Mutants and Masterminds

>>55140139
Also don't even get me started how the Energizing Healing Powers in Power Profiles completely ignore the "you cannot use it to remove fatigue from yourself" rules with Total Self Healing, Psychic Vampirism, etc.

>>55140139
I never really got into that game much, is it good? I've been considering doing some super hero stuff but thus far I'm thinking of just waiting around for aberrant 2e

>>55142667
Despite the inconsistencies, it's one of the better superhero systems available. It also gives a lot of great GM advice throughout all the books that really help with the few problems the system has. It's also still getting support to this day with new supplements and even a simplified player handbook this October.

A decent number of people actually use it to run DnD-esque games since it's a very flexible and customizable system, and the Gadget guides+Power Profiles are loaded to the brim with all kinds of fantasy magic stuff.

>>55140139
>Have you ever loved a system, yet said system suffers from stupid rules?
My favorite systems are WoD, RIFTS and Shadowrun. I know your pain, OP

>>55140139
>>55141950
As much as I love 2e, and as much problems it has, 3e really didn't fix any of them and in my opinion changed some things simply to change them - a few math fixes aside.

>>55143510
I'm honestly not against a "3.5" of Mutants and Masterminds to bring the good from 2e and 3e together.

I still think, from what it seems, 3e did make some good changes. Impervious being allowed to nullify damage ranks equal to toughness was a bit broken.

I prefer the Power Profile armor variant they have which it reduces the damage by a degree of failure instead but still applies to a broader ranks of effect, rather than the narrow application of the default Impervious rules.

>>55144011
I mean, that was the whole point of Impervious in the first place - to nullify damage ranks. It's the equal and opposite of Penetrating. That they nerfed Impervious in 3e but didn't change Penetrating at all is... odd, to say the least.

Then there's just weirdness like removing the [Container] power. Suddenly instead of a nice, neat Container - like, say, Device - suddenly every power that you wanted for something like Iron Man's armor or Mjolnir or the like has to be Removable. Rather than containing stuff into one coherent block, each power is bought separate or in arrays with Removable applied to the Array.

Like, I can totally understand why they changed the costs on Summon - that shit was broken as hell and needed to be made more expensive. But changing skill costs? Why? Suddenly characters have to spend twice as many points on skills to be on the same skill level as their 2e versions.

>>55144135
>Then there's just weirdness like removing the [Container] power. Suddenly instead of a nice, neat Container - like, say, Device - suddenly every power that you wanted for something like Iron Man's armor or Mjolnir or the like has to be Removable. Rather than containing stuff into one coherent block, each power is bought separate or in arrays with Removable applied to the Array.

Um, Devices are still a thing in 3e, it's even an option in Herolab to make everything bundled together.

>I mean, that was the whole point of Impervious in the first place - to nullify damage ranks. It's the equal and opposite of Penetrating. That they nerfed Impervious in 3e but didn't change Penetrating at all is... odd, to say the least.

To be fair, the nerf was a bit much still, but a slight nerf was still needed. To be immune to everything rank 12 at 12 toughness, PL 10 is a bit...much. Which is why I like the inbetween options in the Power Profiles (even just doubling the cost of new impervious to make it work like 2e's).

>Like, I can totally understand why they changed the costs on Summon - that shit was broken as hell and needed to be made more expensive. But changing skill costs? Why? Suddenly characters have to spend twice as many points on skills to be on the same skill level as their 2e versions.

I honestly don't see the problem with skills so much as the attributes they're connected to. Presence and Fighting is not too bad with the .5 points wasted per rank (which could be evened out with a Expertise or a custom "Speed of Thought" like Advantage), but damn, Dexterity is probably the worst if you have no interest in sleight of hand or grabbing finesse.

>>55146686
>Um, Devices are still a thing in 3e, it's even an option in Herolab to make everything bundled together.

Devices as an option as presented in 2e aren't/

Devices as in

>Iron Man Armor
>Protection: "Armor" (Impervious) - Removable (-x) [Iron Man armor]
>Blast 10: "Repulsor Beams" (Removable -x)[Iron Man armor]
>Flight 10: "Repulsor Jets" (Removable -x)[Iron Man armor]

as opposed to:

>Iron Man Armor (Device *rank*)
>Device [Protection (rank), Blast (rank), Flight (rank)]

Can you see why I prefer the latter to the former? And HeroLab doesn't count - RAW, the Container/Device power doesn't exist in 3e.

>Which is why I like the inbetween options in the Power Profiles (even just doubling the cost of new impervious to make it work like 2e's).

So... you make it cost twice as much as its opposite does? That kind of removes the whole point of Impervious. Granted, I haven't read over the options for Impervious as per the Power Profiles, but 3e's default is... well, it's not good. Impervious makes it so the heroes have to find an alternate solution to just punching the daylights out of the foe. Suddenly, they have to actually think.

And 3e removes that.

>skills/attributes

Meh. I haven't actually /played/ 3e, as much as I have read through most of the sourcebooks. And honestly most of the attribute changes don't bother me too much. It's not really that significant overall, the only real difference is changing that ranged and melee attacks now work off of two different attributes, which isn't too bad of an idea, even if the execution isn't the greatest.

File: Meteor Knight.pdf (175KB, 1x1px) Image search: [Google]

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>>55146924
Um, I have a Device built like that 2e example right here on a 3e sheet.

And if you're talking about Impervious for villains, they don't really have a power level limit or power point so you're probably likely to be able to give them plenty of toughness to be able to impervious their attacks (if that's how you really want to do it). There's also nothing stopping you from giving said boss immunity toughness half effect (cutting their attack ranks in half). NPCs have unlimited power points, so the cost for said resistance doesn't matter.

It's just a lot less easy for players to ignore attacks that, well can be strong enough to usually come from other major bruisers, but it still works for most military weaponry that isn't tank busting.

>>55147586
Again, you're looking at HeroLab. In neither the Hero's Handbook, nor HH Deluxe, is there such a thing as the [Device] power. Which such a thing doesn't exist in RAW.

Hell, doing the math - the core Battlesuit archetype in 3e doesn't fit in their math to 150 points. It clocks in at 171 points - including the reduction for Removable.

I wasn't talking about Removable for villains - villains have always worked on a much more flexible power scale; as long as their ranks stay at an average rank, you can use literally as many power points as you want. That's not the issue.

The issue is that, by RAW, they halved the effectiveness of Impervious until they came out with a Power Profile that had alternatives.

In 2e, Penetrating removed that many ranks of Impervious; in 3e Penetrating is worthless. By RAW, any attack more than half the Impervious rank ignores that anyway; any Penetrating ranks less than half of the Impervious rank only hit at the rank of the Penetrating modifier, not the attack itself.

>>55148243
Penetrating does sound overall better when put that way, with the current rules you basically have to apply penetrating to all ranks unless you want to be stuck with a rank 3 damage that the enemy might as well resist automatically anyway.

>>55147586
The whole Device format is well, really just a matter how you format your sheet. Alternate Forms and such are just bundles of different powers in the same way.

>>55140139
I feel the same way about 3e's way of handling Impervious, tradeoffs, and powers in general.
Actually, just 3e period. FUCK 3e, 2 was better.

New to the system, planning on runninga game with it soonish. Some questions:
-How do I make an effect that doesn't use any kind of perception for targeting and/or ignores range? For example a voodoo doll or a cell phone bomb.
-How do I make a portable storage power, for example a bag of holding?

General advice is also welcome.

>>55150541
>voodoo doll
Perception range Damage (or other effect), linked to Mental ESP, requires something from the target to be used.

>cell phone bomb
Easy. That's just Ranged, Burst Area Damage with the Triggered extra. There's already bombs and cell phones in the books under the Equipment chapters.

>bag of holding
Dimensional Pocket in 2e, but the power doesn't exist really in 3e as its own thing - but its effects are basically just Movement (Dimensional Travel) as an Attack.

>>55153110
the fact we have to read 2 editions of the core book to get a proper game doesn't help M&M at all.

You don't hear about needing D&D's 4e to properly play 5e. M&M sounds obtuse as fuck. I will wait for the October print to read it and check it out myself

>>55153596
You really don't, though? 2e and 3e are both perfectly playable without reading either.

I just referenced both because the guy I responded to didn't mention which edition he was playing.

>>55153110
Ok, thanks. 3rd ed, by the way. I just sort of assumed that the newest edition would be the obvious go-to.

What if I wanted to make something capable of self-replication or breeding? Summon effect is the closest, but it says explicitly that the summoned beings themselves can't have summon themselves.

I mean technically a mundane human, given time and access to resources and other humans, can make humans that make humans and so on up to an arbitrary number of humans, but I assume players don't need to have infinite ranks of summon tweaked to match human reproduction in order to be fertile.

>>55153859
That's a problematic power - there's a real good reason why they increased the cost of Summon with the change in editions, and that's because having multiple actions gets really powerful and really broken really fast.

So something that self-replicates or breeds like that I would say is not in the purview of a player character, and I wouldn't allow it at my table.

If you wanted to do it, though... probably the closest I would let a player come would be Summon, Multiple Minions, fluffing the summoning as the minions creating more minions - despite the fact that it means the summoner has to use a standard action to summon more.

>>55153942
FWIW the lack of recursive summoning doesn't stop you from getting a shitload of actions from summon if you're so inclined.

I guess a hive mind of sorts would work, though there's the weirdness of "Oops, hit unit cap. Guess there's no more reproduction until some die off."

>>55142667
The best superhero game is Champions, but the complex intimidates. It has flaws, and relies on GMs to curb powergamers, a bad idea, but a problem with all games.

M&M works better on 2 big points, being not as complicated/complex: easier to get close to a target character vicinity in creation and friendliness to new players. A friend ran games without books in a bus trip to Gencon and his players rokked it. Much as I prefer Champions, M&M shines in its own spotlight.

DC and Marvel have never produced a decent supers game and they've crapped out several. In the 1st Marvel game, I played a Human Torch knock off with Thor's kid brother, a poor man's Tony Stark and 2 wallflowers who had trouble taking a henchman (Happy from IM2). Have yet to see a good one.

There are several on DriveThruRPG that look interesting, plus a few others that lack the support of M&M (Champions has 35 years of supplements! I have most). As you're 'just getting in', M&M is the better choice. Not as much support as C, but better as an intro to the genre.

>>55154426
Technically DC did work with Green Ronin for M&M 3e; they put out DC Adventures first which was basically 3e but using DC characters instead of their proprietary Freedom City/Emerald City setting.

My group latched onto M&M 3e because we came from plenty of D&D 3.5/4e sessions. Having that d20 background means you already know at least half the game before even picking up the book, and we were quick to latch onto anything new the game offered. M&M is honestly one of the most impressive d20 systems out there, which is really saying something.

>>55140139
Considering the Power Profile and other books have a system which you can take various drawbacks in exchange for a hero point that could potentially be traded off for a use of extra effort, I kind of wonder why fatigued/exhausted condition were the default and why does not being able to take said conditions cut off a Construct from a mechanic all together (although this might be thanks to the terrible phrasing with Constructs being lopped with minions).