Sorry, I'm not familiar with those two. Can you expand a bit?
Thanks.
Not sure on 2d20 mechanic.
Mutants and Masterminds. Basically if you roll a save and get a fail by between 1 and 4 less ( less than the DC DC 19 you get say 17 total) you get the minimum possible bad effect. If its between 5 and 9 below the target, you get a slightly worse effect, so and so on. Damage starts with a -1 to your next roll to resist damage (and this penalty accumulates with every failed save, regardless if its as by 1 or 20), and tops out at dead/KO'd if I'm remembering correctly by failing a save by 15 or more.
For example Captain Heropants is attacked by the Evilshirt. Captain Heropants rolls his damage save against a DC of lets say 23. He gets a total of 19, that's 4 less than 23 so his next roll against damage has a -1 penalty.
Next round Captain Heropants has to save again, but Evilshirt got a critical so that a +5 to the DC, so now its DC 28. Captain Heropaints rolls his bonuses, get a 19 total, but wait its -1 from last time. So he failed by 10, which results in three degrees of failure (1-4, 5-9,
10-14, 15+) and is now Stunned and get another -1 penalty. Things are looking grim for Captain Heropants.
This applies other things as well. For example the multiattack effect works on high levels of attack bonus resulting in increased damage. So if Magnum Machinegun (he's the bad guy) shoots at Captain Heropants he rolls an attack vs Captain Heropants' relevant defense score. If the attack roll beats Captain Heropants' defense by degrees of success MM gets to increase the DC of the save Captain Heropants has to succeed on to avoid the damage. One degree is no bonus, two degrees is +2, and three degrees is +5 in M&M 3E. Previous editions had the same idea, but different values.
Other effects like tripping, the Affliction condition (which is really a whole bunch of stuff) works on degrees of success/failure to determine what happens and by how much.