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!
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!