M&M2e: No HP!? What were they thinking?

[HeapThaumaturgist]

I thought this was a comedy thread, at first.

Color me baffled by the heated response, I guess.

Heck, I've never even bothered to READ the HP conversion rules. Everybody I've ever played with rapidly took to damage saves. They're not the be-all/end-all, but made M&M very much M&M.

--fje

 

[Teflon Billy]

I thought this was a comedy thread, at first.

Color me baffled by the heated response, I guess.

Heck, I've never even bothered to READ the HP conversion rules. Everybody I've ever played with rapidly took to damage saves. They're not the be-all/end-all, but made M&M very much M&M.

Ditto that.

I'm kind of shocked not just at the bitching, but at the moral outrage at the "offense" Green Ronin has served up to HP Gamers.

I mean, come on...

If you care so much about this topic, I can only think that it's because that's the rules you played with in M&M 1E...meaning you have the book.

I suspect that the alternate HP rules haven't changed in their utility all that much seeing as the major change to 1E's Damage Save was having it's name changed to "Toughness Save".

Mechanically it hasn't changed (I don't think...maybe kenson can set me straight if I am wrong there), and such strident hand-to-forehead complaints are just making you look like, yes, drama queens.

I have M&M 2E and it is an incredible product.

 

[buzz]

What Heap and TB said. The whole premise of this thread is wacked.

Par for the course for gaming fora, though.

 

[Elric]

Regardless half our group refuses to play Damage Save becuase they are married to HPs. They think it's "Fing Retarded" (to use another quote) to hit your opponent, maybe even crit... and then deal no damage.

I think Teflon Billy's response said almost everything that needs to be said.

Let me add a response to this particular statement

M&M damage is fundamentally different from hit points because hit points are generally continuous while damage in M&M is discrete.

In D&D you continue to count 1 damage against a character with 50 HP, even though it hardly matters at all. In M&M there are only a few possible results so you wouldn't even consider that an attack that dealt damage. Let's say your character has 50 HP in D&D. Imagine that attacks against your character in D&D do 1, 5, 15, 30 or 50 damage. This is a feature of M&M: the variance of M&M attack damage is much greater than the variance of D&D attack damage.

In fact, this is a general property of continuous functions versus discrete functions on the same interval. The variance of a Uniform(0,1) random variable is 1/12. The variance of a random variable that has a 1/3 chance to be each of {0, 0.5, 1} is 1/6. Both have the same mean, 1/2.

How would you categorize these damage results in M&M terms? I'd say that it would be something like:

Making your toughness save is equivalent to taking 1 dmg
Missed toughness save by 1-5: 5 dmg
Missed toughness save by 6-10: 15 damage
Missed toughness save by 11-15: 30 damage
Missed toughness save by 16+: 50 damage.

A similar attack in D&D would have to deal 1d30-3 damage (min=0) to have this kind of variance. Good luck finding a d30!

 

[billd91]

I confess to scratching my head at the moral outrage of the complaint as well. It's not like GR is beholden to the gamers to provide that particular variant rule, particularly when most of the M&M players undoubtedly find the damage save (now toughness save) a better fit with superhero styling anyway.

After wrapping my brain around the damage save in M&M1, I never gave hit points a thought.
For the players who think the game is unplayable with out hit points, have you TRIED playing with the damage save? I find it streamlines things a great deal. And yes, there are times when you try to hit something in a supers game and even though it would obliterate a mundane person on the street, it won't do a blessed thing to a hero. Just like in the comic books.

 

[jdrakeh]

And if you really must, well, the rules are there in your 1e copy.

Which begs the question 'If you like the way 1e does things, why buy 2e if it does them differently?' (and just so you know, this isn't a hypothetical question, but one that I've heard many people ask). From everything that I've read in general discussion forums (i.e, forums not overrun by diehard GR supporters) and heard in various IRC chats devoted to supers gaming, it sounds as though the loss of the Super Unicorn iconics and the shift away from a tool-kit approach in the core rulebook may cost GR some sales.

Personally, while I miss the Super Unicorn artwork, its disappearance isn't a deal breaker for me - but the artwork that replaced it was the first thing to make me rethink the purchase of 2e (a lot of it is poorly digitalized and the proportions are very wrong in other pieces). The big thing that has kept me away so far is the reputed cutting back on options (the aforementioned shift away from a tool-kit approach). Even Champions at its most sparse was still a tool kit system that was loaded with options.

I'm seriously considering sticking with 1e, myself - but I won't count 2e out just yet. I really haven't seen any true reviews or thorough critiques of 2e yet, so have nothing solid to go on past the preview material. I want to wait until reviews start rolling in before I finalize my decision on which version to stick with.

 

[Denaes]

Ditto that.

I'm kind of shocked not just at the bitching, but at the moral outrage at the "offense" Green Ronin has served up to HP Gamers.

I mean, come on...

If you care so much about this topic, I can only think that it's because that's the rules you played with in M&M 1E...meaning you have the book.

I suspect that the alternate HP rules haven't changed in their utility all that much seeing as the major change to 1E's Damage Save was having it's name changed to "Toughness Save".

Mechanically it hasn't changed (I don't think...maybe kenson can set me straight if I am wrong there), and such strident hand-to-forehead complaints are just making you look like, yes, drama queens.

I agree, which is why I said as much.

I have M&M 2E and it is an incredible product.

Can't agree there because I've only skimmed through and seen the artwork...

I assume you're right and even the vast majority of people would thing it's superior in every way to 1e. From what I've heard, art aside, I hear it's a superior Superhero RPG.

I can't say wether I like it one way or another until I play it though. Since we plan on using it for Supers, I hope it'll be fine.

 

[Denaes]

I think Teflon Billy's response said almost everything that needs to be said.

Let me add a response to this particular statement

M&M damage is fundamentally different from hit points because hit points are generally continuous while damage in M&M is discrete.

In D&D you continue to count 1 damage against a character with 50 HP, even though it hardly matters at all. In M&M there are only a few possible results so you wouldn't even consider that an attack that dealt damage. Let's say your character has 50 HP in D&D. Imagine that attacks against your character in D&D do 1, 5, 15, 30 or 50 damage. This is a feature of M&M: the variance of M&M attack damage is much greater than the variance of D&D attack damage.

In fact, this is a general property of continuous functions versus discrete functions on the same interval. The variance of a Uniform(0,1) random variable is 1/12. The variance of a random variable that has a 1/3 chance to be each of {0, 0.5, 1} is 1/6. Both have the same mean, 1/2.

How would you categorize these damage results in M&M terms? I'd say that it would be something like:

Making your toughness save is equivalent to taking 1 dmg
Missed toughness save by 1-5: 5 dmg
Missed toughness save by 6-10: 15 damage
Missed toughness save by 11-15: 30 damage
Missed toughness save by 16+: 50 damage.

A similar attack in D&D would have to deal 1d30-3 damage (min=0) to have this kind of variance.

I (and the rest of my group) fully understand the different concepts of DR (now TS) vs HP.

They wouldn't want to play in game where you can hit & crit and still not deal damage - or die/ko in one hit.

The semantics of the DR rule really rub some people off because they feel they're being cheated. It's the way it's described as a solid hit, but just not affecting the target in any damaging way because they saved.

Funnily enough the same people I know don't mind in the least a game where you roll to hit and the defender gets a dodge/defense roll.

It's all in the concept of how you view it in your minds eye.

I see it as basically the same thing just done with a different goal. HP forces a measured decline, preventing both premature deaths and limiting the amount of hits you can take. DS bypasses that measured aspect and declines randomly slower or faster, allowing 1 hit kills or someone to take 10 solid hits before dying.

To take it a step further, to blow your mind on gamers and their logic, with the same group I'm running Spycraft 2.0, which uses Damage Saves for mooks, but not named villains. They havn't said a single word against it in that game and it would be dead easy to give the mooks Wounds/Vitality if they bitched about it. ::shrugs::

My best guess is that they don't like damage saves with PCs or special characters?

Good luck finding a d30!

3 players have d30's and the gaming store we game in has 4 for sale right now in the dice counter.

If we ever needed one (or a d24!?) we'd be set.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I have not tried M&M (1 or 2) - but I have used True 20 which also has the damage save concept.

In play it works well, and players still cheer when the crit the bad guy, putting him down with a single well placed blow blow, and still groan when the next bad guy returns the favor. Best to get the players to realize that it is not a straight D20 game, just a game that uses a D20 (and has a number of similar rules).

As for why it was left out... maybe it just wasn't getting used?

The Auld Grump

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Note that I'm a big fan of hit points. However, if there is any genre that hit points don't fit, it's the superhero genre.