Silver Age Sentinels Vs. Mutants & Masterminds?

[Coidzor]

So my group that I usually play low-to-middling op D&D 3.5 with recently had the idea put forth of finally trying out a different system, for a superhero game in particular.

Only problem is, what system to use.

A number of us had heard through the internet's grapevine that Mutants and Masterminds was the end-all, be-all answer to d20ish Superhero games and was top 3 if not the top against non-d20 superhero systems. Indeed, that it actually did D&D 3.5 better in its fantasy supplement than most of D&D 3.5 did. Sort of like what's said about Star Wars SAGA as being 3.5 with the goofy legacy decisions and the just plain bad ones excised.

However, while we would have access to the basic core rulebook, we'd have to acquire it first and learn it from the ground up, all of us. And would probably only really have access to the one book and maybe whatever supplementary material/homebrew could scrounged from the depths of the internet.

On the other hand, one of us has, I think, 2-3 of the Silver Age Sentinels books and has played in a game or two in the system, so depending upon things we could have a switch-up of GMs for the game too, and he'd be the default pick for that. But I've never really heard anything about the system myself or even come across whispers of it online, so I'm curious as to what the playground thinks of this scenario.

[Blacky the Blackball]

I have all three editions of M&M, and I also have SAS.

SAS is something of a strange game (I'm assuming you're talking about the D20 version here, by the way - there's also a "TriStat" version).

It's particularly close to D&D 3.5. In fact so close that the rules differences during play (as opposed to character creation) could basically be summed up in a page. It still has the same basic hit points and stuff (although it treats armour as damage reduction, and makes high strength give you bonus damage dice rather than a static bonus).

Unusually for a superhero game, it keeps D&D's "Zero to Hero" thing; assuming you'll start at 1st level and go up to 20th. Most superhero games don't do that. In M&M, for example, you choose a "Power Level" (usually around 10) and pretty much stick to that for the whole campaign.

The way SAS works, the default is that starting heroes are just that - heroes who have just started. So you're pretty much assumed to have just gained your powers and not yet trained in using them effectively. Therefore you would be a 1st level superhero with a poor attack bonus and poor saves and so forth. As you gain experience, you gain levels just like in D&D - which means you get better at using the powers (i.e. better attack bonus, saves, and so forth).

It's an interesting way to work things, and gives it a different feel to most supers games. There's not much difference in the power level between most heroes and villains; but the big difference is in how experienced they are and how well they are able to use their powers.

The power system is pretty much as you'd expect. Character generation is points-based, and you simply buy the powers you'd like. Generally you buy ranks in a basic power and then buy modifiers (called PMVs) to increase the power's range, area of effect, duration, and so forth. Different powers have different variable factors that you can spend PMVs on. It's marginally more complex and marginally less flexible than M&M power generation, but not by much.

And that's about it really. The powers tend to work just like D&D, so if you use a flame blast on someone you'll be rolling lots of damage dice and knocking down their hit points just like D&D.

M&M, on the other hand, is much more traditional as a superhero game. Like SAS, you spend points on powers and stats; but unlike SAS, you're generating an experienced hero from the start so your ability to hit things and so forth is part of what you buy. That makes it a bit more flexible, since it can be tricky in SAS to create a hero whose shtick is that they are very well trained - because they'll probably be starting at 1st level just like everyone else.

However, if you're used to D&D, M&M is much more different to that than SAS is.

The biggest difference is in the way damage is handled. Hit points are replaced by a damage save, where damaging attacks have a fixed DC and the defender needs to save against that DC or be bruised/stunned/knocked out depending on how much they fail the save by. Bruising just gives you a cumulative penalty on future damage saves. Stunning does that plus takes away your next action and drops things like force fields. Being knocked out is self explanatory.

This makes fights much more "swingy" than D&D, because a strong opponent can roll badly and get knocked out first hit and a weak opponent can roll well and survive a surprising number of hits before going down. In practice, this is avoided by giving characters "Hero Points" which can be used to modify rolls.

This system is much more balanced than the SAS system, but it can feel a bit flat and formulaic at times.

The combination of damage saves instead of hit points and hero points makes M&M feel very unlike D&D, even though it's based on the same underlying mechanics.

So to sum up, they're both fine games and I'd say the choice is as follows:

If you want to play "D&D with Superpowers", go for SAS.
If you want to play "Flexible Superheroes using a D20", go for M&M.