tricked out PL 5 Arcade vs. a party of PL 7 New Mutants/soldiers

A rank 1 Variable Continuous power limited to equipment would provide a 25ep utility belt, which could be too valuable in many games. It's definitely the cleanest mechanical way to encourage players to fiddle with their gear, though.