M&M 2nd Edition: Underwhelmed?

[Jim Hague]

Just the opposite to me, it seems incomplete, they leave out powers and don't bother to give us a way to make the powers for ourselves. The power creation rules were in the 1E book, with the extra 60 pages, it isn't unreasonable to expect the 2E book to include them as well.

Some things were definite upgrades, I wont argue that everything was a bad move, but there are definitely a few downgrades, and that is what makes it feel not so complete. A hybrid of the 2 would be perfect, but if its one or the other, make mine MnM 1st Edition.

Your choice, of course, but I'll happily take the book that provides a ton of villain archetypes, same for hero archetypes and a more extensive Gm's section, plus NPCs. All things that make my life as a GM easier. And with my time at a premium, I place a very high value on making my GMing easier. But hey, why not bring up your concerns with Steve when he gets back on the 7th?

 

[Elric]

No, what I am saying is that if each rank only increased the speed by 5ft it would be fine not to have included it in a chart that already exists. 2E is not that neat, it goes 10mh/25mph/50mph, increasing by VARIABLE multiples each rank. I am not talking about adding in a new chart or anything, I'm talking about adding in an extra column to the existing progression chart for movement powers. An example of a little thing that would have made it feel more complete.

You don't need a new chart. If you really want to be able to tell how many feet a character can go in a single move action, here's a very simple rule that works in every case besides 2 mph.

Look 3 columns farther down on the chart than the movement power would tell you to do to get your miles per hour. This is how you determine feet per round.

The reason why there's no statement like this in the book is that this is harder than adding a 0 to the mph value you get looking at the chart in order to get feet per move action. What you propose wouldn't be more complete: it would be more hassle.

 

[Kylara]

Your choice, of course, but I'll happily take the book that provides a ton of villain archetypes, same for hero archetypes and a more extensive Gm's section, plus NPCs. All things that make my life as a GM easier. And with my time at a premium, I place a very high value on making my GMing easier. But hey, why not bring up your concerns with Steve when he gets back on the 7th?

Right, like I said a hybrid would be perfect, you named the things I like about second edition. My major turn offs are the powers system and movement, if the Powers System isn't up to snuff in a supers game...

 

[Dalamar]

First, I'll preface this whole post with the fact that I don't actually have the 2nd edition book. I've only followed the the previews and other tidbits that have been available on the net.

For example, at 1PP/rank, Deflect allows you to block Slow Moving Projectiles, Fast Moving Projectiles, Energy Attacks, or Mental attacks. At 2pp/Rank you block everything but Mental attacks, but what happens when you fall between the cracks, when you don't want to block energy attacks. Your forced to get the GM to make an arbitrary ruling of how much a cost break not deflecting energy is worth.

I'd be inclined to agree with you here somewhat, except for the fact that you're blaming 2nd edition for creating this problem, whereas it is the same one as in 1st edition. Don't believe me? Crack open your 1st edition book and figure out the cost per rank for Deflection with the following configurations: 1) All ranged attacks 2) All physical ranged attacks 3) Slow projectiles.

Also there are a few powers that were just sort of left out, while redundant powers got included. Sorry, no need to have a shape matter power, we need to have entries for Hellfire control and Electricity control, etc, even though they are just the Blast power with different descriptors. It would have been much more helpful if they had consolidated all the control powers in one place, and then gave a quick line or two about each one then writing all of them up as individual powers. All the tables that the different powers use are like this, big jumps, but what do you do between the cracks?

You complain that Hellfire Control and Electricity Control are just variant Blast powers, yet in the same sentence you want them to include a variant (limited?) Transform?

No, what I am saying is that if each rank only increased the speed by 5ft it would be fine not to have included it in a chart that already exists. 2E is not that neat, it goes 10mh/25mph/50mph, increasing by VARIABLE multiples each rank.

It's not really that variable. It multiplies by 10 every three ranks. So the per rank is x2, x2.5, x2 ad infinitum.
And are you really telling me that the super-speed for 1st edition movement was easier to remember? For normal running it was (30+5xrank) as a move action, then multiplied (2^rank)x4 ft. when running as a as a full-round action. For other modes, you need to drop the 30 from the first brackets. That's easier to remember than 50x(10 per 3 ranks) ft as a move action, x4 as a full-round action?

Regarding power creation rules, it was my understanding that unless you're looking for a really obscure power, there's already a way to build it using the powers that are in the 2nd edition book. With the caveat that what might be described as a single power doesn't actually have to be built as ranks in a single power.

 

[Kylara]

For the deflects, thats easy:
1)All ranged: 2PP
2)Physical Ranged: 1PP
3)Slow Projectiles: 1PP

Powers can't go below 1pp/rank in 1E, so its perfectly clear what those are. In 2E thats not exactly clear because in the above cases for 2E:

1)All Ranged: 3PP
2)Physical Ranged: Uhh...between 2 and 3 PP a rank
3)Slow Projectiles: 1PP

The problem is that there is that uncertainty.

You complain that Hellfire Control and Electricity Control are just variant Blast powers, yet in the same sentence you want them to include a variant (limited?) Transform?

It was just an example, but its not a part of transform at any level that I can tell and it was a seperate power in 1E. My problem is that in creating 2 characters, I have fallen into the cracks in the system both times. I'd like to point out that you should probably read the book before you try and refute the criticisms of someone who has, the previews don't inlcude everything.

Before I get hosed down by MnM Fanboi's I want to reiterate that I do love MnM 1E, its not that I hate the game because I hate anything not DnD, I hate Some of the Changes from 1E to 2E, because having played with them, they don't work as well, they aren't improvements.

 

[arwink]

I've been running a 2e game for a while now, and by far the biggest thing that I missed from 1e was the ability to work out the cost for character's power in my head. These days I need a rule-book to properly work out what a characters should cost, and that bugged me for a long time.

Then, about three or four weeks ago, I worked out that I didn't actually need to know the cost of a villains powers to determine PL anymore, which cleaned things up a little. It now takes me less time to put a villain together for a session than it ever has before, since it's largely a case of putting numbers on the page and working out the averages for a few effects.

This, to me, is the trade-off of 2e - doing a character by the book takes longers. Much longer. But I've discovered that it's largely only a real problem when you're putting together the PC's in the early stages of the campaign and when you're putting together bad guys for publication - the rest of the time things flow fairly quickly. Combinine this with the rest of the changes, which I'm fairly tickled with, and 2e becomes one of my favorite system re-writes ever.

As for the half-complete feeling - I suspect that's because they now had two books to put together the system where they once crammed it into one. They can now do the core game, and the Masterminds Manual will cover the rest. While I'm sure Green Ronin would refute the Players Handbook/DMG analogy, that's largely the way I'm looking at it at the moment.

 

[Elric]

For the deflects, thats easy:
1)All ranged: 2PP
2)Physical Ranged: 1PP
3)Slow Projectiles: 1PP

Powers can't go below 1pp/rank in 1E, so its perfectly clear what those are..

If what you say about the 1e costs is correct (I don't remember if it is at this point) then in 1e you could get All Physical Ranged Projectiles for the same cost as all Slow Projectiles.

Why would anyone ever take Slow Projectiles in 1e when they could get All Physical Ranged, which already includes slow projectiles, for the same price?

In that sense, 1e didn't give you the option to pay 1 pp for Deflect: Slow Projectiles. It gave you the option to pay 1 pp for the ability to Deflect Physical Ranged Attacks and if you felt like limiting the power to no benefit you could do that as well.

Well, you can still do that! Take the 2 pp (all projectiles, plus energy attacks) version of Deflect and decide that your character can't Deflect Energy Attacks. Like the Slow Projectiles 1e deflection you don't get any pp for this limitation but if you were fine with it in 1e it shouldn't be much of a problem now.

 

[Dalamar]

Elric caught on to what I meant with with my guestion on figuring the 1e costs of Deflect. Personally, if somebody I was playing with wanted to Deflect only physical ranged attacks, I'd probably treat it as Power Loss drawback (which, I believe, gives 1 + 1PP for each power affected provided the sitation when the loss occurs is common) or a Complication, handing out a HP whenever the character would have greatly benefited from being able to deflect energy attacks.
Since MnM uses so low amounts of points to build characters, it just isn't possible to cost everything 100% accurately. I've heard many people say that Defensive Roll just isn't quite worth the 1PP you have to pay for it, but it would be too cheap it if gave a +2 bonus too.

And the Shape Matter/Transform is purely based on the fact that the 1e to 2e conversion note document gives that pairing. I have no idea how the 2e Transform works, but apparently that's the power to use.

And I agree with you Kylara, there's no point to answering criticism when I myself haven't read the book. It just so happened that you were referring to things I believed I had a decent grasp of. But my FLGS has no idea when they'll be getting the book, and I currently lack the means to order it online short of borrowing somebody else's credit card (and I don't really like that idea, just doesn't sit too well with me).

And last but not least and completely off-topic. Love your Avatar, Kylara. Hinata's great.

 

[jdrakeh]

As a tool-kit system, M&M 2e completely underwhelms me - dropping most of the customization options from the core book and opting instead to release them in the Mastermind's guide really divorces M&M from the tool-kit concept. That said...

As a straight-up supers game, M&M 2e really impressed me. I think that it is a lot more focused on emulating the conventions of four-color comic books than M&M 1e was. It's simply unfortunate that this focus came at the loss of options in the core book.

In the end, I feel that M&M has essentially pulled a reverse Hero - where Champions 4e went from a supers-only system with some customzation options tacked on, to being a true multi-genre tool-kit system in FRED; M&M 1e seems to have gone from a true tool-kit system, to being a supers-only system with customization options tacked on in M&M 2e.

That's not necessarily bad, but if customization is what you most dig in a supers system, M&M 2e will likely leave you feeling underwhelmed (especially if you already own M&M 1e).

 

[arscott]

But now there's the true20 system for all your generic toolkit-type needs, right?