[M&M 2e] Running encounters with many Heroes

[Jerthanis]

I'm about to start running a PL10 Mutants and Masterminds game with a large rotating cast. In theory we all live busy lives and so won't be able to have everyone show up to every game, but in case we do all show up, I'd like to know if there's any good advice to running encounters with 8 Heroes. Will I be better off with 1-2 PL 14-16 enemies or 6-8 PL 8 enemies? Is there a threshold where an enemy will present no reasonable threat to the PCs, and I shouldn't even bother including them? Is there any other good advice anyone has to offer regarding running large groups specifically in this system?

If it matters, it's an X-Men themed game.

[Friv]

It'll depend on your party, but generally speaking single villains never do well against large groups, especially in Mutants & Masterminds. The nature of status effects and toughness saves is such that it only takes one really bad roll for a villain to drop, and if there are a lot of rolls being forced on the villain constantly the chances of that bad roll increase geometrically.

More non-combat challenges, perhaps? A villain is going to blow up the dam, and some heroes go to face him while others race to defuse the bombs and someone else engages in an online cyberwar to delay their detonation?

[Jerthanis]

Having run the first session now, I've learned that having any less than half the party worth of active foes basically means none of them act until they get KO'd, since failing a Toughness Save by 5 or more denies the person their action.

It seems to me that action denial powers like Snare or Stun are mostly worthless, because Damage will be the harder save to make, will progress towards ending the combat, will always work along with other party members if they think along the same lines. It just seems like any turn where you have an option to do Damage or ANYTHING other than Damage, Damage seems to almost always be the better option.

Has anyone else found the "Stunned if fail Toughness by 5 or more" rule to almost completely invalidate an outnumbered force, or is this just a case of the luck running away with us? Would it be awful if I lowered that to Dazed, Shaken or Shaken and Slowed, but left "failing by 10" as stunned & staggered and 15 as unconscious?

Basically, the PCs were essentially fighting 2 to a foe, and at least one would hit almost 80% of the time, and failing by 5 or more was a little more than a 50% chance (slightly weaker foes), so every turn almost half the villains were stunned, and so they had almost no chance of turning the tide by causing PCs to lose actions. Even when a PC WAS denied their action, it meant PCs were fighting at 7/8ths efficiency while the other was at 1/2.

[Dingle]

2 on 1 against people who aren't at least as good as you is always going to be easy.

have you considered 4-6 pl 10-11 enemies?
I think the brotherhood might have frequently been slightly outnumbered, but could gain the advantage by using dirtier tactics and having a higher threshold of acceptable collateral damage.

[Tengu_temp]

I tend to go with lots of minions ~2 PL below the party, several normal enemies around their PL, and 1-2 bosses at least 3 PL above them. When in doubt, in M&M it's better to go too hard on the players than too soft - damage is nonlethal by default so it's hard to accidentally kill a PC, and if it turns out the encounter is too strong for them, just think of excuses to give them some extra hero points and then do so.

If you want to use single enemies against big groups of players, they have to be at least 4-5 PL above them. Immunity to stun might be worth it but is not necessary and will frustrate your players if you use it on most bad guys. Instead, when it's a bad guy's turn to move and he's stunned, just use a villain point to remove the stun and make him move. The players get hero points for that so it's a fair deal.

Snare can be very powerful when used correctly, but in general crowd control powers are better when they're linked with damage powers than alone. Also, they might seem less powerful to you than they really are because your bad guys might have too high saving throws - the cap on them is higher than toughness, but in general the average fortitude/reflex/will should be PL-2, as opposed to toughness that's just on PL.

[Friv]

Has anyone else found the "Stunned if fail Toughness by 5 or more" rule to almost completely invalidate an outnumbered force, or is this just a case of the luck running away with us? Would it be awful if I lowered that to Dazed, Shaken or Shaken and Slowed, but left "failing by 10" as stunned & staggered and 15 as unconscious?

M&M 3rd Edition actually changed that rule, probably for the reasons you've discovered, so that failing by 5 or more makes you Dazed rather than Stunned (meaning you still get a standard action, but not a move action).

[Jerthanis]

2 on 1 against people who aren't at least as good as you is always going to be easy.

QUOTE]

There's "Easy" and "half the enemies didn't get to act before the encounter was over". I was going for Easy as a first battle to get people used to the system. I got 'cakewalk-would-be-too-strong-a-word', mostly because of that particular 'stun' rule.

[QUOTE=Tengu_temp;12749696]I tend to go with lots of minions ~2 PL below the party, several normal enemies around their PL, and 1-2 bosses at least 3 PL above them. When in doubt, in M&M it's better to go too hard on the players than too soft - damage is nonlethal by default so it's hard to accidentally kill a PC, and if it turns out the encounter is too strong for them, just think of excuses to give them some extra hero points and then do so.

Ah, that's an interesting point. I tend to use "slightly fewer, slightly weaker" as a guideline for crafting encounters, since equal and greater numbers mean people are more likely to lose than win, and when the game ends when the players lose, it's undesirable, but yeah, I guess in Superherodom, the nonlethality plays into this kind of thing well, so overwhelming them and letting them get beaten up until they can pull out a victory sounds more interesting anyway.

Now I've just got to figure out how to get enough villains together and run combat fast enough that that many people won't be over the top.


Also, they might seem less powerful to you than they really are because your bad guys might have too high saving throws - the cap on them is higher than toughness, but in general the average fortitude/reflex/will should be PL-2, as opposed to toughness that's just on PL.

I was using PL as the average, but PL - 2 might be better. I'll implement this.


M&M 3rd Edition actually changed that rule, probably for the reasons you've discovered, so that failing by 5 or more makes you Dazed rather than Stunned (meaning you still get a standard action, but not a move action).

Okay, yeah, I was thinking something along these lines (Dazed in 2e means you lose actions, but no penalty to defense or losing dodge bonus, so Slowed was actually what I was looking at, which sounded weird)

As long as this isn't going to mess everything up, I'll probably do it this way.

[Jay R]

1. Have the evil master's superminions be as unreliable as the players are. That way, they can always face the right number of people. (When the Avengers have eight members, they face large groups. When they have four members, they face small groups.)

2. Early JSA and JLA comics always split the party. There would be three (JLA) or 8 (JSA) simultaneous attacks, which they had to split up to deal with. Sometimes they would encounter these first, and then get together to compare notes. This has the disadvantage that only a few are playing at a time, and the advantage that each character gets a moment to shine. I like to start with each PC or pair of PCs getting a small, easy early encounter that provides one of the clues they need. Another advantage is that you can start when the first player arrives, rather than waiting for the last. This can provide as much as an extra hour of gaming, depending on the group. Also, somebody can go out for munchies without slowing down the game.

3. Go read a dozen comics. You'll see that the villains defeat the heroes fairly often, and then the heroes escape after they've been brought back to the villains' lair. Also, the villains are often more powerful, and the heroes have to find a clever way to neutralize the villain's powers. A straight-up slugfest is actually pretty rare. Build over-powerful villains with obscure weaknesses, and start giving clues when the heroes are starting to lose.