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Anyone here play Mutants And Masterminds 3rd Edition?


Brother Glacius

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M&M is quite possibly my favorite RPG of all time. I’ve played every edition and used to be extremely active in the online community (prior to Green Ronin shutting down their forums). I’ve probably built thousands of characters for the system over the years.

I’m more than happy to help answer rules questions or give character building feedback.

(Incidentally, if you have an open seat at the table, I’d love to actually play and not just be Perma GM…)

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A few basic tips:

• Don’t feel like you need to cram every power you‘ve ever seen a character do in the comics onto your character sheet. Guys like Spidey and the various X-Men have been around sixty-plus years. Superman and the Batman are approaching their 100th Anniversary… All of them will have one-off feats of power or rarely seen secondary uses of their powers. You don’t need to spend PP on this. That’s what Power Stunts and Extra Effort are for!

• The Variable Power, Magic, Summoning, Duplication, Luck Control, Metamorph, and Creation Effects; and the Minions and Sidekick Advantages are ones that I suggest most new GMs treat with caution and new players simply avoid. Mechanically, these are all balanced pretty well, the problem is that they are all highly variable and mechanically complex which can really slow down gameplay in the hands of an inexperienced player or a player who suffers from “analysis paralysis.”

• Power Level is not necessarily linked to Power Point budget. PL measures your “height,” PP measures your “width.” GMs should reward one to three PP after every successful session, but PL increases should be very rare.

• Power Level 6 with 75 to 90 PP will generally result in “Action Hero” type characters. More or less mundane characters with very high skills and maybe a single gimmick power or device. Most Arnold Schwarzenegger characters, Stargate SG-1, G.I. Joe, etc. A typical adventure sees these guys team up to save a building from a terrorist bomb plot.

• Power Level 8 with 120 PP will general result in “Street Level” or “Team Book Only” characters. Guys who are clearly superhuman, but really only capable of operating solo against mundane threats and will need to team-up to handle supervillains. Daredevil, Luke Cage, Nightwing, Green Arrow, most X-Men, etc. A typical adventure sees these guys team up to save the city from a mad scientist and a giant robot.

• Power Level 10 with 150 PP will general result in “Nation Level” heroes. Guys who are competent, experienced, and well above human norms. One of these guys can solo the average supervillain after a challenging fight and if they team-up, can handle nationwide threats or even a minor planetary invasion. Most Avengers, more experienced X-Men, the lower-tier JLA members, and so forth fall into this category. A typical adventure for these guys is stopping an alien invasion.

• Power Level 12 with 180 PP is about as high tier as I ever feel is successfully playable in a campaign. These are “Worldclass” level heroes. The guys that other superheroes look up to. The guy who walks onto a battlefield and grizzled old NCO’s tell the rookies “Hold yer fire, kid. You’re in fer a show.” The kind of guy whom the President of the United States has on speed-dial. Superman, Captain America, Thor, the Batman. These guys can solo a small alien invasion and tend to only team up if the entire cosmos is at risk. A typical adventure for these guys is stopping a cosmic level bad guy from undoing the timeline.

• It is possible to mix PLs in a party. I’ve had quite a lot of success with groups where players were allowed to choose between PL 8 / 180 PP, PL 10 / 150 PP, and PL 12 / 120 PP builds. This tends to result in a fun mix of broadly skilled, but low-power heroes; balanced all-rounders; and very powerful, but specialized heroes. Sort of the mix you see in the MCU’s Avengers or the CW ArrowVerse cross-over team-ups.

 

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There are basically five things that PL puts caps on (and a handful of very rare niche things that, honestly, almost never come up). They aren’t too difficult to understand, but the rulebook isn’t the most clearly worded.

Skill Modifiers are capped at PL + 10. This means the total “+X” that you add to your roll, regardless of source, cannot exceed PL + 10. So if you have Intellect 10 and Technology 12, you’re going to have a total of +22. Meaning you’d have to be PL 11… So a PL 10 build would need to tweak either one of those down two pips.

Attack Bonus and Effect Rank are capped at PL x 2; For nearly ever character this is going to be your Unarmed Attack/Unarmed Damage (since everyone can throw hands) and whatever offensive power Effects or Weapons you might have. So, at PL 10, you could have a balanced +10 To Hit with +10 Damage, a whopping +20 to Hit with +0, a ridiculous +0 to hit and +20 damage, or anything in between.

In practice, you generally want to have your primary attack be somewhere between +15 to hit / +5 effect [for an extremely “accuracy shifted” character like Hawkeye] and +5 to hit / +15 effect [for an extremely “power shifted” character]. Any greater trade off is a liability. Secondary attacks can have greater trade offs.

One wrinkle here is that Area Effects or Perception Effects are treated slightly differently. As they have no “to hit” value, they’re capped at PL for Damage Rank. So if you have a PL 10 Wizard casting a Fireball (Ranged Area [Burst] Damage) the maximum rank would be 10.

Dodge and ToughnessParry and Toughness, and Will and Fortitude are your defensive tradeoffs. These are also capped at PL x 2.

Characters who are Immune to Fortitude Effects (i.e., constructs) treated kind of like Area Attacks. They have no Fortitude value, so their Will is capped at PL. 

There’s also the rare Deflect and Toughness trade off for characters with that Effect.

I find it helpful to make a “worksheet” at the bottom of every build I make. So as I type it up, I just tweak these values as I go and make sure all the maths check out. For example:

WORKSHEET
Attack: 12  Effect: 8  Total: 20 (Unarmed)
Attack: 8  Effect: 12  Total: 20 (Energy Blast)
Dodge: 12  Tough.: 8  Total: 20
Parry: 12  Tough.: 8  Total: 20
Fort.: 8  Will: 12 Total: 20 

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On 12/30/2022 at 12:07 PM, Ish said:

M&M is quite possibly my favorite RPG of all time. I’ve played every edition and used to be extremely active in the online community (prior to Green Ronin shutting down their forums). I’ve probably built thousands of characters for the system over the years.

I’m more than happy to help answer rules questions or give character building feedback.

(Incidentally, if you have an open seat at the table, I’d love to actually play and not just be Perma GM…)

Can't send you messages in ordo? Says you can't receive. 

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On 12/30/2022 at 10:44 PM, Brother Glacius said:

I'm struggling a bit with the various limits based on PL and then how multiple stats are combined and set limits too. would love to sit down with you and go over char creation. We play over roll20, so if you are interested in that, let me know and I can find you a seat. that being said, its not our main game.

This is the way it forces you to build balanced characters but gives you enough points to still build a well-rounded character.  You can take a power to blast people at range with ice...  You will either be powerful or good.  You could be both by spending more points but that would violate the limits.  That's what the PL limits do.  They create a limit on each power or facet of the character so that people don't corner to hard for the power level of the campaign....

 

You can be hard to hit or tough to damage.  You can be accurate (hit easily) or hit hard.  You can be mentally tough or physically tough.  As long as the PL is defined you can give players points for more powers and tricks without being concerned that someone will corner into a deathblow that hits on a 2.

 

Keeping that in mind, does PL (and the things it pairs) make more sense?

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11 minutes ago, Duckman said:

You can be hard to hit or tough to damage.  You can be accurate (hit easily) or hit hard.  You can be mentally tough or physically tough. 

You can build a character who can do both, just never both at the same time. For example, you could have one attack effect that had high accuracy and low damage with a second attack that was lower accuracy and high damage. You could have a character who shifts between high Fortitude/low Will and vice versa.

Generally speaking, however, this kind of goes against the spirit of the genre. Look at most superhero teams, you’ll see that each team-member is very strong in their “specialty” or “niche,” but usually has at least one obvious “handicap” where they struggle. It’s fun for the reader to watch the hero overcome their handicap: “Hulk is strongest there is, but how can hit smash the intangible Ghost?It’s also fun to watch teams of heroes coordinate efforts to defeat their enemies: Colossus is strong, Wolvie can cut through anything, but neither one can hit a flying enemy. Fastball Special!

 

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