Mutants & Masterminds

If you did away with CP, what are you buying extras with?

I created "Technique Tree S" so a character had one 5, and one 4, etc etc. The technique slot used were just the sum of the extras (and I guess the basic cost of the properties). The level was the character's power level (adjusted for Damage/attack tradeoffs).

FWIW, there is a Kickstarter project for a limited edition 10th Anniversary edition of the 3E Hero's Handbook.

edited 22nd Oct '12 8:37:46 AM by FuzzyBoots

Running 2e game for fantasy, house ruled Race and Class Feats, 6 Point, usually works like Adaptation power.

IE, have 1 rank in Wizard Class, have 5pp you can put into stuff GM or player can talk GM into that is 'Wizard'. That 5pp can be put into temporary skills and feats as well as powers.

Question: What other limits should I put on it?

Honestly, that sort of open-ended power gets really problematic in the system. A lot of the control of it is going to be fairly ad hoc, deciding on the spot which powers or which skills are or are not appropriate. There's a huge potential for either players breezing through challenges ("An arcane puzzle? I shift my Wizard Class points to get a +15 on Knowledge (Arcane Lore) and Disable Device!") o getting frustrated as you "shoot down" their immediate solutions.

I suppose my question would be, what do you feel this class/power provides that straight-up buying skills and powers does not?

I like the customization of Mn M, each character having unique powers and stats, but one thing I miss from the likes of Dn D is the feeling of 'belonging' to a class and a race, having that label rather than being just a series of unique powers and stats.

Since it's so open ended, perhaps I should increase the cost? 10pp?

You can always segment away certain powers or skills to particular classes.

It's not so much the price that's an issue as the open-endedness. Variable is a nice idea for some concepts involving a "do anything" hero, or to model someone who's got a lot of variation in a single attack. When applied more broadly, or applied to skills or feats, it runs the risk of becoming a "solve the plot" button. Or at least that's my opinion on it.

:) I guess my main question is, what do you see your players using this power for specifically?

Being a race/class, which means a couple things. 1) I'm calling these 'Stunt Feats', after the story telling enhancing rule of Exalted. To have a Feat, it must actually be in their story and described in a way that satisfies me. 2) One player wants to be an elephant person which is an available race. With rank in Beast-Folk (Elephant), if he forgets particular features of an Elephant-Folk, say the trunk, then I can say it's just not an emphasized feature of his character but he can put some of his Beast-Folk (Elephant) points into it whenever it does bear bringing up. 3) One players wants a steam punk cyborg arm and I think that is awesome as shit, and along with whatever he remembers to put, he may also take ranks in Cyborg to play around with. 4) One player is a fits the 'Healer' role but, in setting, there are a couple of ways to be a Healer. With ranks in one kind over another, I give him something to play with and get across the feeling of one kind of healer over another with the different things I grant with it.

Limits I'm thinking about as I'm writing this: 1) IE, said Cyborg character. I may tell him that any pp he plays around with he has to stick with until he has a chance to modify his arm. 2) Wizards have limitations in the setting I'm using (See TVTropes Builds A Campaign Setting!), and I can apply those limits and flaws without reducing PP cost as I see fit. I just need to make this clear to my players. 3) I should maybe increase the cost still.

In case of people trying to follow links, The Atomic Think Tank is migrating to a new server/URL.

This goes off my earlier thing where I wanted to have my cake and eat it too by having D&D esque classes around this build-your-own-powers point buy.

You have a class. For every level, you may if it is a level in your class or a general level. Pick the latter, and you get your normal 15 points (2e) to spend on your heart's desire. Choose the former, and you get something, like, 5 extra points, let's say. However, all 20 points now have to be spent on power "in theme", as I deem appropriate, with non-refundable flaws, as I deem appropriate.

Interesting idea, but I think using archetypes -with powers, skills, etc. already selected- would be more appropriate for a class-based campaign. Though of course the player should be able to use points to further customize his character.

I think that for what you're looking for, you want a system like Wushu that focuses its system on archetype and narrative role and not on the specific abilities you picked for your toon.

Giving point rewards for characters for letting the GM control their design has always rubbed me incredibly wrong.

edited 25th May '14 9:52:10 PM by Ramidel

Ooh so there IS a thread for the system.... even if kinda dead.

Well I'm currently binging on 3e and having loads of funny results out of random chargenner while looking for games.

The Ronin Army site has a Game room with a game listing. Although, right now, we're at a quiet time.

There's also Freedom City Play By Post, though it uses 2e.

Speaking of the Ronin Army site, possible bad news. Long story short, the forums might be closing down due to the mods feeling it's more trouble than it's worth.

The longer story is more complicated and basically comes down to there being a few forum members who were disruptive, and... well, it's complicated, but it sounds like, even if they do keep the forum up, a few of the longstanding site members who saw what happened before the mods edited out all of the posts related to the incident are deciding to leave. It's sad. I know a lot of people there and it was a valuable resource for the game line.

That's really sad to hear. Hope M&M finds a home elsewhere.

There are people suggesting other locations. Reddit is pretty active, but the organization is lousy. Giant in the Playground and RPG.net work well for running games, but don't have dedicated areas for things like discussing rules. A few of the posters who are feeling more pressured by recent moderation are discussing making their own message board. Honestly, I think part of the problem was moderator proactivity. Spam and disruptive posters got swept away fairly regularly, and much of the rancor was limited to smaller areas like the Sidekicks Lounge (the Marvel vs DC wars could get ugly, let alone when people started debating over-sexualization of characters). And, well, as little as I want to criticize anyone at Green Ronin, there was a bit of a tendency for posts they didn't like to get disappeared, including the occasional case where a moderator lost their shit over something and they made it look like that didn't happen. It makes it hard to discuss history when said history has been sanitized.

And, in the end, this all could turn out to be a tempest in a teapot. The people at Green Ronin have said they're still discussing what's going to happen. I've got my fingers crossed.

... And now there are posts complaining about people taking the discussion offline to smear people behind their backs. Which made me worry that my own post of "something is going down and I'm really not sure how much I know or who did what" was being misinterpreted, but from the commentary, they're talking about a much more severe post which I, myself, have yet to see.

And we have a reprieve

Glad to hear of it. Would be a pity to lose such a resource over some petty squabbles.

For anyone coming back to the topic, the forums did go down. Some of us are working with folks at Green Ronin to bring them back up in a readonly format for reference.

I recently made a conversion from Mutants and Masterminds to Basic Action Super Heroes on my Website. Why? Because I feel BASH has better systems, easier to understand and use; but M&M has an entire library of material worth using! If you're curious, give it a read and leave a comment (link to comments page on Home Page) https://sites.google.com/view/elsijosblog/converting-from-mm-to-bash