MnM Damage Save Fiddling

[DanMcS]

The damage save in mutants and masterminds is wonky. There's four categories of result on a single d20 roll; this gives wildly varying results on your roll, and very narrow ranges for those results. You typically have a 25% chance of taking a hit, a 25% chance of being stunned, and the rest divided up between a knock-out result and being absolutely fine.

For instance, if your damage save equals their damage bonus, you get the following results on a d20 roll:
1-4: KO
5-9: Stunned and take a hit
10-14: Take a hit
15-20: No damage.

What this tends to result in is long combats where characters take either a hit or no damage on an attack, or else spend a hero point to reroll if they got a KO result. Once they are out of hero points, they go down rapidly.

The problem here is if a PC is out of hero points, he's really screwed. One bad roll and he's out for a minute.

What I'd like to do is increase the damage category width from 5 to 10, like so:
Damage Save DC = 20 + damage.

If you make the save, no damage.
If you fail, you take a hit.
If you fail by more than 10, you are stunned and take a hit.
If you fail by more than 20, you are unconscious.

Comparing equal damage bonuses and save bonuses, a flat d20 roll:
1-9: stun+hit.
10-19: hit.
20: no damage.

(You can't be KOed on this hit, you need to roll a -1 on a d20 for that. So until a few rounds of successful damage have passed, the enemy isn't going down.)

This makes the "stun+hit" and "hit" results more likely (95% instead of 50%), and the "KO" and "no damage" results much less likely. Combat should become more consistent. Very few hits should result in no damage, which is always frustrating as a player- you finally hit the villain, he rolls high on his damage save, and it was all for naught. But there shouldn't be any one-round KOs (unless your damage is much higher than their save bonus).

This takes hero points out of damage saves, where they were needed to cover up the narrow damage categories, and lets them be used for inspiration, extra effort, adding stunts or extras to a power, and all the other cool things they're supposed to be useful for but rarely are because players know they'll need them for damage saves

 

[whydirt]

Your alternative is mechanically fair, but I feel like it would drag combat out. If this is what you want, then by all means go for it. Players are still likely to save at least a couple HP for poor damage save rolls. Personally I like my combats to by short and exciting, not so that there's less combat, but so that I can go through combat to get to even more combat!

The 25% for each damage category is intentional and mirrors comic book action rather well in my opinion. You're worried about situations where Heroes run out of Hero Points, but I don't see how this is a problem. Heroes should be worried when they're almost down and out. Those Heroes who want to fiddle more often with dramatic editing and extra effort can take the feat that grants extra HP.

Finally, I might look into some of the alternative Hero Point rules in MnM Annual #1, where characters can regain HP when they're KO'd by opponents or voluntarily accept a roll of a 1 on a save. This is supposed to emulate comics where the Heroes suffers initial setbacks but use the experience to triumph in the end.

edit: I forgot that there are alternate damage systems in the Annual as well. One suggestion in the book is to offer 1-hit insurance, where the first hit against any non-mook character can only result in a "hit" result at max, any stun or KO is treated as a basic hit.

Best of luck to you, regardless of what way you go.

 

[DanMcS]

Your alternative is mechanically fair, but I feel like it would drag combat out.

You think? It makes instant KO less likely, but makes taking damage /more/ likely, since it's much harder to successfully save vs damage, you'll probably take at least a hit every time. I'm going to have to playtest it to figure if it actually works out about the same, timewise.

edit: I forgot that there are alternate damage systems in the Annual as well. One suggestion in the book is to offer 1-hit insurance, where the first hit against any non-mook character can only result in a "hit" result at max, any stun or KO is treated as a basic hit.

I see that as a patch to the same problem I'm recognizing, that it's too possible for one hit to take out an opponent. Hero points are the same kind of patch, really; they make one-hit knockouts less likely. If the damage save system didn't make one-hit KOs so likely in the first place, you wouldn't need hero points or '1-hit insurance' to prevent them.

I do really need to pick up the annual, though. I wonder if they sell it as a pdf, hmm.

 

[whydirt]

You think? It makes instant KO less likely, but makes taking damage /more/ likely, since it's much harder to successfully save vs damage, you'll probably take at least a hit every time. I'm going to have to playtest it to figure if it actually works out about the same, timewise.

You might want to stop by the official MnM boards at Green Ronin's website. You'd likely find people who've used alternate damage saves in-game and could get more feedback than I can give. Honestly it can't hurt to try your method and see what works best for you and your players.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

We had some problems with Hero Points in the begining with M&M. They're very much a renewable resource and the combat system is designed around being very give-and-take with HP playing a major role in keeping the characters from being knocked out. Fiddling with the save means the number of action points and how fast they refresh will be thrown out of balance.

--fje