Mutants & Masterminds 3rd Edition Revised: Week 1 - Abilities

[Nintendogeek01]

May have some activity here and there, but it sure feels like I haven't been active on the forums in a while. But now I'm here and wanting to talk about one of my favorite RPG's, Mutants & Masterminds.

For any who don't know, Mutants & Masterminds is a system that has its roots in the d20 system but has moved away from it as time went on; the main draw of the game is the point-buy character creation system that lets you buy skills, advantages, and power effects to create virtually any kind of character you want. Wizards, preternaturally skilled warriors, flying superheroes in capes, genius inventors, the list goes on and on. Further it manages to simplify all of this by making it so the d20 is the only die you will ever roll. It's a system that lets players be creative without being too hard to get into and I love it.

But it is not without its flaws; With a system based around effects and multiple ways to get the same result naturally people want to be efficient with their power points which results in options that are never used, certain character types suffering since point-efficiency doesn't favor them, creating some disconnect between the flavor and the character sheet, and just generally imbalanced options. Some of these are meant to be mitigated by the GM keeping a careful eye on what players are picking, but that's not what I'm here to talk about.

Instead I wish to examine the mechanics behind character creation in M&M and try to correct what I find to be weak points in the system. Tabletop games being what they are I have no expectation nor delusion that I am going to create perfect fixes nor will I make the system perfectly balanced; hell there is a non-zero chance that in the end my propositions will not pan out. But all the same I wish to make the effort, and hope that anyone reading this will contribute to the discussion.

As for this week the discussion will start with what is probably one of the weakest links in Mutants & Masterminds: Abilities!

Anyone who has played a d20 system should recognize Abilities though one distinction worth mentioning is that the third edition of M&M has eight abilities; Strength, Stamina, Agility, Dexterity, Intellect, Fighting, Awareness, Presence. However whereas in D&D and related systems the abilities fueled class features on top of a character's other statistics, M&M's abilities really just fuel skills and maybe your defenses; and given that buying a single point in an ability costs 2 power points they often aren't the best investment in power points. Oh sure buying 1 ability point gets you more than say... a single point in a single skill, but specializing in skills is still often a cheaper investment (more on that subject later). Thus we often see martial arts masters who don't have a single point in the fighting ability, or super-geniuses who don't have a single point in intellect (rarer but I've seen it happen).

Below I'll be breaking down each ability, first by what that ability buys you and the point value the item is worth, then my personal observation/analysis of the ability, and my proposed changes to the ability. If there is an asterisk* by an item, that means the item has multiple specializations and can be bought for different specializations that may cause the efficiency of the ability to increase.

Strength

• Lifting Strength = 1 Power Point
• Strength-Based Damage = 1 Power Point
• Athletics Skill = 0.5 Power Points
• Misc. Uses = 1 or less Power Point(s)
• Strength is something of a take it or leave it ability in practice; if your character concept revolves around being really strong then yeah the player will take it (whether normally or as a power) but a lot of concepts don't really use physical strength as much. Normally that's fine but the trend bothers me when characters who should be as least somewhat athletic neglect strength completely, as it seems few players remember that one needs a strength rank of 2 to be able to move human beings (for rescuing) or that the athletics skill has uses that merit it being used (but I'll go over those when we analyze skills) at least semi-frequently. Now if huge muscles aren't your thing I don't think you should throw all your points into strength but if your concept does use some strength throwing a few points into Strength would not be wasteful given that it's worth slightly more than it costs, it's just that it's miscellaneous uses are often overlooked.
  
  As a quick note on "Misc. Uses," strength is also used for grappling, and standalone strength roles. However, grappling is something that requires specialization and thus it's difficult to really quantify it's exact point value. Standalone strength rolls are also a little more probable than other standalone ability rolls, be it via contested strength rolls or affecting something that is otherwise more difficult to move than even super-strength would automatically allow; still these come up infrequently and may vary by GM.
• Proposed Changes: None. Though I would strongly advise GM's to more carefully pay attention to lifting strength and encourage their players to pay attention to that as well. I would also advise GMs to look for opportunities for straight strength rolls.

Stamina

• Toughness Defense = 1 Power Point
• Fortitude Defense = 1 Power Point
• Not a whole lot for me to say on this one; everyone rolls toughness at some point, and everyone rolls fortitude at some point. Those two saving throws are important for keeping you in the fight and worth having, especially since unlike Fortitude (which can be bought separately), toughness can't be bought directly and stamina is one of three ways to raise your toughness.
• Proposed Changes: None, stamina is perfect just the way it is.

Agility

• Dodge Defense = 1 Power Point
• Acrobatics Skill = 0.5 Power Points
• Stealth Skill = 0.5 Power Points
• Initiative = 0.25 Power Points
• Agility is also one of the more useful abilities in the current system, given that it bolsters a defense and two-skills that see some use so not too bad, plus it even bolsters initiative, not as much as the Improved Initiative advantage does, but it's an extra use that makes Agility technically worth more than it costs. However the crux of its point-efficiency is that acrobatics is a trained skill (though in the past I've ruled that parts of it may be rolled untrained, but not many) so agility by itself won't really buy you acrobatics, and while dodge technically pulls double-duty as an active defense and a saving throw in 3rd ed., the saving throw aspect is rarely used to completely negate effects like other saving throws.
• Proposed Changes: Absorb Sleight-of-Hand and Vehicles skill from Dexterity; while these are technically trained skills and thus not much use without Jack-of-All-Trades or ranks spent in those skills, it does make Jack-of-All-Trades more appealing to take for certain character types, and agility becomes even more useful for them, plus it helps scrap one of the more useless abilities in the game. See below for more on that.

Dexterity

• Sleight of Hand Skill = 0.5 Power Points
• Vehicle Skill = 0.5 Power Points
• Ranged Attack Skill = 0.5 Power Points*
• One of the worst abilities in the game, I'd go as far to say as it's even more useless than presence, which is quite infamous (but more on Presence later). Dexterity only fuels a small pool of skills and all of them are trained skills (though I haven't met the GM who enforces that on ranged attacks too much), thus requiring an investment in those skills anyways and that investment would be more efficient than buying Dexterity. Now, I suppose if someone wanted to be capable of ranged attacking with more than one type of ranged weapon AND be good at the other two skills then Dexterity would be worth the points exactly, but I've yet to see the character who does this personally
• Proposed Changes: Scrap Dexterity: Give Sleight of Hand and Vehicles to Agility, and Ranged Attack to Fighting. This removes a useless ability while bolstering two others with flavor appropriate skills tied to them.

Intellect

• Expertise Skill = 0.5 Power Points*
• Technology Skill = 0.5 Power Points
• Investigation Skill = 0.5 Power Points
• Treatment Skill = 0.5 Power Points
• Misc. = 1 Power Point or less
• Okay the math as I've presented it doesn't paint a pretty picture for Intellect but in practice it is more used than some other abilities; see the Expertise skill, while a trained skill, can be bought for multiple subjects: Science, Magic, Pop Culture, etc. Intellect also bolsters Technology, a vital skill for a lot of science-based characters, and investigation, a vital skill for the detective types. They are all trained skills though so this hurts its versatility a bit, but Intellect is one of those abilities that make people want Jack-of-all-Trades. Still though, the fact that Expertises are as broad or narrow as the GM and Player decide does often make it a questionable investment that requires some discussion before the player decides if it's worth going for the ability or just individual skills. Still, like strength I think that straight intellect rolls can also see more use in play, especially if the players seem a little stumped.
• Proposed Changes: None, though it might do with some way to make it more appealing, I'm admittedly drawing a blank on how to do so. Currently all I can suggest is that players think about how generally knowledgeable vs. specialized knowledge they want their character to be.

Fighting

• Parry Defense = 1 Power Point
• Close Combat Skill = 0.5 Power Points*
• As always, points into a defense is never wasted, the thing that hampers Fighting's point-efficiency is the close-combat skill. If someone wants to have two or more close-combat skills yeah that'll make it exactly or more efficient, but few players seem find appeal in picking up a nearby lamppost to bean the bad guy with so in practice most players only ever take one close-combat skill.
• Proposed Changes: Absorb the Ranged Attack skill. Since most combat-oriented players take one close-combat and one ranged-combat option fighting will now be one-for-one efficient at worst and better enable flavor match the sheet, as someone once told me, you may specialize but most fighters still pick up some general skill too.

Awareness

• Will Defense = 1 Power Point
• Perception Skill = 0.5 Power Points
• Insight Skill = 0.5 Power Points
• Awareness has good things going for it really; bolsters a defense and powers two of the more useful skills in the game, perception and sense motive. While it may not be as widely taken as Stamina is Awareness does still see some use depending on how the player interprets the flavor of their characters willpower and, well, awareness.
• Proposed Changes: None, not as perfect as Stamina but it's perfectly point-efficient as is, affecting other stats that almost every character will see use out of.

Presence

• Persuasion Skill = 0.5 Power Points
• Deception Skill = 0.5 Power Points
• Intimidate Skill = 0.5 Power Points
• Presence-based Expertise = 0.5 Power Points*
• M&M players are familiar with Presence's reputation as the most useless ability in the game (though I personally think that claim to infamy should belong to Dexterity personally), as presence's only use is to fuel social skills when most players prefer to specialize in one or two of those skills, not to mention at first glance it seems like it only fuels three skills meaning that it'd be cheaper to buy those skills individually; however expertise does have presence-fueled options, namely different types of performances. The book does touch on this fact but doesn't really do much else to reinforce that and thus it's an oft-overlooked option.
• Proposed Changes: None directly; however I think that we should better emphasize what skills presence affects, and get the performance skills out from under the umbrella of Expertise so that players are better aware of those options, we might even go so far as to separate untrained "Performance" from trained "Instrument." Though admittedly this might be a discussion better saved for when we get to skills.

So with all of that said what do the rest of you think? Anything I might've overlooked in my analysis? Any other changes you think might work better? When discussing anything please keep in mind...

1. Keep the discussion focused on what aspect we are covering this week, namely abilities. You may use other aspects they affect or are affected by but ultimately the discussion this week is about abilities.
2. Criticizing ideas is constructive, criticizing people is insulting, Don't make things or take things personal when discussing items.
3. Naturally respect other rules on the forums.

So ladies, gents, and all others; Discuss away!