Help me use Mutants & Masterminds for modern fantasy (a la Savannah Knights)

[RangerWickett]

I'm planning to start a modern fantasy game soon, on the low-magic end of things. I could use d20 Modern, but I just bought M&M, and I'm itching to try it out. If any of you have read the Savannah Knights storyhour, you're familiar with the type of stuff I want.

I'm thinking the group should start at Power Level 1 or 2, and maybe reach 4 by the end of the campaign. Magic is available to humans in two ways.

The first way is to perform complicated rituals that have a chance of failure, using Knowledge (arcana) checks to pull off the spell; think of the type of magic used by scholars in Cthulhu-esque stories.

The second is to bond to a magical entity of some kind, like a ghost, a fey, or a monster. You can use magic appropriate to the bonded entity, but you become vulnerable to certain magic, and other magical creatures can immediately tell you're a spellcaster. The benefit is that you don't have to make skill checks to cast spells, and there's less chance of your spells going awry.

I don't really want 'super powers,' but people can have magic powers that basically do the same thing. Most characters will be mundane, though, so guns and skills will be the primary way of dealing with dangers.

I think the players want a game where getting shot is bad.

Any suggestions?

 

[takyris]

My first suggestion would be "Don't use M&M," but you just said you wanted to do so. In my experience, it doesn't work terribly well at PL1 for the heroes. It just doesn't. At least, it didn't for me. (If it's worked fine for other folks, they should say so and shout me down.)

What part of M&M did you want to use? You could just do a classless d20 Modern with a damage save, if you wanted to do something point buy. That's sort of what I'm doing in a game with my players. I'd be happy to go into more detail if you'd like, but I don't want to hijack your thread.

If "Equipment as part of a character package" is what you're going for, then I think that M&M would work fine, but I'd still suggest upping the level. If you make it PL6 and make sure that you're in charge of how people build their characters ("No, really, you can't have Incorporeality. Seriously. And don't even try the 'Just one rank?' garbage on me."), you can build folks who are enjoyable to play but still not in any danger of hurting a big bad PL12 Hell Mutant Worm or whatever you're sending against them. For example, a PL6 guy with a handgun (+2L), Amazing Save: Reflex +4, Evasion, Strike +2 from martial arts training, and a whole mess of skills and feats is a fun guy to play -- but when a PL12 monster with Super-Strength 12, Natural Armor 12, and Energy Blast 12 (Acid) shows up, it's not like anyone is gonna just toss off a Hero Point and punk him.

 

[jezter6]

Taky, how'd you incorporate the damage save into your d20 game? I've been trying to figure it out myself but it never seems to be balanced. My ultimate goal would be to redo the weapons to do +x damage save instead of the XdY current damage, but I'm at a loss as to that as well...it really seems like the separate damages for many of the weapons will just get folded into a few groups, eliminating much of the difference between .22, 9mm, .45, and .50

I'd like to keep classes the same, just give some sort of damage save bonus based on current hit dice instead of breaking everything down into point buy if possible.

 

[threshel]

Any suggestions?

A few.

Power levels aren't like character levels, you'll be surprised at how little ability a PL 1 character has. Essentially: PL1 is little old ladies and infants, PL2 is normal joes, and PL3 is the first step towards execeptional.

If you really want getting shot to be bad, use the high-lethality rules and add the impairment option to damage. Without it, characters aren't really in mortal danger unless they're hit after they drop. The regular chart ends at Unconcious/Disabled.

Remember that the Hero/Villain Point mechanic isn't just an add-on, it's use is intrinsic to the game. Without it, the flat probability curve can make resolution too erratic with low PL characters. If you want to drop it altogether, then I'd suggest switching to 2d10 to curve resolution a bit. I wouldn't drop it, though.

The easiest way to cut down on the "superpowers disguised as magic" thing is by enforcing inherent non-point flaws. Your skill use requirement is a perfect example.

I would handle the "bonded entity" magic by making it an offset template.

Fire-Bonded:
Energy Control - Fire +3, Extras: Energy Absorption +3; Power Stunts: Energy Blast, Immunity (Fire). (10pp)
Weakness - Vulnerability to cold. (-10pp)
Total Cost: 0

I'd put an absolute limit on the number of Weaknesses a character can have. For a low-PL game, I'd say 1 is the right number. Include the ones from bonded templates in this count. Talk alot about your plans to use Weaknesses against the characters.
(I did this in my MnM game, and you'd be surprised how effective it is. Only a few of my guys took any weaknesses at all, and no one took more than 1, even though the limit was 2.)

On that note, talk a lot with your players in general. As takyris' example points out, the sheer number of options in the system can lead to wildly different characters, and threat assessment on the part of the GM is way more than PL v. PL.

Lastly, MnM is not the system for treasure-hunting games. Even if it's in a low-magic setting, free equipment, even if it's only mundane, will nerf the balance of your game in no time. At low PL's, that suit of leather armor is precious. MnM is better, however, at modeling the archetype of the defining possession. Fantasy heroes and villains typically have a few defining possessions: King Arthur's crown, armor, and sword; Elric's sword, Covenant's ring, Legolas' bow, arrows and knives. These possessions identify the character to the reader as well as the inhabitants of the world in which they live.

Hope this helps, and, more importantly, I hope you have fun.

J

 

[takyris]

Taky, how'd you incorporate the damage save into your d20 game? I've been trying to figure it out myself but it never seems to be balanced. My ultimate goal would be to redo the weapons to do +x damage save instead of the XdY current damage, but I'm at a loss as to that as well...it really seems like the separate damages for many of the weapons will just get folded into a few groups, eliminating much of the difference between .22, 9mm, .45, and .50

I'd like to keep classes the same, just give some sort of damage save bonus based on current hit dice instead of breaking everything down into point buy if possible.

Here's what I did (the short version)

XdY damage becomes ((X times Y)/2 - X). So 1d6 = 6/3 -1 = +2, 1d8 = +3, 2d6=12/2 -2, or +4, and so on. A 4d6 grenade does 24/2 -4 = +8 damage.

So that's the basic set so far. Now, for the saves, I ruled that:

- Any melee or ranged attack used a Fort save for the damage save.
- Any area of effect used the Reflex save for the damage save -- instead of the save-for-half thing, you just save against the damage with the Reflex save. In a way, this makes more sense -- you can turn a bullet wound into a graze or shrug off a club to the shoulder, but you don't shrug off a grenade -- you dive out of the way.
- Any magical damage used the Will save (just to give Will saves something to do).

I also turned armor into DR and Stun Conversion. Generally speaking, cut the value of the armor in half, and round toward Stun Conversion. So a breastplate or bulletproof vest (+5, normally) becomes DR2/SC3 -- meaning that a dagger stab by a guy with an ordinary strength just glances off unless he scores a Crit (which does additional damage), while a gunshot (2d6, or +4) gets past DR but is converted into Stun damage, not lethal damage, because the +2 damage that got through is less than the 3 that could be converted into Stun damage. So a guy in a breastplate has little to fear from a weak-looking guy with a dagger -- unless the guy has a lot of training (melee smash, streetfighting), gets lucky (scores a crit), or has something up his sleeve (magical dagger). And if he's shot, and it's a normal hit, then it probably won't kill him, but it would certainly stun him.

I regretfully dropped the "Reduce BELOW 0" thing and turned it to "Reduce to 0" to ignore, so that my players would remember. If I had it as "Reduce BELOW 0", I'd round toward DR on the armor, not Stun Conversion.

If you are rolling a damage save against Stun damage, and you roll a natural 1, it's treated as Lethal damage.

And crits have their normal crit ranges and multipliers. x2 = +3 damage, x3 = +6 damage, and the rare x4 scythe does +9 damage on a crit, which is extremely ugly.

I also made some changes to feats and talents, which should be obvious -- Tough Hero talents got a makeover, with Second Wind allowing you to recover from hits.

The final big change was to keep the grittiness and nastiness -- in M&M, Stun hits only give you penalties to Stun damage, and Lethal hits give you penalties to all Damage Saves. In my game, Stun hits give you penalties to all damage saves... and lethal hits give you penalties to every darn roll of the d20. So when you have 4 lethal hits, you're a bloody sad mess. You can spend an Action Point to ignore the "every darn roll" penalty for half your level in rounds, plus one -- the Bruce Willis "with my last ounce of strength, I heroically do the stuff I couldn't do a minute ago because I'm a bloody wreck" move.

Anyway, hope this helps!

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

The unfortunate fact of it is that, M&M style, there's about 3 damage categories for firearms. +3, +4, +5.

I've thought about moving damage save over to Modern, but it would need a new, larger, save progression to really make it work. The M&M save and damage system is built to scale up to superheroes, and the low ends are really sort of fuzzy. UA roughly converts damage codes to +1 per 5 points of damage. If that were averaged, most firearms would deal +1 (2d6 average of 7) or +2 (2d8 {9}, 2d10 {11}, 2d12 {13}). Taking max damage of each weapon gets you a little more variation with the formula: +2 (2d6), +3 (2d8), +4 (2d10), +5 (2d12).

But, as you can see, by assuming that the Str bonus of a melee weapon is also the damage bonus, that puts firearms at a pretty significant disadvantage.

The M&M damage bonus and save system was built on a Power Level assumption with a 25% breakdown in all successful equal-PL hits doing No Damage / Hit / Stun / Unc. This works great when all damage comes from a super-power or character and scales with level, but level-independant items like guns don't scale with the characters making a +6 rifle very leathal if you build on PL1 or less than average if you build on PL 10.

The sweet spot for guns is where Nocturnals is at, around PL 5 to PL 7. That's not alot of room to work with, though, as far as character advancement goes. Even then, it's quite possible to work yourself up to being nigh immune to weapons.

--fje

 

[Angel Tarragon]

post deleted by user.

 

[Von Ether]

Check out the Nocturnals book for M&M. It's a "Hellboy" style game, with additonal rules for guns, ammo and how to play a lower level M&M game. If you switch out the cuthulu stuff for a more fey and fantasy feel, you should be able to pull it off. They have a "Halloween" girl, so it can't be that far off.

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10290.phtml

My own personal guide lines that worked so far were:
PL 6 or 5.

Super atts bought at +2 cap

Skills are 2/1 PP

Most super powers need to be bougth through devices.

Front Loaded Superpowers like invisbilty and incorpreal are banned.

 

[RangerWickett]

Actually, I agree with some of the sentiments from earlier in this thread, and I'm going to just go with D20 Modern, using a variant Elements of Magic spell system.

 

[Von Ether]

Actually, I agree with some of the sentiments from earlier in this thread, and I'm going to just go with D20 Modern, using a variant Elements of Magic spell system.

In that case, if you need extra copies of 20 Modern for your players, look up Mongoose's pocket guides. They're $20.