General RPG Rules DiscussionDiscuss the rules of any game except D&D or Pathfinder, such as Arcana Evolved, Mutants & Masterminds, Star Wars Saga, d20 Modern, and the like.
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Personally, I think that HERO is counter-intuitive, slow, and there is too much point-juggling. I think that M&M is too derivative, some d20 solution are transferred without any consideration, and there is too much point-juggling.
If I had my choice in superhero RPG, I'd lean towards Savage Worlds.
M&M is, when you include the wonderful Freedom City setting, and the great, really useful sourcebooks, the best superhero RPG I've seen. Sadly, it's too math-heavy to simulate the comicbook feel.
Have I just stepped into Bizarro-World for this thread?
HERO may have many fine qualities, but intuitiveness and elegance isn't on the list. If you've been playing it for a decade or so, it's easy to take everything you've learned by rote for granted and retroactively say it's all so very simple, so obvious, so logical. But for someone coming fresh and doing an apples-to-apples comparison, HERO is about as ponderous as it gets.
I remember the first time I saw Hero. I thumbed through a copy of the Champions books in a mall bookstore. I said to myself, "My god, that's so simple? Why hasn't anyone done this before?" Of course, what I did not realize was that someone had; Champions had been around for quite some time. Compared to DC Heroes, it was the height of intuitive and elegant. Now, once the honeymoon was over, I discovered a few twists and complications, and discovered Hero involved some maths from time to time. Still, it is a very easy to understand game. Hero System is incredibly elegant and intuitive. The fact that it uses fractions does not change that. We are talking middle school math. Hero is probably my number one system for teaching someone the system, making a character, and running a game all in one sitting with few hitches. Character creation is usually longer than in M&M, but it doesn't have to be. Character creation in M&M does not have to be fast; there are things to fiddle with, if you choose to. Sure, Hero involves a more work than some games, including M&M, but not much more. Probably the hardest thing in the game is the Speed Chart, and if you don't like that, you can declare that everyone has SPD 3.
As for END, it's a great part of the system. Endurance allows characters to push their limits, and it allows a wide variety of power constructs, everything from "extra pushing" to tiring explosive attacks. It also stops people from doing stupid, repetitive things. If you don't want that much detail, stripping END is an official optional rule and requires essentially no modification to the system whatsoever; you just don't use it, or anything that refers to it. Alternatively, if you, personally, don't want to deal with it, you just buy down the END costs of your powers.
Personaly I like the simple superhero's game that I have designed. (And ran an alphs playtest of a couple times at cons). 'Course it rely's on a certain amount of player confidence in the DM's judgement, and a kind of freeform/brainstorming approach to character creation. But I don't think my Ottawa Group has ever had more fun, and havn't had a problem making every kind of character imaginable*.
*Some have had to be powered down.
If someone's interested I'd be willing to share for some feedback.
__________________ - We always forget that the monster doesn't want to die either -
You said that in CoC you can alter your saves based on something to do with attack and defense. I was confused on that part. I assumed it meant that you could lower your attack to increase your save values. But in d20 you normally only have one attack value. This would mean that when you decrease or increase your saves they all change by the same amount. I was wondering if CoC had different attack values for each kind of saving-throw-inducing attack so that you could modify the level of each save individually.
Perhaps you could just explain the entire process you were talking about in greater detail?
Perhaps you could just explain the entire process you were talking about in greater detail?
In Monte Cook's d20 CoC on page ten he has Table 1-8 and Table 1-9 which are Base Save options. Table 1-8 is Base Save And Base Attack Bonus: Defense Option. Table 1-9 is Offense Option. The three saving throw progression tables are assigned in any order to Reflex, Willpower, and Fortitude. Offense option has lower saves but higher base attack bonuses. Defense Option has higher saves and lower base attack bonuses. You could put Prossion Save Table into Fortitude, Bases Save Progression Table 3 into Willpower, and Base Save Progression Table 2 into Reflex, as an example.
In Monte Cook's d20 CoC on page ten he has Table 1-8 and Table 1-9 which are Base Save options. Table 1-8 is Base Save And Base Attack Bonus: Defense Option. Table 1-9 is Offense Option. The three saving throw progression tables are assigned in any order to Reflex, Willpower, and Fortitude. Offense option has lower saves but higher base attack bonuses. Defense Option has higher saves and lower base attack bonuses. You could put Prossion Save Table into Fortitude, Bases Save Progression Table 3 into Willpower, and Base Save Progression Table 2 into Reflex, as an example.
Um, yeah. Except, why do that for a point-build system. Kind of misses the point, really.
You can, with startling ease, assign your attack, defence and saves to mirror any configuration you'd find in basically any d20 game anyway. Just spend some Power Points, and make it so. You could even match PL to level, if that appeals for some reason (even though the concepts are different, and M&M doesn't in fact have levels.)
Which, come to think of it, seems to be something at least a couple of people are not aware of: it's not a levels-based game. Srsly.
The player now will go one of two ways: he'll either realize this isn't going to work like he envisioned and he abandons the idea, or he'll mitigate the cost by lathering on Limitations. Let's see, Activation 14< (-1/2), Doesn't work underwater, in vacums, in intense magnetic fields (-1/4 x 3), Only works in Hero ID (-1/4), and then the biggest non-Limitation of all: Obvious Inaccessable Focus (-1/2).
But all this doesn't reduce the active cost of the power, only the number of build points the character needs to spend to acquire it. It's not a cheat--the campaign will have an uppoer limit on the active cost of all powers.
Quote:
My problem with Champions/HERO is that it implicitly offers the pretext of playing gatekeeper through elaborate (some say "elegant") point-costing, but what it really does is ween unassuming players over to the dark side of min-maxing. I think the place where this really becomes evident is the 150 points of Disadvantages each player is required to come up with in building their character. It quickly becomes evident that all Disads are not created equally disadvantageous. Some, like Psychological Limitation and Distinctive Feature, just add some color to your character. Others, like Vulnerability and Susceptability, can get you killed. And still others, like Hunted, don't ever seem to amount to anything (most GM's just can't be bothered).
The disadvantages don't bother me much--yes, there are some easy ones that everyone can take without gimping their character, but that's intentional--it encourages people to add flavor to their characters, but the players that don't take them aren't weaker than those that do. Again, because the game is structured to place an upper limit on the active cost of powers, the difference between a 250-pt superhero with disads and a 200-pt superhero without is one of versatility, not raw power. The first might have all sorts of tricks (like an ice hero that can craft objects, walls, prisons, and slides in addition to blasting away), while the second just flies and shoots lasers, but they'll be equally effective in combat and likely equally interesting out of combat (skills being dirt cheap).
The campaign guidelines are an easy aspect of HERO to miss, but very important. In a superheroes game, the GM must sit down and say that
attack powers should be no more than 60 active points, and resistant PD/ED
no higher than 15/15. This prevents anyone from waving a wand and turning their enemy into a slug in one round, and prevents players from building the invulnerable super-brick or glass cannon.
If the upper limits don't change, players will grow broader, not deeper. They learn new tricks for their powers, might pick up defenses they were lacking, and so on.
Once in a while the GM can "level up" the group and increase the upper limit by 10 Points or so, changing the tone of the campaign a little.
Um, yeah. Except, why do that for a point-build system. Kind of misses the point, really.
Because I don't believe that absolutely everything should be bought with points, In M&M every single save must be bought. I just don't like that option. I prefer to spend my points on powers, skills, feats, and attributes. And even feats is iffy for me personally, but still doable.
It is a level-based game, there are just classes you could play that have worse than low BAB and poor saves.
d20 Call of Cthulhu is a level-based game. It has level progression tables for character advancement.
Mutants & Masterminds is not a level-based game.
If you wish to challenge either of these, I will require evidence. (Note that you cannot prove a negative, therefore no proof has been provided. You can prove a positive, therefore proof is required.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quantum
Because I don't believe that absolutely everything should be bought with points, In M&M every single save must be bought. I just don't like that option. I prefer to spend my points on powers, skills, feats, and attributes. And even feats is iffy for me personally, but still doable.
M&M agrees with you. Only things that will have game-mechanic effect require points.
A place to live (not a super-base, just a home with a bed) does not require points, for example. Having a cool costume doesn't require points. Having a particular appearance, accent, mannerism, and so forth, don't require points unless they are supposed to also have a game mechanic effect.
Your character's ability to affect foes and resist their effects does require power points, since it is purely controlled by game mechanics.
You, Quantum, apparently don't like purchasing saving throws. The implication is that you want them to be assigned to you by the game, using a "table" and a declared choice of "defensive" or "offensive". How they would scale is in no way covered (M&M doesn't have levels, so the CoC method won't work), so there's a big whole in your proposal.
The reasons for your feelings are unclear and obscure to those of us following the thread.
Still, take a look at the Mastermind's Manual, chapter 1, pages 18 and 19. That might work for you.
I think it's just an individual thing; for example, I understood M&M and HERO both very rapidl... and I "get" both of them, and can understand or accept the way they do some things they do.
Yeah.
That is where I stand. I play HERO, and have done some M&M, but I just prefer the style and approach of HERO (5th). Part of it is that I really dislike the damage save as a mechanic, so I can never really get into the whole of M&M.
I think that the M&M stuff has a better setting. I really dig Freedom City.
__________________ I'm one of the lucky ones. I married a "gamer-girl."
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The reasons for your feelings are unclear and obscure to those of us following the thread.
I haven't played M&M so I don't know how this would actually work out in play. But when I try to learn the system I create a few characters and test the rules out a bit. During my creation I found that when using points to buy everything (and just so you're clear what I mean by everything is ability scores, skills, feats, saves, attack bonuses and powers because the example you used was a bit extreme) is that usually you'll have lower saves and attack bonuses if you want more powers, and less powers if you want more saves and attack bonuses. I suppose it could be evened out but you will not have it evened out for your level. In that both saves, attack bonuses, and powers will not necessarily be even with your level. I feel that character abilities should be even with the character level and using points to buy those will skewer the balance in favor of one or the other.
But then again, and I absolutely stress this point, is that it all depends on what the player wants for their character concept. If they're happy with it then that's fine. But as for myself as a player and not a GM I like having these things evened out with my character level and prefer the automatic level advancement at least for saves and base attack bonuses.
Basically, I prefer the Occam Razor approach to rpgs, in that "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity". Or tp put it another way, don't unnecessarily complicate things. That's one of the reasons why I can't stand the Hero game system is that they make things really complicated, at least for me.
Also, I don't have the Mastermind's Manual and have never read it. But it sounds like you're insinuating they created a level based save and attack bonus progression for the character's power level.
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