Other D&D Variant Warriors and Warlocks: Mutants and Masterminds vs D&D

[Indagare Nogitsune]

One thing I keep thinking is how nice Mutants and Masterminds is in terms of character customization. It's easy to make an archetype fit nearly any idea a player may have. By way of contrast, it's very hard to customize in D&D. Certainly there are subclasses and other features, but I'm not sure it ever reaches the same level of easy customization. More usually people have to multiclass to get what they want and even then it rarely fits the concept well because of how the system works.

Of course, it's also impossible to translate characters from one to the other, even with Warriors and Warlocks having a more D&D-style twist. It might be nice if there were a way or if D&D lent itself better to a point-buy system, but would it even be D&D if it were?

If folks have played both systems could comment, I'd really love to know what you think.

 

[kronovan]

I've only sat down to Warriors & Warlocks for M&M a handful of times. I liked it, though I found PCs to be fairly high on the power curve in terms of characters for the types of Fantasy genres D&D embraces. What I've played an GMd a lot however, is True20 which shares the same DNA and a number of similarities to M&M - created by the same TTRPG developer. I definitely prefer T20 for playing and running those Fantasy genres.

....Of course, it's also impossible to translate characters from one to the other, even with Warriors and Warlocks having a more D&D-style twist. It might be nice if there were a way or if D&D lent itself better to a point-buy system, but would it even be D&D if it were?

If folks have played both systems could comment, I'd really love to know what you think.

Since the release of M&M 1e, there's been 3 editions of D&D - 5 if you count sub edtions like 3.5 and 2024. The ease of conversion no doubt steepens the more you get away from D&D 3e, which was current when M&M was originally created. I know from experience it's relatively easy to convert D&D 3e PCs and NPCs to True20 and doesn't require much lifting to convert T20 characters to M&M up to 2nd ed - 3rd ed differentiated it much more. And not too much pain to convert 5e to T20 either.

T20 does have a point buy system for some features during PC creation and it replaces Classes with just 3 core Roles, which are much more freeform than the classes in any edition of D&D. As well the structure of Roles in the last edition of T20 is fully transparent and it's easy to tweek existing roles or build new ones. It might be worth taking a look at the last edition of T20 (True 20 Adventure Roleplaying, Revised Edition) and the free D20 -to- T20 conversion document, to see if it might serve as a bridge for you between D&D and W&W: M&M.

 

[Voadam]

I have played M&M3e with an Achilles themed character (invulnerability/toughness, a spear thingy, bunch of Charisma things). I own but have not played M&M 2e Wizards & Warlocks.

I have played a bunch of D&D.

In the M&M the biggest change for me was the damage save and death spiral versus D&D's hp, I found it really hard to gauge how I was doing in M&M compared to D&D hp.

Taking a concept from one system to another it is mostly the same, the more focused the power point the better it will generally do. A Fighter Wizard is fairly weak compared to a fighter or a wizard in both D&D and in point buy systems like M&M or GURPS and such.

M&M we found the speedster super speed rules fairly easy to break. We all did powered concepts so I don't have an actual comparison of powered people versus those nonpowered vigilantes who put all their stuff into attributes and feats and skills and such which would be a good comparison point for how a barbarian and thief in Warlocks & Warriors would compare to mages and powered up paladin types in play.