Questions about M&M and other Super Hero systems

[Max_Killjoy]

Would you reccomend HERO or Champions? It's a case of already having a system I love for almost every genre, so would I miss out on anything by getting the superhero book instead of the generic book?

5th edition, you'd need to get both to actually play it, the genre books don't IIRC include the full rules.

6th edition, let me see... looks like it's the same way.

[Anonymouswizard]

5th edition, you'd need to get both to actually play it, the genre books don't IIRC include the full rules.

6th edition, let me see... looks like it's the same way.

Okay, so it's not worth going to the all in one book HERO2000/Champions version? Just one of those cases where it's the same price (pdf)/cheaper(print), so it's very tempting.

[Beleriphon]

Would you reccomend HERO or Champions? It's a case of already having a system I love for almost every genre, so would I miss out on anything by getting the superhero book instead of the generic book?

I've noticed a weird thing that people aren't willing to tolerate maths, unless it's a d20-based game. M&M doesn't really have anymore maths than GURPS, but I've seen people violently opposed to GURPS happuly play M&M.

I personally find GURPS maths easier, but that's to do with presentation.

Eh, its not hard at all, I personally prefer the way M&M works for effects compared to GURPS. It's way too granular for my liking to use in a superhero game. HERO/Champions is largely the same for me but on action resolution, the math is marginally more complicated than M&M because it actually use fractions.

As for what to get there is Champions Complete which from what I can tell is a condensed rule set along with the superhero material. Otherwise you need HERO 6th Volume 1 and 2 (each is around 400 pages the first on is just character creation, the second is GM type stuff) for the full rules, and then the superhero genre book Champions. As an aside there are a ton of Champions setting books that are really, really good and easily adaptable to your rules of choice.

I found a copy of rules... it took a while to figure it out but its a roll under system. So characters that have a notation such as 14- means roll under 14 on 3d6.

Oh there were two characters here. Mine was Armsmaster, who has gone through three iterations. Armsmaster Mk1 could create weapons and armour, and used Create because he could theoretically create a functional battleship (never had the ranks in Create for it), v2 was a replacement after he became an NPC, who used either Variable or an Array to simulate his tendency to summon melee weapons and armour. Armsmaster Mk3 is one of the mid-tier heroes in my superhero setting, who uses Create (metal) both to form weapons and a suit of armour but also to hem in opponents with walls and obstacles. In the final version Create is the right effect, because the damage is actually a small part of the powers (and the more used on weapons/armour the less for walls and the like, Create doesn't give much mass to work with).

Makes sense to me.

The other I forget the name, but they summoned magical weapons and armour with the Summon effect, because the GM misunderstood the rules. They should have had either a Variable power or a set of three:
-An array of Damage and Affliction effects to represent the wide variety of magical weapons they could summon, many of which had unique secondary effects.
-An array of Protection effects to represent their array of magical armours, many of which had secondary powers.
-A Summon effect to represent the ability to summon and remotely control one of their suits of armour. The ability to make these suits explode was used rarely enough to be represented by Power Stunting.

Now a lot of problems were caused by the GM not understanding the rules, hence the use of Summon for something it just straight up can't do.

Personally I'd be inclined to do the set of three arrays for simplicity. I tend to not use Variable unless a character needs a super broad ability. Even Doctor Strange doesn't really need Variable to represent what he can do.

But yeah, a straight up Brick or Speedster is the basic level to which you're building towards, and competitive with Array-focused builds if the GM gives some thought as to what makes sense in an array. It's more important for everybody to be on the same page and using the same rules, it wasn't fun for me when I realised that my PL11 speedster couldn't affect the enemies because they had to tank the hits of the PL18 tank when his 'only when innocents are threatened' limit wasn't weakening him*.

* Which annoyed me, he could have done his concept at the same PL as the rest of us just by accepting that he couldn't pump his Strength to 18 without any downsides.

Ugh, that PL18 thing is annoying. I really like to make sure limits are real limits, so they affect the character at least half of the time. Green Lantern not being able to affect yellow stuff is decent for a limit, there's tons of yellow things that can can be run up again (school buses for example), but a character with mind control that only affects men probably but has no reason or need to use it on women (like say Circe) really shouldn't get a discount.

[Anonymouswizard]

Eh, its not hard at all, I personally prefer the way M&M works for effects compared to GURPS. It's way too granular for my liking to use in a superhero game. HERO/Champions is largely the same for me but on action resolution, the math is marginally more complicated than M&M because it actually use fractions.

As for what to get there is Champions Complete which from what I can tell is a condensed rule set along with the superhero material. Otherwise you need HERO 6th Volume 1 and 2 (each is around 400 pages the first on is just character creation, the second is GM type stuff) for the full rules, and then the superhero genre book Champions. As an aside there are a ton of Champions setting books that are really, really good and easily adaptable to your rules of choice.

I found a copy of rules... it took a while to figure it out but its a roll under system. So characters that have a notation such as 14- means roll under 14 on 3d6.

I find the idea of +10% easier than +1/rank. it's just a thing that makes it easier to me.

And yeah, Champions Complete was what I was looking at. If I want to get it for Christmas now would be the time to decide if I wanted CC or the HERO book, so I'll have a look at the difference in print price between HERO6e, HERO5e, and CC. Actually will likely go for Champions Complete, apparently it's somewhat more user friendly without losing too much breadth.

Personally I'd be inclined to do the set of three arrays for simplicity. I tend to not use Variable unless a character needs a super broad ability. Even Doctor Strange doesn't really need Variable to represent what he can do.

Oh sure, but the GM had accidentally houseruled the game to the point where characters were nearly identical (instead of the tradeoffs the game uses you instead had a limit to anything equal to your Power Level, I abused this for one session). It was a lost cause to try to convince him that the game didn't work the way he thought it did, he pretty much only read the Advantage and Effect descriptions, and even then only if people bought them (he thought Improved Initiative was +1/rank, and then got annoyed when my nippy character with 2 ranks was occasionally going before the speedster with no ranks). The way it actually worked was insanely complicated, with two lists of magical equipment, a limit on how strong summoned equipment could be, a limit on how many pieces could be summoned at once, a limit as to how many pieces of equipment it was possible to have 'ready' to summon, and some kludge with Move Element to represent controlling the armour at a distance. The actual way to do it in the rules would be much simpler, and yes it's probably not broad enough for an Array (which IMO should really be limited to power copying and 'Nemesis' powers).

Although I have a history of building characters better than the GM due to reading the rules. One of the reasons I liked my uni group was that the GM was able to learn the ruleset well enough that he could tell my characters were 100% RAW and 95% RAI.

Ugh, that PL18 thing is annoying. I really like to make sure limits are real limits, so they affect the character at least half of the time. Green Lantern not being able to affect yellow stuff is decent for a limit, there's tons of yellow things that can can be run up again (school buses for example), but a character with mind control that only affects men probably but has no reason or need to use it on women (like say Circe) really shouldn't get a discount.

Oh yeah. The stupid thing is the GM went out of the way to make it count, which mean that anybody who hadn't them pumped 15 ranks into their damage effect (which was none of us, the rest of the group had focused on accuracy and Dodge/Parry) was lucky to get a small amount of damage in if any 'big enemies' appeared. It was essentially the GM getting board of a player whining about how PL10 couldn't represent their character (I've seen the media the character was based on, the character would maybe be PL12, I'd argue possibly PL6-8 for most of that comic's characters) and slapping the character with a limitation that they had utter control over. Fights were more enjoyable early in the game before super-tough enemies started appearing and when the character was stuck in kid form.

I mean, to take the Justice League as an example, Batman's player has in the official stats intentionally handicapped his character but made sure they can act as a mook clearer. But Superman and Wonder Woman are both PL15, just built differently, instead of Superman having another four Power Levels on top of Wonder Woman. But the player wanted Superman-level power while everybody else was happy at the power levels of Storm and Quicksilver.

[GrayDeath]

Thanks to this thread, I have now been reminded that I posess a small library of HERO Books (THanks to a friend gifting me with them when he stopped RPGing) that I havent read. At all.

I will aim to remedy that.

The only 2 Super Systems I have had experience with are M&M (does a good job ad modelling the results of Super Comics but is at times counterintuitive) and Aberrant (Does an excellent Job at building powered People for play in a "normal/Powered People are new" world and sucks at reproducing "Comic feel").

[Max_Killjoy]

Okay, so it's not worth going to the all in one book HERO2000/Champions version? Just one of those cases where it's the same price (pdf)/cheaper(print), so it's very tempting.

Let me take a look at that book.

OK, it's 6th edition, which made some changes I don't care for, but it would still give a good presentation of the system. If you're looking to learn it and see what it's like, that might be a good option.

[Beleriphon]

OK, it's 6th edition, which made some changes I don't care for, but it would still give a good presentation of the system. If you're looking to learn it and see what it's like, that might be a good option.

Max, on that note can you answer something for me? In M&M I just add my Dex score to relevant skills, but HERO seems to operate on Value + (Dex/5) for Dex related skills. Is that generally true of most things, in principle if not math?

I also noted on some character sheets a Strengh of 25 and then 14- (I get that means roll 14 or less now) and that modifiers for environment and what not affect the number needed to roll under I think. But how is that 14- arrived at? I'm guessing there's a chart, but I clearly missed it.

[Quertus]

Max, on that note can you answer something for me? In M&M I just add my Dex score to relevant skills, but HERO seems to operate on Value + (Dex/5) for Dex related skills. Is that generally true of most things, in principle if not math?

I also noted on some character sheets a Strengh of 25 and then 14- (I get that means roll 14 or less now) and that modifiers for environment and what not affect the number needed to roll under I think. But how is that 14- arrived at? I'm guessing there's a chart, but I clearly missed it.

I'm not Max, but your math looks right.

Derived things (mostly skills) are (9 + (stat / 5))-. So a 25 would be (9+5)- = 14-, just like you noticed.

[Max_Killjoy]

Max, on that note can you answer something for me? In M&M I just add my Dex score to relevant skills, but HERO seems to operate on Value + (Dex/5) for Dex related skills. Is that generally true of most things, in principle if not math?

I also noted on some character sheets a Strengh of 25 and then 14- (I get that means roll 14 or less now) and that modifiers for environment and what not affect the number needed to roll under I think. But how is that 14- arrived at? I'm guessing there's a chart, but I clearly missed it.

I'm not Max, but your math looks right.

Derived things (mostly skills) are (9 + (stat / 5))-. So a 25 would be (9+5)- = 14-, just like you noticed.

Skill rolls, and a few other things, are all derived like that.

It might seem simpler to just have a number that directly added to the 3d6, but prior to 6th edition, there were also derived Secondary Characteristics, and between the derived rolls, the derived characteristics, the scaling, and the point buy setup, the math worked out best doing it the other way.

[JoeJ]

And DCHRPG doesn't require you to learn anything like that. DCHRPG is perfect for people who don't want to have to learn the game in detail just to make a character. That's the whole D&D 3.x problem. Without system mastery, you can make a terrible character in 3.x even if you think you know what you want (I want to be a "tough" character so I take the Toughness feat... bad idea!). In DCHRPG, if you know what you want... you get it. If anything, the game has the opposite problem: it's too easy to make an overpowered character by accident since the game doesn't give guidelines for what's appropriate, and you can only tell by looking at other official characters (or by asking an experienced GM).

I think that's the biggest difference between character creation in M&M and DCH, since they both use logarithmic scaling (from the same baseline too, in the case of Strength). In DCH you buy superpowers that are already worked out, while in M&M you buy effects and modify them into the powers you want (more like Champions in that regard). That gives DCH the advantage of greater simplicity, at a cost in flexibility; you can only buy powers that are on the list (although it is a pretty comprehensive list).

As a GM, I really really really loved the fact that no character trait in DCH depends on any other, and nothing has to be looked up or calculated except adding up the cost (which is for PCs only; NPCs don't keep track of points). That meant that, once I was familiar with the power and skill descriptions, I could create a villain's stats fast as quickly as I could write them down. And then use a quick simulated combat against the PC's stats to figure out how many hero points to give them to make a balanced fight. For creating villains, it really is the easiest system I've ever played.

[Beleriphon]

As a GM, I really really really loved the fact that no character trait in DCH depends on any other, and nothing has to be looked up or calculated except adding up the cost (which is for PCs only; NPCs don't keep track of points). That meant that, once I was familiar with the power and skill descriptions, I could create a villain's stats fast as quickly as I could write them down. And then use a quick simulated combat against the PC's stats to figure out how many hero points to give them to make a balanced fight. For creating villains, it really is the easiest system I've ever played.

M&M is basically the same. Since it is supposed to be balanced around "power level" all you need to know is the bonus to hit, the bonus to saves, and rank of an effect and you have an NPC.

An NPC can be as simple as:

The Beholder - Power Level 10
+10 to Hit with Gazer Beams
"Gazer Beams" - Ranged Damage 10
Toughess: +8
Dodge: +12
Parry: +12
Fort: +6
Will: +14
Max skill bonus: +20

As a GM you have all the numbers you need to make an NPC go. It's possible to get way, way more complicated but not at all necessary. Given that attributes are used to calculate derived stats the only thing we might be missing is a strength score for hand to hand combat, but for an NPC that has "Gazer Beams" lets go ahead and say his to hit in melee is +0 and a strength of 0 which is the default.

[Anonymouswizard]

So I got Champions Complete, it's probably the best Superhero game I've owned. A;though I do have some minor gripes, like recommended point values not being in the character creation section, but it's all clear and it works. Power building is straightforward, although I need to read all the powers to check a couple of quirks.

END is good, it's a natural limitation for more powerful abilities, and multipowers look like maybe slightly more complex Arrays. VPPs look annoying to run, but that's for every 'you have a partially built character' power.

[Max_Killjoy]

So I got Champions Complete, it's probably the best Superhero game I've owned. A;though I do have some minor gripes, like recommended point values not being in the character creation section, but it's all clear and it works. Power building is straightforward, although I need to read all the powers to check a couple of quirks.

END is good, it's a natural limitation for more powerful abilities, and multipowers look like maybe slightly more complex Arrays. VPPs look annoying to run, but that's for every 'you have a partially built character' power.

I'm glad you like it.

If you have any questions, I'll do my best to apply what I know from 4th and 5th edition.

[calam]

Friends and I want something to mix it up, we've been at d&d going on 20+ years now, and the fantasy genre has just worn thin.
Is M&M a decent system? We don't mind the granularity, as we're used to it, and a lot of us want the ability to totally create our powers from scratch. Is that doable? Or does it have "classes" which Excel at different things?
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Are there any things M&M does badly? Traps I (as a GM) should watch out for? Is it possible to keep one person from creating Super Man while the rest are playing Hawkeye? My biggest fear is running into a situation where one PC just totally dominates tue rest, i want them to be "equal" potential, just different based on options.

M&M is a pretty decent system but the modular aspect of all abilities takes some getting used to, especially when it comes to affliction. While its not necessary the power profiles book outlines some interesting ways to build powers like making afflictions that are resisted by strength (to represent being glued and having to break out by breaking the glue/roots/etc.) and applying impervious willpower. I usually go for a "conceive first, stat out later" approach.

generally there are a couple traps in mutants and masterminds but they're pretty easy to move around
-some attributes like presence are overcosted compared to buying each part separately, generally speaking you should only buy attributes if you're going to use every part of it
-arrays are very important unless you're making a brute force character, generally speaking if you're going to get more than one attack you should thing of putting it on an array. You can also use it for things like stance changes or shapeshifting
-as others pointed out you want to max out defenses and to a lesser extent attack rolls
-the broader the character concept the more you have to watch what the character is doing with it, like a mundane fighter can't really justify any game breaking combinations but a wizard can justify anything, you should check if your player is doing anything wierd.
-not a trap exactly but its generally a good idea for a character to be able to be able to take out opponents using more than one save, it tends to limit what characters you can throw at your players if they only make people roll parry than toughness, in my experience this tends to happen when people don't think of giving non superhuman characters powers (this can be justified by linking afflictions to attacks to simulate gut punches, neck pinches and broken bones).