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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 1757790" data-attributes="member: 5171">Hey, Heap!  Sorry your game was lousy.  I actually had my first live M&M session a week ago, and it was fantastic.  If you don't mind, I'd like to examine where things were different:- I ran a game that I quite literally made up on the spot.  I had mooks robbing a bank, and then I had a brick and a flying blaster robbing a high-tech research lab.  Not exactly Shakespeare, as plots go, but my group liked it.- I had the players come up with their own concepts, and then I built them on the spot (rapidly).  I minmaxed heartlessly but simplistically.  Energy Blast?  +10.  Protection?  +10.  Great.  Done!  Next!  And so on.- I did the same with the bad guys.  I didn't even really stat the brick or the blaster.  I just wrote down their physical stats, gave the Brick +10 in Super-Strength and Natural Weapon (which, I know, don't stack -- it was for flavor), as well as Regeneration and Protection.  I gave the Blaster a good defense and Reflex save (and evasion), and a fire attack with the Area, Stun, and Dazzle extras.  Pretty much a minmaxed nasty attack.  Truly ugly.Then my guys' PCs threw down.  They enjoyed the heck out of things.  At Protection 10 versus Strike (or Super-Strength or Energy Blast) 10, people were making those damage saves for low damage amounts a lot of the time -- and everybody took 1 or 2 hits.  Nobody immediately got disabled, as happened with you.  Also, I'd minmaxed my PCs' characters by giving them (with their permission) the Sacred Combat Feats: Power Attack, Accurate Attack, Combat Expertise, All-Out Attack, Rapid Attack, Move-By Attack.  You might not need every one of those, but every comic-book hero needs a few of 'em.  Power Attack is fantastic when you know that you're fighting someone who's easy to hit (like, say, a brick), and it's not limited to melee attacks.  You can power attack with your blaster rifle -- it just means that you're going full-auto or tightening your beam or something like that.  Accurate Attack is great for hitting speedsters that one critical time.  All-Out Attack is awesome for the comic-book trope of "I'm leaving myself fully exposed, devoting everything to striking at the cost of my own defense".  Move-By and Rapid Attack are just tactically intelligent.Maybe my team had better luck than yours -- or maybe they just enjoyed playing their own characters.  If this turns into a regular game in this world, I'm definitely un-min-maxing them ("Okay, explain to me why you have a BAB of +10.  How is that part of your concept?  Are you special forces or a lifelong martial artist or what?") and making sure that my bad guys are appropriate.This is to say: If you tell your players "Okay, nobody should have max'd out Energy Blast or Protection unless that's their CORE concept -- if you're a speedster who ALSO throws energy blasts, that energy blast shouldn't be at +10," then you shouldn't give them a bad guy with +10 Protection.  That's just not going to work.  It sounds like part of your game problem was that you used the (non-minmaxed) archetype characters against your hastily made homebrews -- and the homebrews you hastily made were minmaxed, because it's a heck of a lot easier to just slap +10 onto the relevant powers than it is to go "Well, I feel this one should be at +7, and this extra should be flawed to only +3, and..."  Also, you gave them a foe who had attacks none of them could counter (mental stuff).  You wouldn't send a Blaster with Mental Protection and massive Area Attack powers (Damage, with the Stun, Snare, Dazzle, and Fatigue extras, for example) against a party of PCs who are all mentalists.  That's... not gonna be pretty.  It's gonna be FAST, but it's not gonna be pretty.Dunno.  Mostly thinking out loud.  (I thought about giving my guys a mentalist, and then said, "Hm... nobody with any Will save worth mentioning... that wouldn't be fun for them," and decided not to.)  Any of that help?</blockquote>

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