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Nintendogeek01
2018-07-08, 02:14 PM
I'm back and ready to jump back into this! We've got abilities and skills discussed with plenty of good ideas, so let's move to the next item; Advantages!

Advantages are this system's take on feats (and if I recall correctly, they were called feats back in 2nd ed.), which help expand on a character's capabilities without investing in powers. Me personally, I don't have a long speech to make about advantages; taken as a group I think advantages work quite well as intended. That doesn't mean there aren't some that deserve discussion or possibly revision though so let's break them down.

I'm not going to go over every single advantage in this game, just the ones that merit discussion or revision in my humble opinion.

Artificer/Inventor/Ritualist
Any GM with sufficient experience or knowledge that sees these advantages on a character should have their finger hovering over the red-alert button; and if they see quickness on the same character sheet they should jam that button into the console! These three advantages let a player with technology (for inventor) or expertise: magic (for artificer & ritualist) basically replicate any power effect they want as long as they have sufficient in-game time and the skill ranks in the respective skills. Said in-game time takes hours but many players attempt to circumvent this with quickness, thus time stops being a factor and the only factor is "what is this player's take 10 result?" Think about this; any power effect the player wants at any time for the cost of one advantage, a 1 point per rank power, and some ranks in a skill, if that doesn't make any GM's out there shudder even a little bit have fun with the next player who slips this combo by you snapping your game in half over their ritually crafted/invented knee.
Now I spent a good bit of time talking about the potential havoc these advantages can have on the game but in truth I like these advantages a lot. If you take quickness out of the equation these advantages reward thinking ahead and careful planning on the player's part, and when the player with these advantages cooperates with a GM this can create some amazing scenes that made things a lot more fun than they could have been without them.
Proposed Changes: Put in a clause that quickness does not work with these advantages if there isn't one already (I could've sworn I'd read something about this but I can't find it again). Jury-rigging's already a thing if a player is really in a desperate time crunch and that comes with the reasonable cost of valuable hero points.

Benefit
The advantage for everything else the other advantages didn't cover. Benefit is meant to give some mechanical benefit in the game world, like extra money, a harder to dig up history, security clearance or status with a group, etc. I'm not bringing it up to discuss the examples given in the book however; as I said this advantage is meant to allow the player to create an advantage not otherwise covered by the rest of the advantages in the game; indeed several people who've joined in the discussion thus far have brought up customized uses of benefit. As useful, and necessary, as this option is it definitely requires some cooperation between GM and player.
Proposed Changes: None, I simply felt this merited some discussion.

Close Attack/Ranged Attack
It gives the player 1 rank in the close combat skill or ranged combat skill respectively, and not just for a singular form of attack but for all forms of close or ranged combat; but wait don't the abilities already do this and more? You're absolutely right, and that's probably why these advantages are almost never seen in play. Now having said that these advantages do have a niche; the former for the characters who don't want to have a parry rating equal to their general close attacking prowess, and in baseline M&M3E the latter would be a better investment for those who want general ranged attacking prowess than dexterity. And given that M&M should be about options these advantages need to be here to enable that niche.
On the topic of our revisions thus far I suspect these advantages will still serve a niche, though that niche will be slightly expanded given that our revised DEX currently impacts both ranged and close combat; thus besides those wanting to differentiate their parry and close combat we'll now have a niche for those who want to differentiate their general close and ranged combat attacks. Having said that I still don't suspect this'll increase use of these advantages significantly.
Proposed Changes: None other than how prior changes may affect this indirectly.

Defensive Roll
One of the ways to obtain toughness in this game, and the flavor of choice for those who don't have superhuman powers. I love the flavor of this advantage, but when we examine it mechanically there is one sticking point. No other method of purchasing toughness on a 1 point for 1 rank basis comes with the limitation of being lost on becoming vulnerable or defenseless. Such a thing could fall anywhere from and including a quirk up to and including a limitation depending on the game. Plus equipment (more on that later) also allows PC's to boost their toughness.
Proposed Changes: Either make it so the first rank gives you 2 toughness (equating the advantage's cost to a quirk) or make it so every rank gives you two toughness (equating the advantage's cost to a limitation). I hope we can discuss this one at length to figure out something more uniform and which is more appropriate.

Equipment
Every rank gives a player five points worth of equipment. So a few ranks in this skill really let's players deck themselves out. However I've seen examples where this gets abused and goes beyond what the book(s) would likely consider generic equipment. This advantage is made for what your GM would consider commonly available in the setting, not for a large enough supply of super-science auto-targeting guns, body armor, and misc. gadgets to outfit an army of duplicates (yes this happened, I still cringe to think about it). Worse yet while the book lists some examples of what would be considered generic equipment it still does little to reinforce that and some of the characters published for M&M also have equipment that push those limits just enough to make some players think that the limits are safe to ignore.
Proposed Changes: None to the advantage itself, however I believe the system could benefit from providing guidelines to help GM's, especially newer GM's, create their own guidelines for what does and does not count as equipment. I look forward to discussing this in more depth later, but for now there's other advantages we've got to get to.

Languages
Increases the number of languages you get. You get 1 additional language at rank 1, and from rank 2 onwards you double the number of additional languages you know. So this gets better the more you invest in it. Not bad, not great but not bad. Your mileage with this one will vary depending on how often you change locales in your game.
Proposed Changes: I would suggest taking it a minor step further and double the languages you know period, rather than just the additional languages. Honestly neither this suggestion nor it's baseline version accurately represents the difficulty of learning more languages but I feel my suggestion is every so slightly more intuitive from a mechanic's perspective.

Minion/Sidekick
Extra characters! Now this one is potentially powerful because the advantage of having more actions in a round cannot be overstated, it's still rarely used since few GM's want the headache of one player managing more than one character for extended periods of time, and/or because of the steep investment of ranks in these advantages it would take to make them able to play at or close to power-level. Minion's sort of hamstrung by the fact that you get a minion who, if you read the game's rules at all, is designed to lose easily. Sidekick requires a steeper investment since (s)he gets fewer points per rank to make up for the fact that they aren't going to OHKO'd so quickly. Potentially a powerful pair of advantages, but they're also expensive.
Proposed Changes: Admittedly none, the extra actions could be powerful, and therefore the expense makes sense. These advantages just bore mentioning.

Those are my picks for the advantages that most need addressing, but what about the rest of you? What do you have to say of my analysis here? Or better yet are there other advantages you feel need addressing? When discussing anything please keep in mind...
Keep the discussion focused on what aspect we are covering this week, namely advantages. You may use other aspects they affect or are affected by but ultimately the discussion this week is about advantages.
Criticizing ideas is constructive, criticizing people is insulting, Don't make things or take things personal when discussing items.
Naturally respect other rules on the forums.

So ladies, gents, and all others; Discuss away!

Nintendogeek01
2018-07-08, 02:15 PM
Missed out on the rest of the discussions so far? The links below take you to the other discussions both here and on Ronin Army.



-
Ronin Army
Giant in the Playground


Abilities
Ronin Army Abilities (https://roninarmy.com/threads/7615-Mutants-amp-Masterminds-3rd-Edition-Revised-Week-1-Abilities)
GitP Abilities (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?561619-Mutants-amp-Masterminds-3rd-Edition-Revised-Week-1-Abilities)


Skills
Ronin Army Skills (https://roninarmy.com/threads/7636-Mutants-amp-Masterminds-3rd-Edition-Revised-Week-2-Skills)
GitP Skills (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?562231-Mutants-amp-Masterminds-3rd-Edition-Revised-Week-2-Skills)


Advantages
Ronin Army Advantages (https://roninarmy.com/threads/7682-Mutants-amp-Masterminds-3rd-Edition-Revised-Week-3-Advantages)
GitP Advantages (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?563318-Mutants-amp-Masterminds-3rd-Edition-Revised-Week-3-Advantages)


Defenses
Ronin Army Defenses (https://roninarmy.com/threads/7695-Mutants-amp-Masterminds-3rd-Edition-Revised-Week-4-Defenses)
GitP Defenses (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?563934-Mutants-amp-Masterminds-3rd-Edition-Revised-Week-4-Defenses)


Powers
Ronin Army Powers (https://roninarmy.com/threads/7740-Mutants-amp-Masterminds-3rd-Edition-Revised-Week-5-Powers)
GitP Powers (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?565245-Mutants-amp-Masterminds-3rd-Edition-Revised-Week-5-Powers)


Other
Ronin Army System (https://roninarmy.com/threads/7777-Mutants-amp-Masterminds-3rd-Edition-Revised-Final-Topic-System)
GitP System (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?566524-Mutants-amp-Masterminds-3rd-Edition-Revised-Final-Topic-System)

Quellian-dyrae
2018-07-10, 02:09 PM
Artificer/Inventor/Ritualist

These advantages are potentially very powerful, but I don't think they're quite as powerful as you're giving them credit for at baseline.

Because remember, any character can get...if not literally any power, at least any power that they can justify from their descriptors just by power stunting. There is a certain degree of fluff limitation there, yes, but...fluff is a terrible thing to use to balance mechanics. For a creative player, there's usually a way to fluff whatever power stunt you want. And for, say, a gadgeteer with a "utility belt" sort of array or a mage - two characters who would likely take these advantages - you can pretty much power stunt any effect anyway.

So these advantages basically let you power stunt off of your Technology or Expertise (Magic) skills, with certain advantages (no fatigue, can still use the skills simultaneously) and disadvantages (time spent, mainly; the skill cap does mean that a power stunt off of a "primary" array may well be stronger, as well).

I actually find that a certain amount of Quickness is necessary to use these advantages effectively in play. Without it these take like 5 hours of prep time (...I think 4 hours ten minutes for Ritualist?) per point. That's just not going to be useful in most games. For my money, they need Quickness 6 or so to be even worth considering compared to a power stunt. Quickness 8 or so makes them functional. Quickness higher than 10 is starting to get too good. (And as best I can tell, not only do these things allow Quickness RAW, they're actually one of the only things in the game that explicitly DO; Quickness works on checks you can Routine, and Inventing is one of the only mechanics in the game that explicitly tells you you can Routine it, rather than leaving it to GM discretion).

There is, however, one critical thing that can absolutely break these advantages, especially with Quickness, and that is the fact that there isn't technically a limitation on use. Yes, absolutely, being able to stack power stunts at a cost in time is ridiculous, especially if that cost gets knocked down to "minutes" or "seconds". I impose a sanity limit of one invention per scene per advantage, and keep Quickness with inventing to 10 or less, and it works fine. Honestly, they still tend to get used well less than power stunts in my games.

Although I think it would be better still to remove the hard numbers entirely and just say you need a "reasonable amount of downtime" to create an invention, kinda like how Slow Variable works.


Benefit

Yeah Benefit as "custom minor abilities" is something I make use of extensively. Some common rules of thumb I use for more "crunchy" Benefits:

-A Benefit can shift one use of one skill over to another skill. It's probably best to only allow this once or maybe twice per skill, and the new skill has to be thematically appropriate.
-A Benefit can give a +2 circumstance bonus on one use of one skill. A second Benefit can give +5.
-A Benefit can reduce one type Major Penalty to a Minor Penalty, or negate a Minor Penalty, for a certain skill (the most common use of this is reducing the -5 penalty for using Deception as a move action). A second Benefit can negate a Major Penalty outright.
-I have a custom Benefit (or Feature) called Master of Stealth. It lets you hide without Concealment (it doesn't actually give you Concealment, so Counters Concealment senses don't beat it, but you need normal Stealth rolls). It applies to one sense per rank, two ranks for a sense type, doubled for visual, ten ranks for all senses. It includes tactile sense but not the mundane sense of touch. Basically, a less binary form of the Concealment power that keeps Stealth and Perception important.


Close Attack/Ranged Attack

My views on attack bonus have been well established by this point.


Defensive Roll

For my money, I rate Defensive Roll's restriction as at least equivalent to Easily Removable. It can be negated by specific enemy actions (anything that catches you Vulnerable vs. disarms), by certain circumstances (surprise vs. a situation where you can't bring your gear for whatever reason), or by defeat (being knocked out or tied up vs. having your gear taken away once you're KOed). Although from a metagame perspective I think Vulnerable is much more common than disarming.

If I want the fluff, I'll generally take a [Skill]-descriptor power I call Uncanny Defensive Roll: Protection X (Quirk Equipment[/QUOTE]

Yeah, some more guidelines for exactly what can qualify as Equipment would be good. But by and large Equipment's balanced as long as the GM is attentive and perhaps just a little malicious.


[B]Languages

Yeah not much to say here. The way the advantage works isn't necessarily the way I'd do it (see Skills discussion re: Fields of Expertise), but now that I know it doubles each rank rather than being just one language per rank, it's probably fine.


Minion/Sidekick

These I honestly think are way worse than you're giving them credit for. Multiple characters are, bar none, the most broken mechanics in the game, the way they're handled.

It's not just about the extra actions. Do not get me wrong, the extra actions are extraordinarily powerful, no question. But they (well, less so Minions) also get entirely separate "health tracks". And they get PP of their own. Sure, a healthy chunk of that will be eaten getting their basic stats and such up to par, but you still end up being "in control" of more PP worth of unique options than you spend, on top of the other advantages. A PL 10 character buying Sidekick 24 basically has two PL 10, 120 PP characters. They might be individually less versatile than a single character, but together they are more versatile, more powerful, and more durable than any single character could hope to be.

And that is assuming you play it in the most straightforward way - two characters built as full-fledged combatant contributors. But what if the Sidekick is built around buffing and supporting the main character? What if you build a combat beast, and then have a Minion who gets 15 PP worth of sweet skills and utility powers for each PP you spend? Sure, it'll go down if an enemy so much as looks at it funny, but if you keep it away from combat that's not as big a problem. And it doesn't even get into the tactical considerations of multiple characters using things like Aid and Team Attack to get a single character that punches well outside its weight class. These things are broken on their face, and then there are dozens of ways to break them even further.

Now, to be fair, it is possible to balance them. There is some combination of ensuring a lot of overlap in capabilities (Batman and Robin style), and taking below-PL stats to make up for the advantage of numbers, that allows you to play multiple characters in a balanced way...but it requires extremely careful balancing work. I don't trust myself to do it as a player; if I want to play multiple characters, I make a single character with powers and such that represent multiple characters working together and use a custom Feature to basically say the character has multiple bodies.


Those are my picks for the advantages that most need addressing, but what about the rest of you? What do you have to say of my analysis here? Or better yet are there other advantages you feel need addressing? When discussing anything please keep in mind...

This is probably long enough for now. I might go back through later and see if there are any that I think merit more discussion. Actually, just off the top of my head, All Out Attack, Luck (in particular), and Fast Grab all probably do.

Nintendogeek01
2018-07-12, 08:10 PM
These advantages are potentially very powerful, but I don't think they're quite as powerful as you're giving them credit for at baseline.

Because remember, any character can get...if not literally any power, at least any power that they can justify from their descriptors just by power stunting. There is a certain degree of fluff limitation there, yes, but...fluff is a terrible thing to use to balance mechanics. For a creative player, there's usually a way to fluff whatever power stunt you want. And for, say, a gadgeteer with a "utility belt" sort of array or a mage - two characters who would likely take these advantages - you can pretty much power stunt any effect anyway.

So these advantages basically let you power stunt off of your Technology or Expertise (Magic) skills, with certain advantages (no fatigue, can still use the skills simultaneously) and disadvantages (time spent, mainly; the skill cap does mean that a power stunt off of a "primary" array may well be stronger, as well).

I actually find that a certain amount of Quickness is necessary to use these advantages effectively in play. Without it these take like 5 hours of prep time (...I think 4 hours ten minutes for Ritualist?) per point. That's just not going to be useful in most games. For my money, they need Quickness 6 or so to be even worth considering compared to a power stunt. Quickness 8 or so makes them functional. Quickness higher than 10 is starting to get too good. (And as best I can tell, not only do these things allow Quickness RAW, they're actually one of the only things in the game that explicitly DO; Quickness works on checks you can Routine, and Inventing is one of the only mechanics in the game that explicitly tells you you can Routine it, rather than leaving it to GM discretion).

There is, however, one critical thing that can absolutely break these advantages, especially with Quickness, and that is the fact that there isn't technically a limitation on use. Yes, absolutely, being able to stack power stunts at a cost in time is ridiculous, especially if that cost gets knocked down to "minutes" or "seconds". I impose a sanity limit of one invention per scene per advantage, and keep Quickness with inventing to 10 or less, and it works fine. Honestly, they still tend to get used well less than power stunts in my games.

Although I think it would be better still to remove the hard numbers entirely and just say you need a "reasonable amount of downtime" to create an invention, kinda like how Slow Variable works.
I disagree that quickness is needed for these to function. These advantages reward players who think ahead or like to be prepared for situations a little beyond their character's regular capabilities. Quickness on the other hand winds up obviating the need to power stunt, thus the player gets the perks of power-stunting without the fatigue or hero point expenditure. Having said that and taken into consideration your points though, no matter how this advantage is handled it's clear that there needs to be good communication between the inventing player and the GM.


These I honestly think are way worse than you're giving them credit for. Multiple characters are, bar none, the most broken mechanics in the game, the way they're handled.

It's not just about the extra actions. Do not get me wrong, the extra actions are extraordinarily powerful, no question. But they (well, less so Minions) also get entirely separate "health tracks". And they get PP of their own. Sure, a healthy chunk of that will be eaten getting their basic stats and such up to par, but you still end up being "in control" of more PP worth of unique options than you spend, on top of the other advantages. A PL 10 character buying Sidekick 24 basically has two PL 10, 120 PP characters. They might be individually less versatile than a single character, but together they are more versatile, more powerful, and more durable than any single character could hope to be.

And that is assuming you play it in the most straightforward way - two characters built as full-fledged combatant contributors. But what if the Sidekick is built around buffing and supporting the main character? What if you build a combat beast, and then have a Minion who gets 15 PP worth of sweet skills and utility powers for each PP you spend? Sure, it'll go down if an enemy so much as looks at it funny, but if you keep it away from combat that's not as big a problem. And it doesn't even get into the tactical considerations of multiple characters using things like Aid and Team Attack to get a single character that punches well outside its weight class. These things are broken on their face, and then there are dozens of ways to break them even further.

Now, to be fair, it is possible to balance them. There is some combination of ensuring a lot of overlap in capabilities (Batman and Robin style), and taking below-PL stats to make up for the advantage of numbers, that allows you to play multiple characters in a balanced way...but it requires extremely careful balancing work. I don't trust myself to do it as a player; if I want to play multiple characters, I make a single character with powers and such that represent multiple characters working together and use a custom Feature to basically say the character has multiple bodies.
When you explain it like that you're right, I haven't accurately assessed how terrifying these can be.


All Out Attack
Once-upon-a-time I perceived this as a problematic advantage, however after a few games of one player making liberal use of this advantage with his toughness shifted character I realized something; toughness shifted or not he could only take so many fully charged power attacks before going down. He learned to be a little more conservative with this advantage after that. This and the related advantages all have their times and places for good and bad usage.


Luck
It is true I've had some thoughts on this one but on that same token I wasn't sure how to write it in the initial write-up. But since you've mentioned it I'll just give it a whirl and see what I type.

As a player I do feel like I suffer from bad dice a lot and the power to re-roll those dice is a nice touch. Yeah Hero Points already do that but they're useful for other things in the game too so having a thing dedicated to letting players make their actions feel more about tactics and less about luck (especially since deciding WHEN to re-roll also adds an interesting layer of strategy) is a wonderful thing. So I do like the advantage a lot.

Having said that, I often find myself wondering if Mutants & Masterminds doesn't allow too much of this? Capping luck at half the power level IS mathematically neat and tidy, but as nice as re-rolls are to have they are a VERY powerful tool, especially since M&M's re-rolls guarantee results of 11 or better. While I know I certainly don't like to look at the dice(-roller) and see my results come up at less than 10, or worse the dreaded natural 1, the risk of failure is one of the defining core aspects of game design. A few luck points add a little more control over the player's own fate while simultaneously adding a new layer of long-term strategy (do I use my luck points now or save them for later?), too many luck points undercuts the risk-factor.


Fast Grab
Actually we've had some discussion on this one over in the Ronin Army thread; though my opinion on it remains unchanged, yes it's powerful but we can credit that to the fact that it's sort of the bread-and-butter advantage of particular kinds of builds and not significantly more powerful than other cornerstone player options of other builds.

Quellian-dyrae
2018-07-12, 08:28 PM
I disagree that quickness is needed for these to function. These advantages reward players who think ahead or like to be prepared for situations a little beyond their character's regular capabilities. Quickness on the other hand winds up obviating the need to power stunt, thus the player gets the perks of power-stunting without the fatigue or hero point expenditure. Having said that and taken into consideration your points though, no matter how this advantage is handled it's clear that there needs to be good communication between the inventing player and the GM.

It might depend somewhat on the game style. I tend to play more episodic games where it's like...you learn of a situation, you go deal with it. There's rarely several days to prepare. I suppose if you're working on the premise that you use Inventor etc to kinda "stockpile" some options that you won't need regularly (especially if you only have to do the design phase once) the full-time cost becomes more palatable.


Once-upon-a-time I perceived this as a problematic advantage, however after a few games of one player making liberal use of this advantage with his toughness shifted character I realized something; toughness shifted or not he could only take so many fully charged power attacks before going down. He learned to be a little more conservative with this advantage after that. This and the related advantages all have their times and places for good and bad usage.

Yeah I don't think All Out Attack is a problem as it stands. I do kinda wish there were a bit more restriction on it in terms of like...having to actually have an impact in most cases. I'm down with AoA and if you take them out so they can't strike back awesome. AoA when you're in a situation where you can easily avoid being attacked back...more iffy. Frustrating to deal with as a GM anyway.


It is true I've had some thoughts on this one but on that same token I wasn't sure how to write it in the initial write-up. But since you've mentioned it I'll just give it a whirl and see what I type.

As a player I do feel like I suffer from bad dice a lot and the power to re-roll those dice is a nice touch. Yeah Hero Points already do that but they're useful for other things in the game too so having a thing dedicated to letting players make their actions feel more about tactics and less about luck (especially since deciding WHEN to re-roll also adds an interesting layer of strategy) is a wonderful thing. So I do like the advantage a lot.

Having said that, I often find myself wondering if Mutants & Masterminds doesn't allow too much of this? Capping luck at half the power level IS mathematically neat and tidy, but as nice as re-rolls are to have they are a VERY powerful tool, especially since M&M's re-rolls guarantee results of 11 or better. While I know I certainly don't like to look at the dice(-roller) and see my results come up at less than 10, or worse the dreaded natural 1, the risk of failure is one of the defining core aspects of game design. A few luck points add a little more control over the player's own fate while simultaneously adding a new layer of long-term strategy (do I use my luck points now or save them for later?), too many luck points undercuts the risk-factor.

I mean, I unashamedly use Luck heavily, but yeah the cap's a bit high and...more importantly, there is actually a pretty distinct power disparity that can come up between different Luck investments. And it's weird in that the balance point changes depending on length to HP resets, so its power can be GM dependent. Reducing the cap probably wouldn't hurt, although I'd just as soon remove Luck and start characters with like 3 HP per adventure if I'm honest.


Actually we've had some discussion on this one over in the Ronin Army thread; though my opinion on it remains unchanged, yes it's powerful but we can credit that to the fact that it's sort of the bread-and-butter advantage of particular kinds of builds and not significantly more powerful than other cornerstone player options of other builds.

Yeah my main note about Fast Grab is that if you use it it should count as a Linked effect when calculating how many Linked effects you can use at once (not that there's a hard rule for that but most GMs probably have some sanity limit). Point-for-point if you're focusing on Grab it's probably a bit more efficient than say an equivalent Affliction, but not so much so that it's problematic, and it does have some weaknesses, such as Precise Teleports and Insubstantial.

Nintendogeek01
2018-07-16, 09:22 AM
The discussion on defenses (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?563934-Mutants-amp-Masterminds-3rd-Edition-Revised-Week-4-Defenses) is a-go!