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

[Quellian-dyrae]

I think these days, if I were to refine the Abilities rather than removing them, it'd look something like this:

Strength: +1 Damage, +1 Lifting Rank. Treat miscellaneous Strength functions as factors of lifting rank for purposes of Limits. The Damage bonus is automatically discounted from the cost of attack powers that aren't Strength-based (although only one power using Strength's bonus can be used in any round, so you don't apply the discount multiple times on Linked powers for example, or apply it to powers Linked to Strength Damage).

Stamina: +1 Toughness, +1 Fortitude.

Agility: +1 Dodge*, +2 Mobility*, +2 Initiative.

Dexterity: +1 Parry*, +2 Stealth, +1 Attack Bonus*.

Fighting: Removed.

Intellect: +1 Expertise, +1 Investigation, +1 Technology, +1 Treatment.

Awareness: +1 Will, +1 Insight, +1 Perception.

Presence: +1 Deception, +1 Intimidation, +1 Persuasion, +1 skill rank for Deception, Intimidation, or Persuasion only.

*Dodge, Parry, and Attack Bonus are changed to cost 0.5 PP/rank. The Close/Ranged attack bonus skills and advantages are removed; if you want to only be accurate with certain attacks, establish it as a Complication. Mobility absorbs Athletics, Acrobatics, Vehicles, and the Escape and Contortion options of Sleight of Hand (Stealth gets all other functions of Sleight of Hand). Strength (lifting rank, specifically) may be substituted for Agility on Mobility checks for making or resisting combat actions that called for Athletics.

A somewhat cleaner, but perhaps slightly less intuitive, version might turn Initiative from its own thing to a function of Mobility (Improved Initiative would still boost it, but base initiative would be a Mobility check), and do this:

Strength: +1 Damage, +1 Lifting Rank. Treat miscellaneous Strength functions as factors of lifting rank for purposes of Limits. The Damage bonus is automatically discounted from the cost of attack powers that aren't Strength-based (although only one power using Strength's bonus can be used in any round, so you don't apply the discount multiple times on Linked powers for example, or apply it to powers Linked to Strength Damage).

Stamina: +1 Toughness, +1 Fortitude.

Agility: +1 Dodge, +1 Parry, +1 Attack Bonus, +1 Mobility.

Dexterity: Removed.

Fighting: Removed.

Intellect: +1 Expertise, +1 Investigation, +1 Technology, +1 Treatment.

Awareness: +1 Will, +1 Perception, +1 Stealth.

Presence: +1 Deception, +1 Insight, +1 Intimidation, +1 Persuasion.

The premise of Stealth being Awareness rather than Agility is because, well, you have to be pretty keenly aware of your surroundings (cover, concealment, things that might make noise, enemy sightlines, etc) to effectively use stealth. Presence taking Insight just makes it even more the straight-up social Ability. You could also mix it up by moving like...Deception to Intellect, Insight and Investigation to Awareness, and Will to Presence. Having two fewer Abilities would also reduce the PP impact on players who prefer having a few points spread around their Abilities (a player whose characters average around Abilities of 2 would be saving 8 PP, for example).

EDIT: For what it's worth, I remove Fighting rather than Dexterity because Dexterity at least has interesting fluff on its own. Hand-eye coordination and such. And technically it's a DC 5 Dex check to catch a falling character . There is no need for a separate Ability telling you how good you are at fighting, when you have combat stats for doing just that; I can't even imagine why somebody would ever roll a Fighting check rather than an attack roll or Parry check.