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Glimbur
2010-04-20, 01:24 PM
So, I know a guy who is running a d20 game. Not a 3.5 game, he's allowing any d20 source. There are people with characters from Stargate d20, Vampire d20, and other, sillier places. It's an incredibly high powered game. They recently fought a foe doing 110 damage 2/round, and also 8 points of ability drain. XP is... used for more than leveling up, feats and skills and class abilities can be bought a la carte.

I wanted to make a luchadore, and I figured that Mutants and Masterminds (2nd Ed) was a natural system to use. I'm foreseeing several major problems.

1) Toughness saves v regular d20 damage. A 1:1 ratio will get the aspiring hero killed in short order, so some sort of divisor seems to be in order.
1a) M&M damage is piddly compared to standard d20 damage, perhaps a multiplier is in order. Or replace each point of damage bonus with a die; this will lead to a lot dice rolled.

2) The game master gives out XP. This is like giving rubles to a person in Brazil, we need to make an exchange rate for XP to Power Points.

3) This "power level" thing is going to limit my growth. That's what it is supposed to do, but since everyone else can gain levels and such, it might need to be adjusted or removed.

Should I give up? Or is this workable?

Dust
2010-04-20, 02:09 PM
You should give up and choose another system.

I originally started a very long, rambling post on the subject, which I stuck in the spoilers below...but ultimately, this is all kinds of headache waiting to happen. The game clearly has no sense of balance whatsoever and is little more than a schoolboy 'EVERYONE CAN PLAY ANYTHING!' fantasy game, which I loathe. Despite that, involving M&M rules will only make things worse.

As you've already noticed, damage doesn't work the same. As M&M doesn't use hit points, you'll have difficulty not only figuring out how much damage you're taking (as you already noted), but also how much you're able to do.
Let's say, for simplicity's sake, you're not playing a Luchadore but a simple Iron-Man-esque blaster. In fact, you even have the Blast power - at Rank 10, no less. That value - taken out of the very explicit M&M framework - doesn't mean a damn thing when incorporated with other systems. Even if you decided this meant it dealt 10d6 points of damage, you've only managed to pretend that you've balanced a very small aspect of the overall character.
Having a Defense (AC) score of 20 in M&M is pretty excellent at PL10, and you'd need to adjust that by....let's pick a number totally at random and say +50%....just to be on par with the same character built in DnD3.5. But then the new problem is that you're actually trying to....actually, I can't even keep doing this. It's just too ridiculous to wrap my brain around.

As for your game master giving out XP, I certainly can't even begin to fathom a conversion rate without more info.

RandomLunatic
2010-04-20, 02:22 PM
Unearthed Arcana features an injury (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/injury.htm) variant rule clearly inspired by Mutants and Masterminds. In addition, the Mastermind's Manual features alternate rules for a HP system. Either could start as baseline for converting HP to toughness saves.

But I do not think either one is going to play well. You are going to have to have a long talk with the DM about making this work, or just switch to something else.

The Cat Goddess
2010-04-20, 02:25 PM
GURPS (http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/) is a system designed for cross-genre gaming.

Severus
2010-04-20, 02:58 PM
GURPS (http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/) is a system designed for cross-genre gaming.

Gurps is awful. Try Hero. Gurps' stat based system is broken. Hero, on the other hand, crosses Genres very well.

my .02 after having run long campaigns in both. In the GURPS ones, we were always bandaiding the rules.

Glimbur
2010-04-20, 04:31 PM
Turns out the DM already disallowed Mutants and Masterminds. This is probably a good idea.

Escheton
2010-04-21, 12:05 AM
gurps supers and magic combined
pimp regeration and int. Oh, and get some spells...
win gurps

Darth Stabber
2010-04-21, 02:04 AM
Make a totemist in D&D, and reflavor everything. Totemist is a good make-your own monster class.