Mutants and Masterminds - Move up to 2nd edition?

[Jim Hague]

I played a 1 long running campaign in 1e that covered a number of genres and Power Levels:

• Pulp (PL 5-6)
• Mystery Men (PL 7-8)
• WWII Golden Age (PL 8-9)
• Silver Age (a la Justice League) (PL 10-11)

1st edition worked just fine for all of those settings and Power Levels, and I was especially pleased at how well it worked at the lower end of the scale.

whereas my experience was that it scaled badly to the lower and higher end of the scales, especially regarding powers like Gadgets and Variable Extras.

Right now I am playing in a PL 8 Iron Age game (based on the Villians & Vigilantes universe) and we have converted to 2e. Unfortunately the conversion has not been very smooth for us. In many ways it's the same problem as the conversion from D&D 3e to 3.5. Many little things have been changed about the system. It's basically the same, so you think you know how it works, but when you go to check a rule, you find that it's been changed in a subtle way.

What do I like about 2e?
• For the most part, they got rid of super stats, now you just buy your base stat up to whatever level you want.
• Making 4 skill points per power point official.
• Divorcing Attack and Defense levels from stats (Dex does not make you harder to hit).
• PL trade-offs.
• Flat caps on PL (you can no longer max out your power, stats and feats to go above the campaing PL limit).
• Fixing powers like Invisibilty and Insubstantial.

What I don't like about 2e!
• Damage is needlessly complex now. I much prefer the 1e way of handling it.
• I think I prefer the 1e way of buying powers, although I don't hate the 2e way.
• Feats are too cheap! I don't know why they didn't keep them at 2pts per Feat.
• The way Regeneration works is just odd, too expensive, and generally squirrelly.
• A number of character concepts were more straight forward in 1e, in 2e you need to jump through a few more hoops.

Our group is very tempted to sit down and make a 1.5 edition. We just need to find the time to do it.

Damage hasn't changed at all, except that there's a Toughness save that things like Protection add into. Feats are actually useful now, instead of being point sinks. I won't disagree on Regeneration, but it does work, if differently.

I don't know - my group is enjoying 2e far more than they did in 1e. There's been a few characters that have been slightly sticky in conversion, but beyond needing minor mechanical tweaks, we're extremely satisfied with the system change.

 

[Bront]

My only complaint is that they didn't limit the tradeoffs to -5/+5 (which mathmaticly, anything more is kinda specialized and ugly to deal with).

1st Ed turned me off so much I almost wasn't willing to look at 2E, but now I run Living Supers here in EnWorld, a 2E PbP open game, and I'm working on Jupitor City, a Con living game. It just runs so much smoother, and I've realy had little trouble finding a good fit for a concept.

 

[Henry]

My only complaint is that they didn't limit the tradeoffs to -5/+5 (which mathmaticly, anything more is kinda specialized and ugly to deal with).

In first, or second? In second, the BAB/save and def/toughness is explicitly GM discretion - reread it yesterday.

 

[Plane Sailing]

OK, I capitulated and purchased 2e M&M.

Now I'd better get to run a game of that before 3e comes out OR THERE WILL BE TROUBLE.

'nuff said.

 

[Elric]

What I don't like about 2e!
• Damage is needlessly complex now. I much prefer the 1e way of handling it.
• Feats are too cheap! I don't know why they didn't keep them at 2pts per Feat.
• The way Regeneration works is just odd, too expensive, and generally squirrelly.

By damage being needlessly complex, I think you mean the addition of the staggered condition (which is the major change since 1e). I think this was put there to slow down fights a little.

I don't think feats are too cheap (in fact I like that feats only cost 1 pp!) but I agree that some of the most useful feats (e.g., Power Attack) are too cheap for what they do.

I also agree on Regeneration- it's a very clunky power. One way to make it a little better (and less clunky) is to allow regeneration to cure less severe damage conditions (e.g., bruises before injuries) even if the normal recovery rules wouldn't allow it (and I think that reading regeneration by the book it doesn't give any exception to the normal recovery rules)

 

[hobgoblin]

Powers-as-extras are gone, helping to reign in some of the more over-the-top character builds. Instead, you pay for "extra" powers tacked onto the main power (such as variations of a Blast power) by paying 1pp for the Alternate Power feat, but the trade off is you can't use both powers at the same time, only one or the other.

this was available in 1e to, only it was rarely used...

btw, remind me, how does 2e handle powers like sorcery and cosmic power? or are they now split into their seperate sub-powers and the player just hooking them all up to the same power source?

 

[Asmor]

Ah, crap. I guess now I have to go and get 2e too.

Thanks for all the opinions, all. I'm in the same boat as the first 2 posters, sorta. Have 1e, and only briefly ran one very short game, and I played it a couple years ago at an ENWorld game day. I've been looking for something new to run on the weeks we don't play D&D...

 

[Nightchilde-2]

I think 2e is great, a great improvement over 1e (and I loved 1e). Better rules, everything clarified. Like someone else said, almost all of the problems of 1e have been fixed with 2e. Also, the Masterminds Manual is great as well.

Plus, someone just might be having a sale on 2e this Wednesday, July 5th...

 

[Asmor]

I just picked it up a couple days ago, and I've only had a chance to flip through it a bit. What I've read I've liked a lot. It seems like they cleared up a lot of the ambiguities of the old edition. There's also a nifty history of superhero comics in there, intended as background reference for setting the game in different time periods (golden age, silver age, etc).

I think it was a good upgrade.

 

[Karl Green]

As I am the one who started the V&V meets M&M game let me add...

Damage hasn't changed at all, except that there's a Toughness save that things like Protection add into.

Ah damage has changed in two little, yet important ways...
first the track changed from "failed by more then 5" to "failed by 5 or more"
second there is one more levels of damage (bruised, stunned, staggered, unconscious)

Feats are actually useful now, instead of being point sinks. I won't disagree on Regeneration, but it does work, if differently.

I don't know - my group is enjoying 2e far more than they did in 1e. There's been a few characters that have been slightly sticky in conversion, but beyond needing minor mechanical tweaks, we're extremely satisfied with the system change.

Our problem with Feats is that stuff like Luck, which can be VERY important is soooo cheap that almost no one does NOT take it. Other feats like Evasion are really just "too good"... for 2 points, you can take 1/2 damage from Area Attacks... why buy up Reflex saves?

NOTE that yes, if your players follow the concepts then these "issues" might not be issues for you... but it can be hard to resist.

2nd ed has a lot of GOOD stuff going for it and I think that it is just fine for Superhero games. I REALLY wish that they had not changed little things throughout the book, just for the sake of change because they throw us all the time BUT they are not bad, just different. I also don't like the redundant Powers (i.e. "Weather Control, see Environment Control" what?)

In the end, for me, I like 2nd ed just fine for Superhero gaming and 1st ed for non-supers games (although I like True20 even better for them myself). Power Level limits is a very cool concept in the mid-range of the game (8+) but for lower games I don’t think it works as well. But that is all just my option and all