M&M 2nd Edition: Underwhelmed?

[ZombieButch]

true. but it helped that in m&m1 you had a bit of text that explained the prosess they usualy used when creating a new power.

define effects, count them, base cost found. then apply the extras and stuff.

I don't see this as being substantially more useful advice than "compare to an existing power and price accordingly" for the initial pricing of a power, as it's not exactly clear in many cases what constitutes an effect.

and i need a bit of clearification done on the alternate power stuff. is it kinda like the same stuff in 1ed, only now defined as a true generic power stunt with rules and all?

I buy Power X, and spend 20 points on it. For a 1 point Alternate Power Feat, I can purchase any other power - Power Y - as an alternate to Power X. Power Y can cost no more than 20 points, and I can't use Power X and Power Y at the same time. You can buy as many Alternate Power Feats as you like, until the GM throws something at you and tells you to cut it out.

That's it in a nutshell.

and if so: how do they do stuff like cosmic power now? split them up in seperate powers with the same power source or something?

You'd probably buy all your attack powers as Alternates off of Cosmic Energy Control, then have a separate Fly and Force Field (just as examples) as their own powers, yep.

Conversely, if you wanted to do someone like Ultra Boy from the LSH, you'd buy all of his powers in a single array of Alternate Powers, so he'd only ever be able to use them one at a time.

 

[hobgoblin]

alternate power existed in 1ed to, known as a secondary effect. a 2 point power stunt...

same rules applyed there (alltho it was never realy spelled out in the book).

thing is i kinda liked the extra effect stuff, from a flavor point of view. rather then have x number of powers hooked into a single power source, i had one power that could do a lot of stuff. kinda like the ring of green lantern (basicly cosmic power in a ring)...

sure it was kinda messy (like what happens if a extra the base power, does it carry over to the sub-powers?). and it allowed people to shave of a point pr level, pr power. so, whack em in the head if they keep pulling that move

but i guess it was simpler just to split them up into seperate powers.

alltho i think they could have just said: "here is the blast power, it can come in a number of flavors. each flavor have to be bought as a seperate power". no need to spell out each freaking power just because it maybe have a diffrent apperance.

this would have condensed the text and left room for more stuff...

as for seperating effects, sure it a tough one. but eyeballing the cost based on other powers can be just the same. atleast with the text you have some general idea of what to look for when setting the cost. trying to eyeball it you have no clue what so ever why they made power 1 have this cost and power 2 that cost.

still, the number of times you have to make up a power from scratch is limited. most often its a existing power with a diffrent fx.

want to trow pointy bits of ice at someone? blast with a ice FX.

but i still keep thinking that they lobotomized the system in some way. cant put my finger on why tho...

 

[Thomas5251212]

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.

I've been puzzled by this one too. There are only two classes of characters I've run into that I've had problems with in 2e:

1. Power-poolish type open ended characters. A lot of these were a bit problematic in 1e too, and some of those are actually easier now; however the elimination of the Gadgets and Variable Power powers do make some types--less clear. Yes, you can do things with power stunting, but there are issues with what the appropriate limits of that are that come up.

2. Characters that need really fussy fine distinctions. But of course, those were even _harder_ to do in 1e

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.

And more to the point, it created balance and emulation nightmares in lots of places; anyone who could wrap their character around extraing powers off others was capable of getting an immense boost in power over anyone who for conceptual reasons couldn't, and the only balance was present in games with what I refer to as Mad Drainer/Neutralizer GMs. For the emulation problems, consider what happened when someone needed to put a flaw on a power extraed off another, as compared to someone who needed to put a flaw on the whole power set. Either the first couldn't be done, or the second was getting far more limitation for the same savings as the first.

 

[hobgoblin]

the question is if the mechanic could have been reworked so that it would work better...

as it is they did the simple thing and just tossed it out...

so, how do they handle "multipower" drain now?

or for that matter devices like power armor? it used the same basic mechanic and therefor it was somewhat simple to build stuff. just toss together a multipower, slap a device flaw on it and presto.

im guessing that more examples and some basic rethought on how to calculate a multieffect power with flaws on some powers (like saying that applying the same flaw to multiple effects/sub-powers only reduce the cost one time and so on) would have fixed the problems experienced.

sure, there would still be ways to exploit it (like say defining multiple powers with diffrent flaws), but hey, with infinite flexibility comes infinite munchkinism...

 

[Thomas5251212]

or for that matter devices like power armor? it used the same basic mechanic and therefor it was somewhat simple to build stuff. just toss together a multipower, slap a device flaw on it and presto.

Device is a power in and of itself, of the "holds other powers" type; it costs either 3 or 4 points per rank (depending on how easy it is to remove) and yields 5 points of power per rank. From those points you build the device including feats, alternate powers and all.

It's not complicated, and it avoids certain issues with treating Device as a Flaw.

im guessing that more examples and some basic rethought on how to calculate a multieffect power with flaws on some powers (like saying that applying the same flaw to multiple effects/sub-powers only reduce the cost one time and so on) would have fixed the problems experienced.

No. Doing the latter just means that either its not permitted to flaw only part of an extraed power, or flawing the whole thing is an idiots game. Neither are desireable results.

 

[hobgoblin]

not permitted? if i take the same flaw on 2 of 3 sub-powers in my system the cost only get reduced for that one flaw. basicly you get the same reduction if you flaw the whole power or just some of the sub-powers. perfect for concept over munchkin...

any system that allow you to eitehr gain points from picking a flaw, or reduce the cost for getting a flaw will see people that loves to powerplay, try to take as many flaws, that dont affect the main use of the power, as they can (like say only being able to use it at full power and so on)...

cute solution on the device, but i think i like the old way better

 

[Thomas5251212]

not permitted? if i take the same flaw on 2 of 3 sub-powers in my system the cost only get reduced for that one flaw. basicly you get the same reduction if you flaw the whole power or just some of the sub-powers. perfect for concept over munchkin...

Nonsense. All it does is punish one concept over the other. Any system that favors one concept over another does nothing but discourage some concepts by encouraging others. In this case it'd simply discourage people from taking overall flaws on powers, as they'd get the same cost and value if the flaw only applied to one of them.

That's simply bad design, dress it up how you will.

any system that allow you to eitehr gain points from picking a flaw, or reduce the cost for getting a flaw will see people that loves to powerplay, try to take as many flaws, that dont affect the main use of the power, as they can (like say only being able to use it at full power and so on)...

And that's one reason 2e Drawbacks yield much less points than they used to, and many Flaws have turned into Drawbacks. That's _not_ a good reason to treat two different power limitations with significantly different game effects as being worth the same and yielding the same points.

cute solution on the device, but i think i like the old way better

That's an issue of taste, and as such unassailable, but as an issue of taste, all someone can say is "That's nice."

 

[hobgoblin]

That's _not_ a good reason to treat two different power limitations with significantly different game effects as being worth the same and yielding the same points.

huh? are you refering to the list of flaws having diffrent potential effect but gives you -1 on the cost for each flaw?

 

[Thomas5251212]

huh? are you refering to the list of flaws having diffrent potential effect but gives you -1 on the cost for each flaw?

No, I'm talking about the same thing I did before: the fact that 1e had no way to distinguish between a flaw effecting one power in a power set and all of them. It either had to only let you flaw the set once, or let you flaw all of them individually, and the latter was clearly the winning way if permitted.

 

[hobgoblin]

how so, in that you could then reduce the cost by 1 for each sub-power that you could flaw?

two ways to fix that:

- each sub-power have to cost atleast 1 pr level.

- a flaw can only reduce the total cost of the power by 1 pr level, no matter how many sub-powers its applyed to.