Doing some Mutants and Masterminds

[Dean]

So I'm gonna be running some Mutants and Masterminds soon for the first time in a decade. There's a third edition out now which I've looked through. It seems to be virtually identical to second edition but I guess that's good for me cause I don't really need to learn anything new. I was wondering if anyone here had any MnM knowledge on parts of the system that don't work well, commonly instituted houserules people use (besides "no summoning"), or links to anything anyone has made as improvements to the system. I'm not totally foreign to using it, but it has been a while.

I plan on doing a sort of "fantasy supers" thing, that way I can use setting stuff I've been making but still run MnM with it which some people I like want. I remember there being a 2E book called Warriors and Warlocks that had some fantasy stuff in it, so I imagine I'll use that. Playing fantasy themed Mutants and Masterminds is also almost the same as playing True20 so it probably means any True20 material that's good is in play.

Any advice or material anyone wants to throw at me would be appreciated.

[Grek]

The Mutants and Masterminds game balance philosophy is for the GM to carefully examine whatever the players come to the table with and then veto anything that they think will make life difficult for the GM. Keep that in mind when looking at Teleport, Sense, Create, Transform, Mind-Reading and other such powers - the game isn't balanced around having those, it's balanced around the GM only letting the players have them if the GM wants to hand-wave the sorts of problems those powers would solve.

In terms of house rules, the following are pretty common:
[*]Fuck Abilities. In theory, an Ability (Strength, Dexterity, Fighting, Intellect, etc.) is a bundle of competencies which gives you 2 character points worth of related stuff in exchange for 2 character points. Strength is +Damage (1 point), +Athletics (0.5 points) and +Power Lifting (0.5 points). Stamina is +Toughness (1 point) and +Fortitude (1 point). In practice, it doesn't actually work like that because Agility gives you 2.25 points of bonus for two points, while Presence gives you 1.5 points for every two. Besides that, you usually end up paying for stuff you don't care about using Abilities. Getting Dexterity for ranged attacks is all well and good, but most characters could care less about Sleight of Hand or Vehicles, and it's a rare combination of someone who wants both of those and also ranged attack benefits. As a result, most people just pretend Abilities aren't a thing.
[*]Accuracy Cost Fixing. Similar to the above, RAW would like you to buy 'to hit' modifiers at different rates depending on how you acquire them. Skill: Sword Fighting gives you +1 per half character point with swords only; Advantage: Close Attack gives you +1 per one character point for all melee attacks; Power Modifier: Accurate gives you +2 per character point for that specific power and Abilities bundle it in along with other stuff as mentioned above. Depending on if you build your knight as having 'an array of weapons', each of which has the Accurate modifier to an appropriate level, or as having 'many martial skills' you can end up saving a good handful of points. As such, most GMs tell the players how much to hit really costs in this game and vetoes anyone who tries to buy it the wrong way.
[*]The Evasion Defense. As a weird obverse of the above, Toughness, Defensive Roll, Dodge and Parry all cost one point each to get and all count toward the same PL cap, but are wildly different in terms of actual utility. I've listed them in order of best to worst, incidentally. Toughness applies to everything. Defensive Roll is 'active Toughness', which is Toughness that goes away if you're hit with the Vulnerable or Defenseless status effect. Dodge and Parry do the same thing with regards to status effects, but have additional downsides on top of that: the former only applies vs. Ranged attacks and the latter only vs. Melee attacks. Needless to say, that's totally fucked. Most people resolve this disparity by fusing Dodge and Parry into a single Evasion defense which applies to both melee and ranged, but some people solve it by making Toughness cost 2 points instead of one (while leaving Defensive Roll at 1 point, since it's still an active defense).
[*]Check Required is Stupid. The Check Required modifier reduces the point cost of a power by a flat X points and then requires the PC to make a 10 + X check in a related skill. This is never used for anything fun and is 100% always a weird accounting trick to make powers cost less while technically 'requiring' a check that you can only fail on a natural 1. Mock any player who comes to the table with something like that and tear up their character sheet in front of them.

[Roog]

I've recently revised my groups house rules for M&M 2E.

I've copied the relevant section (along with some reasoning) into a Google doc.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EHv ... sp=sharing

While they are for 2E, they include the same four issues that Grek mentioned - although the only ability that causes major issues in 2E is Charisma.

[Heaven's Thunder Hammer]

@Grek has some great points.

1. Keep an eye out on movement powers and how the group is moving around, and applying things like Quickness. Battles can get really wonky with a Speedster/Technomancer who insists they can invent a new item at x2048 speed or somesuch thing.

2. Another factor with super movement is the scale of the battlefield. Someone who can move 10,000 feet/round in the same party with someone who moves the standard 120 ft/round can lead to some wonkiness in play.

3. Be careful about letting players who don't know the game design their own powers. I'd recommend a player look at the default character archtypes and swap some different powers in an out.

4. Impervious sucks in 3E and isn't worth it.

5. Affliction can be designed to be a one-shot kill if you're not careful.

6. Knowledge and Expertise can be pretty hard to categorize - remember this is a comic book world you're making. Knowledge: Science is just as valid as Knowledge: Engineering - don't let players overspecailize in something like "Math" unless it's really part of their character.

Overall, the game is rather long in the tooth at this point and desperately needs to be rethought.

[Dean]

Thanks guys, all of that is super helpful. The game is rather "long in the tooth" isn't it. Grek's "fuck abilities" thing really highlights that in my opinion. It's crazy that the most player facing part of the ruleset, the ability scores, are completely valueless. Say what we will about 5e making everything an ability check, that at least makes sense from a UI perspective. These numbers are on the top of your sheet and facing you at all times, they must be important one would assume.

The ruleset looks like it wants to become just about powers vs powers. The d20 baggage of ability scores and skills (and even kinda feats) seems to drag on the system. It's powers are what matters and what anyone cares about. It almost seems like you could make the powers the "classes" and have your superhero be the "super strength" or "blast" hero and have that be what the game defines them as. Then you'd just playtest those a bunch to make sure those subtypes can interact in fun ways. Basically I guess I'm suggesting a model closer to City of Heroes or something. I get that you'd lose the universality of the system, but I think you would gain a lot of fun and playability.

[Aryxbez]

It would also help if the combat system was worthwhile, and more than just spamming one or two abilities. Never played any superhero-based MMOs but I figure they did more to add variety to a characters moveset.

Letting ye use abilities in ways not directly intended should be free (at worst a hero point). Sometimes ye want to be spiderman, but can't think of all the ways use it till playing heat of the moment.

[Heaven's Thunder Hammer]

The other thing to consider is hand out hero points a lot. They let players power stunt and gives them some rewards for RPing and doing heroic stuff. Make sure you're clear about what those can do, as well. They're nice to use in dramaticly important moments so they player doesn't completely flub their roll.

Also, any updates on what's happening with your M&M game so far?

[Dean]

Yeah it's actually got me experimenting with the rules a lot. Every time we've played I've re-tooled some part of the system or another. So I have some observations.

First, combat took way too long imo. I always think the "minions go down in 1 hit" thing is an ugly kludge. I've used it before and I'll use it again in stuff I make, so don't get me wrong, sometimes you use ugly lazy kludges, but that's still what it is. I think it obfuscates the problems of the combat system and generally leads to worse systems being designed around it, because KO'ing people in one hit feels good but the system isn't doing that naturally so it should probably have been retooled until that's the normal result of the system.

Anyway combat was too long so I've made some changes. One was to put everything attacker side. So To-hit and Damage roll instead of To-hit and Damage Resistance roll. That's sped things up some by putting all the die on one side. I also found it boring that every good hit dazes people and daze is super boring, so I've made a condition list for players to choose from when they make a strong hit. Basically like making every attack an affliction attack with a limited list of options. That way people can knock the wind outta people or concuss them or whatever and apply fatigue or confusion or whatever. So far that's gotten a good response.

I don't love how little movement matters so I've also made a little list of movement abilities like Skirmish, charge, retreat, outmaneuver, etc. So you pick one a round and try to use your movement to have some effect on gameplay. That's unpolished as of yet though. I'll probably introduce that in a session a couple weeks from now.

So like everything I play nowadays it's quickly gone from a normal system to a crazy frankenstein of design to feed my unnatural dark urges.

[Heaven's Thunder Hammer]

Yeah it's actually got me experimenting with the rules a lot. Every time we've played I've re-tooled some part of the system or another. So I have some observations.

First, combat took way too long imo. I always think the "minions go down in 1 hit" thing is an ugly kludge. I've used it before and I'll use it again in stuff I make, so don't get me wrong, sometimes you use ugly lazy kludges, but that's still what it is. I think it obfuscates the problems of the combat system and generally leads to worse systems being designed around it, because KO'ing people in one hit feels good but the system isn't doing that naturally so it should probably have been retooled until that's the normal result of the system.

Anyway combat was too long so I've made some changes. One was to put everything attacker side. So To-hit and Damage roll instead of To-hit and Damage Resistance roll. That's sped things up some by putting all the die on one side. I also found it boring that every good hit dazes people and daze is super boring, so I've made a condition list for players to choose from when they make a strong hit. Basically like making every attack an affliction attack with a limited list of options. That way people can knock the wind outta people or concuss them or whatever and apply fatigue or confusion or whatever. So far that's gotten a good response.

I don't love how little movement matters so I've also made a little list of movement abilities like Skirmish, charge, retreat, outmaneuver, etc. So you pick one a round and try to use your movement to have some effect on gameplay. That's unpolished as of yet though. I'll probably introduce that in a session a couple weeks from now.

So like everything I play nowadays it's quickly gone from a normal system to a crazy frankenstein of design to feed my unnatural dark urges.

Sounds very cool! If you're willing to share some of your tables on google docs, I'd love to see them.

M&M is one of those games that I can just never figure out how to GM. I guess I never read enough comics as a kid, or something. I don't want ridiculous 4 color, but get too gritty but not fantastic enough... Had lots of fun as a player, however.

My favorite character was "Olympus" who was a bodybuilder and would challenge the villains to "pose offs" and flex his muscles (with a skill check) instead of fighting the bad guys. Had a lot of fun. This was back in 1E of the game in 2004.