M&M 2nd Edition: Underwhelmed?

[Longshadow]

The page right before the heroic archetypes begin....the one opposite the first archetype (armored guy)...all the math for the heroic archetypes is listed in one place, in one box, right there.

 

[Aaron2]

The page right before the heroic archetypes begin....the one opposite the first archetype (armored guy)...all the math for the heroic archetypes is listed in one place, in one box, right there.

I saw that. But it isn't all the math. For example, the Mystic has 5 powers, plus a bunch of extras and power feats. Knowing that the combine cost of all that is 65 points doesn't help much especially since I try to figure out the cost of the same powers and end up with a different number. I still don't know what the individual powers cost. It's worse for things like the Paragon where points in powers end up affecting abilities.


Aaron

 

[Elric]

For movement, see pg 32- miles per hour vs. feet per round. If you can go X miles per hour (which is normal pace, so it's a move action), then you can go 10*X feet with a move action. So Flight 3 is 50 miles an hour (at normal pace), which is 500 feet as a move action.

For pp costs: let's see: the Mystic has Astral Form 6 * 5 pp/rank= 30 pp + 1 pp for the Alternate power feat. The Mystic also has Magic 12* 2 pp/rank= 24 pp + 6 pp for 6 power feats, and Super-Senses 4 which is 1 pp/rank, so 4 pp for Super-Senses. That's 31 pp for the Astral Form array, 30 pp for the Magic array and 4 pp for Super-Senses= 65 pp total.

If you want to look at the costof the alternate power feat on Astral Form to make sure the pp cost of the alternate power bundle is <= the cost of the original power, you have Flight 3 * 2 pp/rank + Forcefield (Impervious) 12 * (1 pp/rank base + 1 pp/rank for Impervious)= 6+24=30.

The Paragon is even easier:
Enhanced Con 20 (1 pp/rank) = 20 pp
Enhanced Strength 20 (1 pp/rank) = 20 pp
Flight 5 (2 pp/rank) = 10 pp
Immunity 9 (1 pp/rank)= 9 pp
Impervious Toughness 12 (1 pp/rank)= 12 pp
Quickness 3 (1 pp/rank)= 3 pp
Super-Strength 6 (2 pp/rank)= 12 pp

Sum it all for a total powers cost of 86 pp.

 

[Aaron2]

For movement, see pg 32- miles per hour vs. feet per round.

Thanks. I totally missed that sidebar. Never Mind.

Thanks also for the Mystic breakdown. Magic is the one power I'll probably use the most. The line on page 91 "Choose one power feat ... You can aquire others as Alternate Power feats" makes is sound like you get your first power feat for free.


Aaron

 

[swrushing]

I loved 1e. Ran two games, each lasting about a year to 18 months each.

I don't have 2e and from what i saw in reviews and playtesting, won't be getting it either.

What i saw as "the beauty of 1e" is apparently a whole lot different from what they saw as its beauty.

the point buy system is more complex and more detailed and its supposed to be better balanced and all that and IMO if more complex point buy was the road to the better then HERO would have hit the pinnacle some 300-400 pages ago.

The drive to move Mnm further toward what i see as "Like HERo but without the fractions" drove me away. The more complex the point buy become then IMX the less balanced it becomes and the more abusable it becomes and in no small part to the increasing notion that the point system "does that balance stuff for you."

1E seemed to have as an approach what i called "the game of yards, not inches" where all the point buy was supposed to do was get you close, in the ballpark, and let the play and the Gm handle the fine tuning. That worked for me, very well.

My vision of 2e would have been to minimize the point buy even further. Move it towards an even more loosely defined power buy where you don't get bogged down into detailing mechanics and costs for each individual trick of a power but instead define and buy in broader terms "super-powers" and on the fly you handle specific uses. You might buy something like "firepowers" at rank 10 with traits like "power", "finesse" and "endurance" with their own scales and then in play when you decide "i want to throw a fireball" you do so.

Anyway, while i don't have any mechanical references, I find it ironic that an alternative chargen system will apparently be in the Manual and the description sounds a lot like what I would have liked, loosely defined broader scope powers. This is ironic because, since 2e turned me off so much i won't be buying the core rules, I won't then be buying the manual which will be mostly useless without the 2e core book. :-(

thats OK... i probably wasn't their target audience anyway.

 

[Kanegrundar]

I picked 2E up on pre-order. When I first delved into statting out my first character, it was rough. I was used to the 1E way of doing things, so it took some time to really get the changes. However, now, I can stat out a character and make conversions easy with just a cheatsheet. (Just as in 1E.) I like M&M 2E. Honestly I love it. It has some warts, but all game systems do. It works for me, I understand (may not always agree though) the changes, and can easily use the system however I want. M&M 2E gets a big seal of approval from me.

Kane

 

[Elric]

Thanks also for the Mystic breakdown. Magic is the one power I'll probably use the most. The line on page 91 "Choose one power feat ... You can aquire others as Alternate Power feats" makes is sound like you get your first power feat for free.Aaron

I read Magic as "Choose a 2 pp/rank power as the base power. The power feats below are examples some of the things you can choose that are 2 pp/rank base powers." Then when the Mystic says "Choose 6 power feats" to me it meant "You have a base magic power and the Alternate Power feat taken 6 times."

I can see how you could get an "off by one" error here, though.

 

[Michael Tree]

M&M is no longer my tool-kit system for supers or anything else, as they've decided to forego that approach in the core book. The less flexible a system is, the less I tend to like it, generally speaking. Given that I loved M&M more for its flexibility than its genre coverage, though, my dropping it like a hot rock as soon as it cut most of the customization options out of the core book should hardly come as a surprise.

I don't understand comments like this. M&M2e is still extraordinarily customizable. With the book you can create 99.99% of all power effects you'll even want to create, just using the existing powers, modified by extras, flaws, power feats, and drawbacks when neccessary. It's no different from Hero.

Sure M&M2e doesn't have many house rules in it, but 1e didn't either. The one thing 2e lacks is guidance on how to create brand new powers, but with the powers and modifiers in the book you can create almost all powers. 1e didn't have much guidance on how to create brand new powers either. 1e's "power creation rules" were basically just guidelines on how to buy existing powers as extras on other existing powers, something that was eliminated from 2e because of its unneccessary complexity.

 

[jdrakeh]

I don't understand comments like this. M&M2e is still extraordinarily customizable. With the book you can create 99.99% of all power effects you'll even want to create, just using the existing powers, modified by extras, flaws, power feats, and drawbacks when neccessary.

You can modify existing powers to mimic certain effects, yes - but that isn't the same thing as being able to build them from the ground up to suit a specific concept.

It's no different from Hero.

Untrue. Hero lets you create new powers/items/spells/technologies from scratch and specifically has systems in place to facilitate this construction, as well as rules that ensure such powers/items/spells/technologies remain balanced in the context of a given campaign.

1e M&M had a lot of this in its power creation rules, as well. The fact that these rules have been dropped from the main book in 2e M&M greatly reduces the game utility for my needs (and please, don't resort to dictating what my needs are again).

The one thing 2e lacks is guidance on how to create brand new powers, but with the powers and modifiers in the book you can create almost all powers.

Again, modifying existing powers to mimic certain effects isn't the same thing as building powers from the ground up. Similar, sure - but the same? Not even close. I want a system that allows me to build things from scratch to fit a certain concept, rather than something that forces me to re-tool a concept to fit existing rules.

1e's "power creation rules" were basically just guidelines on how to buy existing powers as extras on other existing powers, something that was eliminated from 2e because of its unneccessary complexity.

What you see as 'unnecessary complexity', many people view as utility.

 

[Valiantheart]

I get the feeling from a lot of these posts that people are just undergoing "familiarity growing pains". After 3 years of play its easy to scrawl down a 1E character from scratch because all the rules, powers, feats, skills and their values are in your mind.

Well now you just have to relearn some new values for a bit. Once you spend some time with the book you will find your ability to create characters quickly increases as your rule familiarity does.