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Baltor
2010-11-12, 12:11 AM
A friend of mine just brought over the second edition players guide and asked if me and my other buddies would like to play. I looked in the book and the build feels really similar to 3.5 until you actually start building. the sheer amounts of resource management that goes into building a character is daunting. Does the playground have any helpful hints for building a character in M&M? do you guys know of any useful online guides for this game? I mean its no Hero system or anything but yeesh.

hiryuu
2010-11-12, 12:44 AM
Well, the real question is what sort of character you want to make. More than 3.5 ever was, M&M requires you to have an idea for a powerset or character before you start even looking at your point allocation or how you're going to build something.

So we'll start there. What sort of powers are you going for?

Some generic stuff:

Extras and flaws are your friends. They mean the difference between a blast of energy, a blast of acid, or a fireball.

Describing your powers is half the rules. By RAW, a blast of water can counter or nullify fire-based powers (and the fire controller can possibly nullify your water blast by turning it to steam/etc.), and can in turn be possibly countered or nullified by cold. These are called descriptors, and it's like assigning key words or phrases to your powers.

Feats like Power Attack, Accurate Attack, and so on that let you trade off saves or attack or defense can break the PL caps (http://www.atomicthinktank.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=25410#p419435).

Pinnacle
2010-11-12, 01:19 AM
I doesn't actually say it anywhere (though if you look at the archetypes it applies to them), but you're generally expected to hit certain Power Level caps.

Your Attack bonus/Damage bonus and Defense bonus/Toughness bonus should hit caps, because they effectively define how powerful you are. If you don't hit those, you're not really a PL 10 (or whatever) hero.
If you have other ways to make up for it, this might not be necessary, but it is the standard.

So my advice for a starting point is to figure out how you want your character to compare to other heroes. Obviously, your numbers should be above-average compared to bystanders all 'round, but where are you better than average for a hero of your caliber?
Particularly durable, but not extraordinarily so? +12 Toughness with +8 Defense. Now you can figure out the specifics of where that comes from and you have your starting point.

Check out The Atomic Think Tank (http://www.atomicthinktank.com/), MnM's official board. You particularly may be interested in the Roll Call (http://atomicthinktank.com/viewforum.php?f=14) forum.
These posts (http://www.atomicthinktank.com/viewtopic.php?p=402256#p402256) may be useful.

Also, you might want to be aware that there's a new edition coming out. DC Adventures, of which the core Hero's Handbook (http://www.greenronin.com/store/category/dc_adventures.html) is available, is supposed to use exactly the same basic system that 3rd-Edition MnM will use.


If you have a concept, I might be able to help you make it.

Baltor
2010-11-12, 04:24 AM
Thanks guys for replying, I am about to check out that official board. Thanks for the link and advice.

Tengu_temp
2010-11-12, 06:57 AM
The most important advice for M&M:

Don't build your character in the dark. It's best if all the players make their characters together, overseen by the DM. That guarantees that all of them should have more or less the same power level, and prevents cheese.

hiryuu
2010-11-12, 01:18 PM
The most important advice for M&M:

Don't build your character in the dark. It's best if all the players make their characters together, overseen by the DM. That guarantees that all of them should have more or less the same power level, and prevents cheese.

This is almost required: practically every power can be broken. Cases in point are Summon (minion), Blast stepped down to a free action, Duplication, Transform, Mimic, and Absorption. In addition, what's a common descriptor or not can depend on the GM, so prices on a lot of immunities are subject to change; for example, if every super power in the setting is going to have the magic descriptor, its corresponding price as an immunity should increase dramatically, if it's even possible.

Pinnacle
2010-11-12, 01:31 PM
This is almost required: practically every power can be broken. [...] Blast stepped down to a free action...

Very true. Since PCs and villains use the same rules, and since everything is laid out to be combined however you want, there are some combinations that won't work very well.

As a general rule, you're not supposed to allow more than one attack in a round, so no-no on even move action attack powers, although reaction with a specific trigger can work (Aura..). Use Autofire or Split Attack or Selective Area instead.

Hyozo
2010-11-12, 02:09 PM
Your Attack bonus/Damage bonus and Defense bonus/Toughness bonus should hit caps, because they effectively define how powerful you are. If you don't hit those, you're not really a PL 10 (or whatever) hero.
If you have other ways to make up for it, this might not be necessary, but it is the standard.

On this point I'd like to point out that actual attack ranks are a bit of a waste unless your character is a very versatile combatant (which is, of course, an entirely reasonable option, especially in this game.). Playing a hulking brute whose only attack is to smash people? Get your attack bonus from Attack Specialization (Smash). Playing a multi-talented martial artist who is still lacking in ranged abity? Don't make the pregen's mistake, get your attack bonus from Attack Focus (melee). Playing a versatile ranged attacker who has one melee attack as a last resort? Focusing on the ranged attacks and specializing on the melee one could still get you to the attack bonus cap for fewer points than the attack ranks would cost.

Pinnacle
2010-11-12, 02:13 PM
It also doesn't specifically have to be damage, just some kind of attack effect.

Tengu_temp
2010-11-12, 02:16 PM
Having a bad unarmed attack bonus is just asking the DM to throw grapplers at you, though.

BladeSingerXIV
2010-11-12, 02:47 PM
One of the most important things about M&M is the difference in how things are constructed. The powers you buy are the powers you get. If you want the power to do something in addition, you have to pay for it. This can get kind of expensive, sadly; the system puts a really huge tax on versatility.

For example, if you want to do that thing Green Lantern does sometimes, project a bubble around himself and some other people and fly them all through space? That's a create object linked to Immunity 9 (life-support) with the Affects Others and Duration (continuous) extras. This raises the price to something obscene like 30pp. That can be partially mitigated, though, by making it an alternate power of something expensive like your attack array. I find on my characters that's the highest concentration of PPs anywhere.

Also, area attacks always have whatever area they have listed. Burst, for example, is 5x(power rank), so at PL10 it would have a burst of 50 foot radius. You can have a smaller area by using it at a lower rank, but the only way to use your full PL10 attack and not do damage to everything within 50 feet is to have progression (which can increase or decrease the area) or have the selective attack extra.

A good guideline for exotic saves (fort, reflex, will) is an average of PL-2. So a PL10 character should have an average bonus of 8. Lower won't hurt you too badly, but it's a good place to start. This doesn't apply to toughness, though, that should always be at PL cap.

My last suggestion is that you learn how alternate powers work. I had to go to the internet to get my head around it because I found the description in the book to be lacking, but APs really enhance the versatility of your character and are very important to making fights interesting.

hiryuu
2010-11-12, 05:34 PM
For example, if you want to do that thing Green Lantern does sometimes, project a bubble around himself and some other people and fly them all through space? That's a create object linked to Immunity 9 (life-support) with the Affects Others and Duration (continuous) extras. This raises the price to something obscene like 30pp. That can be partially mitigated, though, by making it an alternate power of something expensive like your attack array. I find on my characters that's the highest concentration of PPs anywhere.

That's great, but you can't move now; you'll need a movement power for that. You also probably don't need continuous on it, and you probably don't even need Create Object, just setting "I fly them around inside a giant bubble" as your descriptor should work, but you will have to slap on a movement power. I suggest Space Travel. We had a guy with Time Control who used this as his descriptor, actually.

The system puts a tax in versatility to try avoiding scenarios where players overlap. However, you can easily mitigate this with Hero Points (which should drop like candy), Luck feat, a variable power structure, and any array at all.