M&M vs BESM

[sblock=Me being ill informed]First of all, I cannot really find any good information or reviews on the Mecha & Manga book and I was hoping someone could point me to some or tell me about it themselves. [/sblock]

I'm interested in peoples opinions regarding which of these games (M&M vs BESM 3e) best suit something in the vein of One Piece or Fairy Tail as I don't have much experience with either system (but a decent knowledge of the basics of both mechanically speaking).

Some specific things I'm interested in.

1. Which is best suited to PbP, I'm leery of reactive rolls and such that might clog up the works unnecessarily.

2. Easy, fast paced combat, want to avoid unnecessary drag.

3. Ease of prep. How quick can you put together functional npc's and how easy is it to balance them so don't suck or wipe the floor with the players. Want to minimize the mechanical aspect of planning.

4. Which one best emulates the tropes and feel of the the manga I mentioned above.

Oni said:

First of all, I cannot really find any good information or reviews on the Mecha & Manga book.

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That is probably because it isn't out yet?

Ha, I'd seen the blurb for it several places, didn't realize that.

My questions still stand regarding M&M vs BESM 3e though.

Oni said:

2. Easy, fast paced combat, want to avoid unnecessary drag.

3. Ease of prep. How quick can you put together functional npc's and how easy is it to balance them so don't suck or wipe the floor with the players. Want to minimize the mechanical aspect of planning.

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M&M hands-down. There just aren't as many things to keep track of in both these categories.

The one thing I have trouble with is "reactive rolls". What do you mean by that? M&M has rolls for resisting effects, if that's what you mean. It's like D&D with the Attacks of Opportunity and extra attacks cut out. Plus is very easy to change around the numbers so that the attacker is making all the rolls.

Rolls that react to other rolls. I.E. Defense vs an attack roll, or Toughness vs. a hit.

The former is what BESM does and you get a penalty for each additional defense roll you take and you can choose to forgo defense rolls because of that.

With M&M, as long as you've got the relevant statistics on hand the GM can roll toughness himself and just say the result since there's no reason not to roll it (that I know of), which is definitely a plus for M&M in my book.

I am a little concerned about the damage mechanic in M&M though, it seems as if one poor roll could totally do you in, I don't know how that works out in practice though.

Oni said:

With M&M, as long as you've got the relevant statistics on hand the GM can roll toughness himself and just say the result since there's no reason not to roll it (that I know of), which is definitely a plus for M&M in my book.

I am a little concerned about the damage mechanic in M&M though, it seems as if one poor roll could totally do you in, I don't know how that works out in practice though.

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In M&M, hero points can be used to reroll a roll (and if you roll a 10 or below on the reroll, you add 10 to the result, meaning that you can't get below an 11). This is probably the strongest hero point function and prevents quick knockouts. In a pbp game, you may want players to specify when they'd use hero points to reroll saves in advance (e.g., "when I suffer a result of Staggered, or anything worse than that) so the GM can roll Toughness saves.

You can also invert the system so attackers make the rolls; see my post on how to do that here. Attackers make all the rolls could significantly speed up combat because of its interaction with hero points (see this thread for some more discussion of the effects of using this type of option).

Even without hero points, M&M combats last longer than you might think. I just did a post on my roll call thread about this. I ran a simulation for "how many attacks does it take to KO the defender" in the most basic combat scenario you could have in the game, and plotted how many attacks it took (since a character will be getting 1 attack a round, this is equivalent to rounds). The average ended up as 9.35 attacks, with a standard deviation of 5.2.

This number is shorter (and has a higher variance) than it would be if you gave the defender hero points to spend on defense (or, for a villain, the GM used GM Fiat to duplicate the effects of a hero point, which gives a PC a hero point each time he does it). However, attacking a stunned defender (which happens in group fights) will speed things up. I find that 9 rounds is a long fight in M&M, but a (relatively threatening) fight typically goes at least 5 rounds.

NPC prep in M&M can be very easy because of the PL system, and because the power points you spend don't matter for NPCs. For example:

I want a PL 10 villain built around super-strength/toughness; that gives +10 attack/damage from strength/defense/toughness. However, I think he should be Toughness and Damage shifted, so let's add 2 to damage/Toughness and subtract 2 from Attack bonus/Defense bonus. Fortitude save should be high; let's make it +10, but Reflex/Will should be lower: +6 each. I want him to be bulletproof, but not rocket-launcher proof, so we'll give him Impervious Toughness 8. Due to his strength, he should be able to jump: let's say he has 3 ranks of the Leaping power, for a running long jump of about 200 feet and a high jump of 50 feet.

Super-Strength would increase his lifting capacity without affecting most combat abilities directly, so we'll assume he has enough of it to have a Heavy Load of 25 tons (this would be about 4 ranks). Rounding him out with skills, let's give him Intimidate +10 and Notice/Sense Motive (and any other miscellaneous skills he should have at a low rank) +5. Done!

And if you really feel like you want something more ablative there are the hit point rules in the Mastermind's Manual. Most people I've heard from don't like them, but they're there if you need them.