Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Doug McCrae" data-source="post: 5206409" data-attributes="member: 21169">Eberron's action points, at least in 3e (I'm not familiar with 4e Eberron), don't let you take heroic actions like swinging from chandeliers or running up a dinosaur's back, a considerable flaw imo. They just give you +1d6 to d20 rolls. That's not going to be anything like enough if the PC doesn't have jumping/tumbling/etc. As far as I can see, Savage Worlds bennies are much the same, they just let you take a reroll, or avoid damage, but they don't let you do action movie stuff, unless your character could do that already.Hero points in M&amp;M are potentially much more open-ended, so GM fiat does come into play there. They can also be used to give bonuses, +10 and a reroll when applied to a d20 roll, so they're significantly more powerful than those in Eberron.Another aspect of GM fiat with M&amp;M's hero points is that they are actually awarded when the GM chooses to use fiat. For example if a PC takes out a boss villain on the first action of round one, the GM can declare the villain safe and award the PC's player a hero point. Likewise if the GM simply declared all the PCs captured so he could run his death trap scenario, all players would get a hero point.I never did the 'keeping the villain standing' thing when I ran M&amp;M as it seemed an abuse of GM power. And, more seriously it just seemed to be papering over a big crack in the system, which should have stronger, or more obvious, mechanical means for keeping a BBEG up in the early rounds.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Doug McCrae, post: 5206409, member: 21169"] Eberron's action points, at least in 3e (I'm not familiar with 4e Eberron), don't let you take heroic actions like swinging from chandeliers or running up a dinosaur's back, a considerable flaw imo. They just give you +1d6 to d20 rolls. That's not going to be anything like enough if the PC doesn't have jumping/tumbling/etc. As far as I can see, Savage Worlds bennies are much the same, they just let you take a reroll, or avoid damage, but they don't let you do action movie stuff, unless your character could do that already. Hero points in M&M are potentially much more open-ended, so GM fiat does come into play there. They can also be used to give bonuses, +10 and a reroll when applied to a d20 roll, so they're significantly more powerful than those in Eberron. Another aspect of GM fiat with M&M's hero points is that they are actually awarded when the GM chooses to use fiat. For example if a PC takes out a boss villain on the first action of round one, the GM can declare the villain safe and award the PC's player a hero point. Likewise if the GM simply declared all the PCs captured so he could run his death trap scenario, all players would get a hero point. I never did the 'keeping the villain standing' thing when I ran M&M as it seemed an abuse of GM power. And, more seriously it just seemed to be papering over a big crack in the system, which should have stronger, or more obvious, mechanical means for keeping a BBEG up in the early rounds. [/QUOTE]

Verification