Discussion TabletopGame / MutantsAndMasterminds

The following trope example:

• Competitive Balance: The tradeoff mechanic allows for characters of the same Power Level to perform differently, sacrificing, for example, accuracy for damage, or vice versa, allowing different character archetypes:
  • Fragile Speedster: A character who sacrifices toughness for defense, and/or damage for accuracy.
  • Glass Cannon / Squishy Wizard / Stone Wall: Mostly averted. The overwhelming majority of M&M character builds have equivalent offensive and defensive ability, or at least have relatively small tradeoffs compared to Power Level.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Speed is not considered to be part of the tradeoff system, so it's not difficult to have a very fast hero who also hits hard.
  • Jack of All Stats: A default character, with no tradeoffs between accuracy and damage or defense and resistance.
  • Mighty Glacier: A character who sacrifices defense for resistance, and/or accuracy for damage.
  • Powerful, but Inaccurate: Swapping accuracy for damage.

...is incorrectly formatted insofar as subtropes shouldn't be bulleted under a supertrope this way. Either they need to be folded into the first bullet point in a paragraph format, or they need to be broken out into separate examples and placed in their correct spot in the alphabetized list.

Also, some of the sub-bullets seem to be misused, or at least don't have quite enough context to determine whether the use is correct or not. Lightning Bruiser, for example, is defined as fast + strong + tough, and the example only specifies fast and strong.

I'm not overly familiar with this particular gameplay system and am not sure which (if any) of the sub-bullets are used correctly and/or worth breaking out into their own examples, so rather than do a lot of back-and-forth in the edit history, I'd like to hash out a version that works here before changing it again.

I propose folding them into a single paragraph, something like:

• Competitive Balance: The tradeoff mechanic allows for characters of the same Power Level to perform differently, allowing for generalized Jack of All Stats characters or specialized characters that make tradeoffs such as sacrificing accuracy for the sake of raw power. Since offense and defense are nearly always evenly balanced with respect to one another and speed is not factored into the tradeoff system, however, archetypes common in other systems such as the Glass Cannon and the Fragile Speedster are nearly always averted.

Does that satisfy, or have I gotten my facts wrong somewhere? Thanks!

Edited by HighCrate Hide / Show Replies

• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Super strong characters can pummel normal humans without fear of accidentally causing lasting damage. In fact, the game's assumption is that everyone deals nonlethal damage by default, and because of the way nonlethal damage works, it's literally impossible to accidentally kill someone. However, if you'd like a "darker" game, there are also detailed rules for lethal damage accompanying the "default" option, though this was taken away in 3rd Edition (with lip service paid to the old way as a possible house-rule in the book).
  • Lethal damage as an option is discussed in the 3rd Edition Gamemaster's Guide. As written, it's still not easy to outright kill a major character with a single attack (it'd take a fairly massive botch on the damage save to even reduce them to "dying but not dead yet", and having "instant" death is a separate option in its own right), but as discussed under One Hit Kill above Minions are fair game...and any damage inflicted by a source declared to be "lethal" takes a lot longer to recover from than the usual nonlethal default.

Thou Shalt Not Kill is about character morality, not system rules. There's got to be a better trope about attacks being normally nonlethal.

Hide / Show Replies

"Experience Points: "Power Points." In a refreshing change of pace from most RP Gs, they function identically to the points characters receive at character generation."

How is this a refreshing change of pace? This is normal for point based systems like GURPS and HERO. True most RP Gs don't do this, but most RP Gs aren't point based.

Cut:

• This became almost silly in one Paragons module; the writer created a character who could take over the world with a mind control virus while in a coma for only 105pts. A starting vanilla-setting or Freedom City character has 150pts.
  • On the other hand, that same character could have their mind control be bounced by anyone with a decent superhero-class Will save (and be immune for the next 24 hours, as the re-infection period had a built-in delay), found with mundane investigative skills, and defeated simply by pulling out the plug on their life support machine. The adventure was written for characters about as powerful as the secondary cast of Heroes. Actual comic-book superheroes would blow through it in six pages.
  • Those 45pts that would be spare for a player trying to recreate this build, however, is enough to remove the coma, and buy a +10 bonus to Fortitude and Reflex saves, plus 10 ranks of Protection - and there would still be 10 points left over for Strike or a couple more ranks in Mind Control.
  • And with Attack and Defense of +0, meaning that anyone on the planet could hit her blindfolded, and she couldn't hope to hit water falling out of a boat. In other words, still a one-round wipeout for any other PL10 super willing to spend one hero point on their Will save.
  • Not to mention that in either the Freedom City or META-4 game universes, the list of people lining up to kill anyone using this build would be legion. And Taurus and Talos both can afford death robots, while Ghostworks is a black ops spook squad composed of the psionically active... and defended.

Moved into Thread Mode. Admittedly, my fault, but still Thread Mode.