Stunlock in Mutants & Masterminds!

[MortalPlague]

The new DC Adventures announcement got me thinking about Mutants & Masterminds again. I ran this game for my group a little while back, and while it was fun, I ran into a problem with the damage system. It seemed that bad guys would either be bruised, which is a rather small penalty to future toughness saves, or stunned, which is pretty crippling. Once a villain became stunned, usually one or two PCs would beat on them to re-stun them, and keep doing that round after round until they got knocked out.

Sure, there is a rule that they can "shake it off", handing out a hero point to everyone in the process. But then my players wind up with tons of hero points, which they can use to continue pounding the villain. Also, it's annoying for my players if none of their hard work sticks to the target.

Has anyone else found this to be a problem? Is there something I'm missing as far as stunning rules and breaking stuns?

 

[arwink]

The hero point you're giving out should only go to the hero whose stun result you're reversing rather than the whole group. It's not a huge change, but it does make a difference and the payoff for that single character not having an effect on that attack is the chance to do something spectacular and fight-finishing when they spend the point.

 

[Stormonu]

Minions and associates.

If the party is working as a teamed-up group, so should the villains. Someone who is outnumbered is always at a disadvantage and any sort of assistance they have to keep from getting ganged-up on should help keep characters from easily stunning and mass wailing on the bad guy. The associates need not be full-fledged supervillains; just someone who can help take the pressure off the supervillain so he can actually take a few actions or have a moment to recover from a stunning effect.

 

[Doug McCrae]

You can give them Immunity to Stun. I reserve this for brick types (Hulk, Thing, Juggernaut and the like). It's not in the rules but on the boards the designer, Steve Kenson, mentioned it, giving it a cost of 10 points.

You can give your bad guys any immunity you want - staggered, disabled, even injured, bruised and unconscious (though I would be wary of using the last three). I once used a villain who was immune to all physical, energy and mental attacks. The PCs beat him using the speedster's suffocate power.

Stun is generally regarded is occurring too frequently in M&M, it's particularly annoying for the players, so you might consider altering the damage chart. One possibility would be to replace staggered with stunned.

 

[MortalPlague]

Stun is generally regarded is occurring too frequently in M&M, it's particularly annoying for the players, so you might consider altering the damage chart. One possibility would be to replace staggered with stunned.

I considered taking a page from 4th edition D&D and using the "Dazed" condition instead. Limited to one action can still be pretty serious, but only for one round. Then it escalates to stunned instead of staggered (or perhaps they're paired?).

Minions are a good call, though I find my players tend to ignore them in favor of keeping the dangerous one stunlocked. One of my more successful battles involved a small evil super team, though, so having a number of opponents is definitely a good idea.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

One thing that occured to me - it might be to "metagamey" for you, but maybe not: Create a "temporary stun resistance/immunity" that applies after the target has been stunned once. It doesn't have to last longer than one round, but it means that "stunlocking" specifically is not possible, but stunning is still a worthwile trick. The most basic approach is just to say that you can't be stunned while you are stunned, and if the stun ends at the start of a creature's turn, you can't be "stunlocked".

 

[Elric]

You can give them Immunity to Stun. I reserve this for brick types (Hulk, Thing, Juggernaut and the like). It's not in the rules but on the boards the designer, Steve Kenson, mentioned it, giving it a cost of 10 points.

Steve Kenson suggested at least 10 points. I'd say that 20 pp for Immunity to Stunned results from Toughness-saves is a reasonable cost.

Stun is generally regarded is occurring too frequently in M&M, it's particularly annoying for the players, so you might consider altering the damage chart. One possibility would be to replace staggered with stunned.

Ganging up on stunned character is counter-genre, but very effective. One solution is to make stunned less of a penalty; e.g., Stunned could be -2 Defense and unable to take actions (but not loss of Dodge bonus), in which case there would be much less incentive to gang up on a stunned target.

Also, as previously mentioned, only one character should get a hero point when you shake off a stun for a villain. If this leads to too much of a "rich get richer" effect, consider the following option due to Paragon on M&M's official boards.

2. Hero Point Rotation: Currently, the rules of assignment for GM fiat usage gives the hero point to the character most effected; instead of this, pick a random character to start with, and go through rotation (e.g., clockwise by where the player is sitting) amongst the characters as hero points are given out. This avoids the problem of some characters reaping a disproportionate amount because of operating procedure. Hero Points for complications or things like being knocked unconscious should be assigned normally. (Thanks to the Rubber Baron for this idea; he’s used it in his New Golden Age campaign, and I think its worked splendidly).