Questions about M&M and other Super Hero systems

[Mongobear]

Friends and I want something to mix it up, we've been at d&d going on 20+ years now, and the fantasy genre has just worn thin.

We've decided to try out a Super Hero game gor awhile, and are left looking thru the various options out there. Atm, we are gonna try out Mutants & Masterminds, as we are all very familiar with d20 material, and also because it's entirely online with an SRD site, so we don't risk paying money for something we won't use later.

Is M&M a decent system? We don't mind the granularity, as we're used to it, and a lot of us want the ability to totally create our powers from scratch. Is that doable? Or does it have "classes" which Excel at different things?

Are there any things M&M does badly? Traps I (as a GM) should watch out for? Is it possible to keep one person from creating Super Man while the rest are playing Hawkeye? My biggest fear is running into a situation where one PC just totally dominates tue rest, i want them to be "equal" potential, just different based on options.

[Knaight]

It's not class based at all, and can cover a pretty wide range of characters; while it wouldn't be my first choice it's definitely a good system. That said, there are a few major weaknesses.
1) Antagonist statting can be rough. The system standard is to treat them as parallel to PCs, and while there is a decent collection of antagonists the genre pretty much demands you make a decent rogues' gallery, and that takes a while.
2) There are a few balance issues. Most of it is transparent enough that you can collectively decide where you want to put the optimization level, but there are definitely a few cases where you can blunder into hilariously overpowered builds by accident just because of a conceptual fit. Worse, they tend to be high maintenance at the table. Anything involving copies of yourself especially will get out of hand quickly.
3) The injury system can be a little too swingy at times. Replacing hit points was a solid design choice, and additive injuries individually tracked is a pretty good way to do it. Some of the specifics, less so. I'm pretty sure (70%ish) at least some of it was inherited from True20, which is modeling a very different genre where this would fit better.

[Grod_The_Giant]

M&M is excellent. I've used it extensively, and as long as everyone obeys the Power Level rules, I've not really had balance problems. You can stretch your points farther if you know what you're doing, but for the most part if you're doing something game-breaking it's because you made an intentional choice to do something that you know is going to be a bad idea. Just remember that powers >> skills and advantages and you'll be fine. (Toughness saves can be swing-y, I admit. I highly recommend rolling 2d10 for them, to add a bit of the bell curve.)

The more varied your party is, the better the system works. It's good at letting you build a baffling variety of archetypes, but it's not always great at granular differences between those archetypes. Especially once Power Stunting comes into play, it's hard to build, say, two martial artists that don't wind up looking very similar.

In terms of Superman vs Batman... the way the system's math is set up, it plays out a lot like cartoons like Justice League Unlimited/Young Justice/etc-- Superman might punch a tank and blow it up while Batman plants C4, but they can both take it out with about equal effectiveness, and the same blast of electricity can hurt both of them without making Batman evaporate.

[Beleriphon]

The biggest thing to look out for with M&M is to watch your power and save/resistance trade-offs. One would assume Superman should have a super high Toughness save, which is fair, but it also means he's stupid easy to hit because. In contrast one would assume that Batman is hard to hit, but has a lower toughness save. That's fair, but the system is setup to get saves to where you want them in a variety of ways. So Batman can have an amoured batsuit (I do this when I clone, copy, get inspired by Batman).

In the end its about knowing as GM what your players want and what the characters are good at. Batman for example is a goon sweeper, he should be able to take out minions en masse. So in a fight with Darkseid, Superman can punch Darkseid square in the face and Batman can take out the parademons. By providing multiple opponents, or avenues for success, you end up emulating comic books better and everybody can participate.

On granularity, M&M isn't that granular. Is there a difference between the lifting power of Strength 40 and Strength 41? Sure, but Strength 40 can lift up to 51 megatons, and strength 41 can lift up 102 megatons. That's a pretty big difference, but Strength 40 vs 41 who cares? Both are enough to lift a dozen aircraft carriers at the same time. Strength is the biggest example, but at high ranks Speed and Flight end up in similar places.

[Quellian-dyrae]

M&M's my favorite system to date. I'll echo much of what was said above; considering how much design space there is, it is actually shockingly well-balanced. Like 90% of power difference is going to be a matter of point efficiency more than raw power. Now, the system could definitely have some improvements on that point efficiency balance (it has some issues where you can purchase the same thing in multiple different ways sometimes, with different options sometimes being mechanically identical but more or less expensive, or mechanically inferior but equally expensive), and there are some potentially broken things to watch out for, but on the whole, the balance is very good. I have a guide in my sig that gets into the details of balance if you want to check it out. Short version though, Healing is overpowered but not too hard to nerf into shape, Metamorph is kinda nonsense, anything that gives you additional characters (Minions/Summons/Sidekicks) are trivially easy to break. And pay careful attention to any sort of Reaction/Triggered stuff, those can do weird things to balance by messing with the action economy.

[Quertus]

So, in my most recent game of M&M, one of the players decided, "defenses? How much can I get?, while another decided, "defenses? Nah, I'd rather spend my points on other things.". It's been… interesting… watching them take Hawkeye and Superman - and make it work. They sometimes charge in full bore, and Hawkeye goes to the med bay afterwards. Other times, they carefully plan in order to leverage Hawkeye's strengths while giving him minimal exposure to danger. And it's great!

Now, the system probably works best if everyone pays similar levels of attention to things like defenses. And if you run it with the intended pacing, where earning a hero point for being knocked out can actually matter. So, imagine running Fate where the players build up aspects… and then the scene ends. The game kinda doesn't work that way. Same with M&M. It helps to have a feel for the intended pacing, where suffering a setback gives advantages.

All in all, I recommend the system, even though my play experience is rather limited.

[Beleriphon]

So, in my most recent game of M&M, one of the players decided, "defenses? How much can I get?, while another decided, "defenses? Nah, I'd rather spend my points on other things.". It's been… interesting… watching them take Hawkeye and Superman - and make it work. They sometimes charge in full bore, and Hawkeye goes to the med bay afterwards. Other times, they carefully plan in order to leverage Hawkeye's strengths while giving him minimal exposure to danger. And it's great!

I'd very much recommend the players max out their trade-offs on Toughness/Dodge. Not doing so makes the character not an appropriate power level. Just like I'd recommend maxing out the trade-offs on Damage (or whatever)/To-Hit bonus. Not doing so means your character isn't actually an appropriate power level. Not that it can't work, but I'd recommend against doing so.

Now, the system probably works best if everyone pays similar levels of attention to things like defenses. And if you run it with the intended pacing, where earning a hero point for being knocked out can actually matter. So, imagine running Fate where the players build up aspects… and then the scene ends. The game kinda doesn't work that way. Same with M&M. It helps to have a feel for the intended pacing, where suffering a setback gives advantages.

All in all, I recommend the system, even though my play experience is rather limited.

Pacing is a big one. GM Fiat is another. If you want the Joker to escape, he does. GM Fiat, here's a Hero Point for your troubles, use it next time to catch the Joker.

[Max_Killjoy]

My choice for superheroic campaigns would always be HERO, probably 5th edition.

[Grek]

The Power Level limits for defenses and attacks should be treated as both maximums and minimums for your first campaign. While there are builds that save points by using circumstance bonuses to get back up to PL limits, those are weird edge cases and not something you should try doing on your first character.

Don't let people take teleportation as an attack. The game specifically tells you not to allow this, but my first M&M GM missed that warning and allowed it. It broke three encounters before we decided to make that guy take a different power.

Be very skeptical of anyone who wants to take Metamorph, Variable, Summon, Sidekick or Minion - these are powers that have "GET GM PERMISSION" written on them in big bold letters for a reason. All powers technically require GM permission, but it is particularly true for these ones because they're powers that modify what powers you have access to. There are times when these are the only thing that fits, but if you can build a power in any other way, you usually should.

Optimization in this system involves taking complications that you think the GM will want to bring up a lot (every time your complication comes up, you get a Hero Point), taking whichever descriptors (ie. fire beams vs ice punch vs psychic mind crush vs kung fu) that you think the GM will let you do the coolest stunts with and buying powers very cheaply using a large number of drawbacks that you think you can manage without too much hassle.

[Jay R]

My choice for superheroic campaigns would always be HERO, probably 5th edition.

Agreed, but a lot of people don't enjoy the basic math needed to build a character. I've had a friend who wouldn't design a character in it, so I always built his character, based on his description. After that, he had no problem playing it, but unless you have at least one person who actively enjoys building characters in the Hero system, it can be a problem.

[Porcupinata]

I think you can't go wrong with the old "FASERIP" Marvel Super Heroes (or one of its more recent clones). The game's considered to be a stone cold classic for a reason.

[SimonMoon6]

Another classic game (and my superhero game of choice) is Mayfair's DC Heroes RPG (long out of print now, of course), for which you would want the 2nd or 3rd edition (not the 1st edition).

It's one of the few games that does all of the following:

(1) Characters are as easy to create as they are to describe in words (unlike, say, Champions).

(2) There is very little crunch, but there is *some*, just enough to describe everything in as much detail as needed while being just as vague as superhero comics are. You do know exactly what you can and can't do, but you don't have to worry about tiny details.

(3) Without using crazy numbers, the game easily describes full-power Superman (even pre-Crisis Superman if you want to go overboard). It's not difficult. You don't have to roll more dice in combat or anything. And you don't have to do stupid game-mechanics descriptions like "He has a strength of 1 for damage, but he took "lifts heavy things" a lot so that he can pick up heavy objects... which is apparently a thing that same games have to do to describe an insanely strong character. Strong characters can just be ridiculously strong *and* damaging at the same time.

(4) There aren't any built-in trade-offs between being tough and agile. Superman is hard to hit because he's super-fast *and* he's super hard to hurt.

(5) Characters with incredibly versatile abilities (like shape changing into animals or people... or stealing/copying/neutralizing other people's powers... or having the ability to do a little bit of anything) are simplicity itself to use in game (unlike, say, Champions).

It does have a drawback or two but they are easily dealt with for all the gains it has that no other game comes close to having.

[JNAProductions]

Another classic game (and my superhero game of choice) is Mayfair's DC Heroes RPG (long out of print now, of course), for which you would want the 2nd or 3rd edition (not the 1st edition).

It's one of the few games that does all of the following:

(1) Characters are as easy to create as they are to describe in words (unlike, say, Champions).

(2) There is very little crunch, but there is *some*, just enough to describe everything in as much detail as needed while being just as vague as superhero comics are. You do know exactly what you can and can't do, but you don't have to worry about tiny details.

(3) Without using crazy numbers, the game easily describes full-power Superman (even pre-Crisis Superman if you want to go overboard). It's not difficult. You don't have to roll more dice in combat or anything. And you don't have to do stupid game-mechanics descriptions like "He has a strength of 1 for damage, but he took "lifts heavy things" a lot so that he can pick up heavy objects... which is apparently a thing that same games have to do to describe an insanely strong character. Strong characters can just be ridiculously strong *and* damaging at the same time.

(4) There aren't any built-in trade-offs between being tough and agile. Superman is hard to hit because he's super-fast *and* he's super hard to hurt.

(5) Characters with incredibly versatile abilities (like shape changing into animals or people... or stealing/copying/neutralizing other people's powers... or having the ability to do a little bit of anything) are simplicity itself to use in game (unlike, say, Champions).

It does have a drawback or two but they are easily dealt with for all the gains it has that no other game comes close to having.

How does it do all that?

[Ken Murikumo]

I love M&M. It's easily one of my favorite systems. As you have said that you played D&D (or one of it's offspring) just know things works more liberally in M&M. For example, flight or teleportation is a big deal in D&D land, but super cheap in M&M. The challenges that come up in D&D, like "getting to the other side of this chasm" or "exploring this cave looking for the resident dragon" will be mostly easy to overcome in M&M.

That said, here's a few things i've learned over the years:

1) others have said that the game is mostly well balanced, but some hiccups do appear. As the GM, you have to approve a characters powers and abilities. Having Super strength, super speed, and telepathy are pretty normal. Making a trigger based move that's triggered by being attacked and as a result makes them untargetable is (technically) legal but won't fly at any table i could think of.

2) your dodge, parry, and toughness scores work on a trade off system. The higher your toughness, the lower your dodge & parry; the reverse is also true (this is normal rules stuff). I suggest limiting the minimum score to half PL. So at PL 10, minimum is 5 and maximum becomes 15 as a result. I do this to curb players (or GMs) from maxing toughness and having a 0 in dodge & parry (or the other way around). This makes things too swingy. For max toughness characters it makes them almost impossible to take down without some kind of gimick and only characters built to deal damage and nothing else can even hurt them. For max dodge/parry characters, when that one single hit lands, they go down.

3) regeneration isn't expensive. Let your players have it, but be careful with enemies that have it. Too much and/or combining regen with point 2 can make unbeatable enemies that are a slog to deal with. This happened when i was a player. The GM threw 4 guys of equal PL at us but they all had max toughness, immunity to a ton of things and crazy regeneration. We fought for a whole session and ended the session without doing any lasting damage to them. Next session he had his GMPC mage "remember" a spell to stop the regen and weaken toughness.

4)One thing my group adopted was making higher degrees of damage do more than just dazed and staggered. For one degree of failure it's -1 toughness, for two degrees it's dazed & -2 toughness (normally it's just -1 no matter how many degrees they fail by), for 3 degrees it's staggered & -3 toughness, and lastly for 4 degrees it's incapacitated/dying & -4. This just speeds up encounters a bit and makes the game a bit more lethal. It also makes Regen more valuable out of combat and make the Healing power more valuable in combat.

5) Unlike D&D, you can power attack with any effect you roll to hit. You can even do power attack without the advantage (but to a lesser degree). Hell, you can power attack with an aimed healing beam to get extra healing.

[Quertus]

1) others have said that the game is mostly well balanced, but some hiccups do appear. As the GM, you have to approve a characters powers and abilities. Having Super strength, super speed, and telepathy are pretty normal. Making a trigger based move that's triggered by being attacked and as a result makes them untargetable is (technically) legal but won't fly at any table i could think of.

2) your dodge, parry, and toughness scores work on a trade off system. The higher your toughness, the lower your dodge & parry; the reverse is also true (this is normal rules stuff). I suggest limiting the minimum score to half PL. So at PL 10, minimum is 5 and maximum becomes 15 as a result. I do this to curb players (or GMs) from maxing toughness and having a 0 in dodge & parry (or the other way around). This makes things too swingy. For max toughness characters it makes them almost impossible to take down without some kind of gimick and only characters built to deal damage and nothing else can even hurt them. For max dodge/parry characters, when that one single hit lands, they go down.

1) triggered movement is a staple of some anime. Does M&M limit the number of triggers you can use / have active, or is that Hero/Champions? In any event, I would encourage - if it doesn't have it innately - putting a "limited uses" limitation on the trigger advantage (that matches the source anime better, anyway).

Also, AoE effects tend to catch such characters just fine. Also, it probably shouldn't trigger for invisible attacks, mind control, psychokinesis, etc.

Yes, it's strong - very much so if unlimited use - but not a significant problem for more balanced encounters.

2) having lots of toughness (and no dodge) doesn't protect you from damaging saving-throw attacks, or even non-damaging attacks.

So it's only a problem if the GM is stuck playing the "damage" game, instead of embracing the diverse options M&M allows.

Note that my experience with M&M is limited, so take my experiences with a grain of two of salt.

[SimonMoon6]

How does it do all that?

Well, prepare for a lot of details...

Let's start with (3). Mayfair's DC Heroes RPG (to be abbreviated as DCHRPG) uses a logarithmic scale for ability scores (using base 2 logarithms). Thus, a character with a strength of 3 is twice as strong as a character with a strength of 2. An average person has a strength of 2 (in fact an average person has 2's in all their ability scores). Thus, if we realize Superman needs to be eight million times as strong as an average person, he can simply have a strength of 25 (since 2^23 is approximately eight million). So the game easily accommodates people of ridiculously high power levels while still having reasonable numbers in the game system itself. Even the ridiculously powerful pre-Crisis Superman only has to have a strength of 50 to model most of his crazy antics (with the rest being represented by "pushing" his strength, a game mechanic that allows one to exceed their normal limits for short periods of time).

The game system uses 2d10 for all actions, including combat. (You add the results and if you got doubles, keep rolling and adding until you don't have doubles.) And it uses a table to indicate whether or not you hit as well as how damage you did, based on how well you hit. So, a strength of 50 does not strain the game, since it's just another number on the table.

Some might complain that this system doesn't do a good enough job of differentiating between the stats of non-heroic characters, but... it doesn't need to. This is a superhero game. You're not going to go into a superhero game hoping to play Jimmy Olsen, Lana Lang, or Perry White (at least I hope not)... I mean, maybe Elastic Lad and Insect Queen, but not just normal Jimmy and Lana.

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Now, let's talk about (5). The game already has built in powers like "Shape Change", "Neutralize", "Self Manipulation" (not what you think), "Force Manipulation", and so on to handle all those strange versatile powers that a person might have. You don't have to assemble the powers yourself. And it uses simple number-based results to determine what you can or can't do... or it uses the same action table as it does for combat to determine how successful your "neutralizing someone's powers" power will be. For example, if you have a Shape Change of 4, that means that you can turn into any animal with a BODY stat of 4 or less, and you can add up to 4 points to its ability scores. Simple. Or if you try to neutralize someone's heat vision power, you just "attack" the heat vision power (like in combat) and you do "damage" to that power just like you would do damage to someone's BODY stat. Simple. It's all straight forward and simple.

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Talking about (4)... well, you have your points to spend and you can spend them however you like to make whatever kind of character you like. This can be easily abused (which is one of the flaws of this game system), but with an experienced GM to keep players in line, it's not a huge problem.

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In regard to (2), I don't know how much more needs to be said. Powers are straightforward. They explain what you can and can't do. Skills are similarly kept simple but clear. Like, if you want someone who is good in hand to hand combat, you would give them the Martial Arts skill and you're done. Or if they're also good with Weapons, give them the Weaponry skill. And that's it. You can specialize a bit (like someone who is only good with Melee weapons... or just Melee and Missile weapons... or any grouping of these categories), but in general, you can easily make a "weapons master" without having to give him a skill for each and every weapon. Someone can be great in hand to hand combat without having to have a skill for each and every fighting style or for each and every maneuver (foot sweep, punch two people at once, kick instead of punch, disarm, etc). And that's good because that's how comic book characters act. Likewise with Science. If you take the Scientist skill, you know all of Science, just like comic book scientists (sure, Hank Pym is a biogeneticist, but that doesn't mean he can't build a killer robot)... or you can specialize and be more reasonable.

Skills do have ranks like in D&D (but they are called APs). Similarly, powers are described in APs. And so are ability scores. So they can all use the same table for rolling for success. You might have a STR of 5, a Heat Vision power of 8, and a Martial Arts skill of 9, for example. It's all one grand unified system.

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Regarding (1) and (2), again, it all works because everything is kept simple. If you want to make Batman in the game, you just realize he's got all the skills (well maybe not one or two of them), so you give him those skills at a certain AP level. And you look at his stats and realize, he's a perfect human specimen, so you give him maximum human stats (or nearly so), and then you realize he's really great mentally and personality-wise, so you give him great stats there too. And you're done making his character. Other than maybe some advantages and drawbacks. With Superman, it would be similar. If you can figure out how strong, fast, etc., he is, well, that gives you his stats. Then, you list his powers and realize how strong his powers are... like, he's got Heat Vision at 12 APs (that might not be the right number, I'm away from my books) and Super Speed at a certain level, etc. And then you list his skills, advantages, and drawbacks and you're done. No scrounging for "what's the best way to purchase Heat Vision" because it's already a power in the game and you just buy it. No trying to say, "Well, I need this Heat Vision to be better at this kind of thing and worse at this kind of thing, so let me spend an hour weighing the pros and cons of every possible thing". No, you just buy it.

And as I was saying with the versatile powers, they're easy. If you want to make Beast Boy, you just give him Shape Change and you're basically done (Limitation: he's always green).

Of course, you *can* have Limitations (and Bonuses) on powers, but you don't have to in order to make a typical character.

Now, of course, being able to afford to build a character like Superman with a starting character's allotment of points is out of the question, perhaps. But if the GM wants a high powered game, he can let you start with any number of points to build your character (that's an official rule, not a "GMs can do anything" Oberoni-fallacy rule).

But for me, the thing that makes this a brilliant way to create characters is that the GM has an easy job. "I want to create a villain who steals the PC's powers and rides in a giant robot." No problem. List what you want him to do and at what power levels and you have his character sheet. Think about trying to make a min/maxed 20th level boss enemy in D&D 3.x... that takes forever. Here, you can just make up a character (of any power level) on the spot, in case the PCs go where you didn't expect them to go.

[Beleriphon]

But for me, the thing that makes this a brilliant way to create characters is that the GM has an easy job. "I want to create a villain who steals the PC's powers and rides in a giant robot." No problem. List what you want him to do and at what power levels and you have his character sheet. Think about trying to make a min/maxed 20th level boss enemy in D&D 3.x... that takes forever. Here, you can just make up a character (of any power level) on the spot, in case the PCs go where you didn't expect them to go.

M&M works in much the same way, although the build a power concept is more detailed. So laser eyes are the Damage effect, with the Ranged extra added on. Superman's super-breath could be an Affliction (an effect that adds status effects like paralyzed and what not) with the Cone extra.

Green Lantern's ring is a suite of effects wrapped up together, and then discounted because the ring is "removable". Iron Man works the same way for the power armour.

Here's a version of Batman that Baron on roninarmy.com put together.

Batman Power Level 10


Abilities
Strength 4, Stamina 5, Agility 5, Dexterity 6, Fighting 13, Intellect 8, Awareness 7, Presence 6

These should be fairly obvious. Fighting is the generic ability to engage in close combat, while Agility is the generic ranged combat stat. Presence is kind of like Charisma in D&D.

Equipment -

• Cape & Cowl: Gliding 2, Feature (Fearsome Design: major bonus to demoralize), Senses 3 (communication link, dark vision) * 6 pts
• Costume: Immunity 2 (critical hits: limited to ballistic damage) * 1pt
• Miscellaneous Gear: binoculars, handcuffs, mini tracer * 3pts
• Re breather: Immunity 2 (suffocation: limited to 2 hours) * 1pt
• Utility Belt: Array (17 points) 7 alternate effects * 24pts

- Batarangs: Ranged Damage 1 (multi-attack) * 1 point
- “Bat Gas”: Sleep 5 (cloud area) * 1 point
- Bolo: Snare 3 * 1 point
- Explosive Batarang: Ranged Damage 5 (burst area, subtle: looks like a regular batarang) * 1 point
- Flash Grenade: Dazzle Sight 5, burst area * 1 point
- Grapnel Gun: Feature 1 (can perform trip attacks at range), Movement 1 (swinging) * 1 point
- Smoke Bombs: Cloud Area Concealment Attack 4 (visual senses) * 1 point
- Thermite Explosives: Burst Area Damage 8 (trigger) * 17 points

• Batcave: Size H (3), Toughness 10 (2), Features: communications, computer, concealed, garage, gym, infirmary, laboratory, library, living space, power system, workshop (12) * 17pts
• Batmobile: Size H (0), Strength 8 (4), Speed 6 (6), Toughness 12 (5), Defense 8 (0), Features: Alarm DC30, Caltrops, Navigation System, Remote Control (6), Powers: blast 7, concealment 3 (auditory under chase speeds, normal visual in shadow), impervious toughness 8 (25) * 46pts

Everything uses the base effects. The rules have a few prebuild powers (the Sleep is a common power that is based on Affliction, same with Snare). All this stuff is Equipment, which gets added up as a regular power, but then a 5:1, so a Effect that costs 25 points normally, costs only 1. The rationale is that equipment is more or less mundane stuff and can be broken or taken away at the GMs whim.

Skills
Acrobatics 10 (+15), Athletics 13 (+17), Close Combat: unarmed 3 (+16), Deception 8 (+14), Expertise: criminal 6 (+14), Expertise: streetwise 8 (+16), Insight 8 (+15), Intimidation 8 (+14/+19 to demoralize), Investigation 12 (+20), Perception 10 (+17), Ranged Combat: throwing 3 (+13), Sleight of Hand 11 (+16), Stealth 13 (+18), Technology 10 (+18), Treatment 2 (+10), Vehicles 4 (+10)

Again should be obvoius. Notes, Batman has Close Combat: unarmed as a skill with 3 ranks in it, which adds to Fighting 13. Note his damage from Strength is 4 and his attack to hit with his fists is +16, so that total is 20 which when divide by 2 is 10. Thus Power Level 10.

Advantages
Assessment, Benefit 4 (multi-millionaire), Connected, Contacts, Daze (intimidation), Defensive Roll, Eidetic Memory, Equipment 20, Great Endurance, Hide in Plain Sight, Improved Disarm, Improved Initiative, Improvised Tools, Inspire, Languages 3 (English: native, 4 others), Move by Action, Power Attack, Precise Attack 2 (close, ranged against concealment), Ranged Attack 4, Redirect, Second Chance (escaping), Sidekick 15 (**** Grayson), Skill Master 3 (athletics, intimidation, investigation), Startle, Takedown, Well Informed

Think D&D Feats. Any character can do a bunch of stuff, but these let Batman do things better. As a goon sweeper Takedown lets Batman immediately attack an adjacent enemy if his attack Takes Out the first one (super good on minions who take the worst possible result on a failed save).

Offense: initiative +9, unarmed (close +16, Damage 4), utility belt (ranged +13, various effects including Damage 1, Snare 3)
Defense: dodge 12 (7pts), parry 13, will 11 (4pts), fort 7 (2pts), 6/5 toughness

Short form combat stats.

totals: abilities 108, skills 64, advantages 70, powers 0, defenses 13=255pp

Complications:
Enemy (Ra's Al Gul has been Batman's nemesis since before his days in the cowl)
Flashbacks (to the night his parents were killed especially when in connection to crime alley)
Obsession (fighting crime. Batman’s drive to seek justice often leaves him without sleep)
Relationships (Batman has few friends, but the few he has mean everything to him. Jim Gordon, **** Grayson, Alfred Pennyworth, Lucius Fox, and Leslie Tompkins are the closest people in the world to him)
Reputation (Batman has built an urban legend around himself in Gotham that he works hard to maintain)

Complications are things that generate Hero Points when they come up in play by hindering the character. Good examples are Green Lantern's ring needing to recharge, or Superman's weakness to Kryptonite.

[Anonymouswizard]

Green Lantern's ring is a suite of effects wrapped up together, and then discounted because the ring is "removable". Iron Man works the same way for the power armour.

There are official Green Lantern stats, and he's probably one of the best built heroes in the core DC M&M rulebook. He officially uses a removable variable array, which isn't the best but considering how weird some of those stats can be it's pretty good.

But yeah, I'm not seeing much that DC Heroes does that M&M doesn't, including the logarithmic stats. I think a comic-accurate Flash has a Speed stat in the mid-40s, at that point you're comfortably faster than light.


Actually, the most fun character I ever played was a robot with something like Strength 8, Speed 6, and an Alternate Effect on their Strength score's Damage Effect* to allow them to swap it for another eight ranks of Speed. By the final session it was clear that the GM had not planned around that, my character could be anywhere in the city within a minute or two (we stopped tracking how long it took me to get to places). I think this mainly worked because I had points in Close Combat (Unarmed) but not Close Combat (Ramming)...

But yeah, M&M has essentially fairly broad power effects. You manipulate anything? That's Move Element, with an Alternate Effect of Damage (Ranged) if it can hurt people. The real trick to getting the power system is learning how Alternate Effects, Simultaneous Effects, and Triggers work.

* no this probably isn't RAW, but the GM okayed it because I had no intentions of ramming into people.

[SimonMoon6]

M&M works in much the same way, although the build a power concept is more detailed. So laser eyes are the Damage effect, with the Ranged extra added on. Superman's super-breath could be an Affliction (an effect that adds status effects like paralyzed and what not) with the Cone extra.

Whereas in DCHRPG, Superman's heat vision is the Heat Vision power, his super breath is the Super Breath power, and so forth. You don't have to work to assemble things.

Green Lantern's ring is a suite of effects wrapped up together, and then discounted because the ring is "removable". Iron Man works the same way for the power armour.

Green Lantern's ring is one of the more complicated items in DCHRPG. Here it is (or at least what I found online which may have been modified slightly):

POWER RING [Body: 23, _Body_: 12, Int: 10, Comprehend Languages: 20, Flight: 40, Force Manipulation: (same as user's WILL), Invulnerability: 18, Life Sense: 40, Omni-Power: (half of user's WILL), Recall: 20, Regeneration: 4, Sealed Systems: 16, Skin Armor: 4, Spirit Travel: 50] Limitations: Life Sense can only detect other Green Lanterns.Ring is useless against anything colored yellow. Ring must be recharged every 24 hours using the Power battery.

Let me unpack this. It is written in capital letters to indicate that it can not be taken away in combat. It is clearly a Gadget and therefore the costs for the powers are reduced, but you have to pay for a couple of ability scores. Its BODY stat indicates how hard it is to damage (just like any other character's BODY stat). The underlined BODY is the BODY stat that a wearer can use. Its INT score represents the computer-like intelligence that it has, capable of answering questions and taking instructions, while its Recall power allows it to remember facts. The rest are a bunch of powers and their values. Most of them are pretty straightforward. Force Manipulation is the "create constructs" power. Invulnerability is a somewhat misnamed power that is basically "hard to kill". Omni-Power covers all of the "the ring can do absolutely anything" powers, like reading minds, phasing through walls, and shrinking people. Sealed Systems is the "survive in space" power. Skin Armor is the "hard to hurt" power. Skin Armor makes the wearer harder to hurt by non-energy physical attacks (though the 12 BODY covers a lot of protection already). And the Spirit Travel represents the energy duplicate that the wearer may send quickly through space, usually to Oa, since it takes such a long time to actually fly physically to Oa; it's like an astral projection but it can move 1000 times faster than the ring normally could in space. The weirdest thing about the ring is that the power levels of two of its powers are based on the user's WILL, which is a very rare condition (perhaps even unique) for a gadget to have in the DCHRPG game.

This is obviously the pre-Kyle version of the ring because the post-Kyle rings have much more limited abilities. For most people, they think of Green Lantern as just "fly, even in space, and make green stuff" which would be just Flight, Sealed Systems, and Force Manipulation, and that's pretty much what the post-Kyle rings do. I don't think the post-Kyle rings even protect their users automatically (the wielders have to choose to put up a green shield or else anyone can beat them up).

Here's a version of Batman that Baron on roninarmy.com put together.

Here's an official version from DCHRPG, at least what I could find online:

Batman
________________________________
Dex: 10 Str: 5 Body: 6
Int: 12 Will: 12 Mind: 10
Infl: 10 Aura: 8 Spirit: 10
Initiative: 36 Hero Points: 150

Skills: *linked
Acrobatics: 10*
Artist (Actor):8
Charisma: 12
Detective: 12*
Gadgetry: 12*
Martial Artist: 10*
Military Science: 12*
Scientist: 12*
Thief: 10*
Vehicles: 10*
Weaponry: 10*

Advantages: Area Knowledge (Gotham City); Buddy (Alfred Pennyworth); Connections: Arkham Asylum (High), Gotham City Police Department (High), Gotham State Prison (High), Gotham State University (High), Justice League International (High), Street (High); Connoisseur; Expansive Headquarters (Batcave); Intensive Training; Iron Nerves; Leadership; Lightning Reflexes; Sharp Eye

Drawbacks: Catastrophic Irrational Attraction to Seeking Justice; Secret Identity; Traumatic Flashbacks: Relives the deaths of his parents whenever he is within Crime Alley, and relives the death of Jason Todd when he sees Robin take damage in Killing Combat

Bonus: If given the change to cast his bat-shadow down upon his adversaries before they are aware of his presence, he receives a -1 Column Shift bonus to the OV of the ensuing Intimidation attack.

Alter Ego: Bruce Wayne
Motivation: Seeking Justice
Occupation: Millionaire Playboy
Wealth: 20

Equipment:
Batarang w/Line [Str: 7, Body: 8, Gliding: 2, EV: 3] Line is 4 AP's long

Batcall [Body 4, Animal Summoning: 13, R#: 4] Limitations: Only summons bats from beneath Wayne Manor; Will not function if more than 13 AP's from Wayne Manner

Razorwings (x8) [Body: 6, EV: 2] Bonus: Can thrown up to four in a single phase and adds one to the final die roll for each addition Razorwing thrown after the first.

COWL [Body: 4, Radio Communications: 8, Thermal Vision: 8, Artist (Actor): 16] Limitation: Actor only usable to prevent voice from being recognized as Bruce Wayne's

Cutting Torch [Body: 2, Heat Vision: 9, R#: 5] Limitations: Range is 0 AP's and if used on another character, the user automatically enters Killing Combat

Miniature Camera and Recorder [Body: 2, Recall: 12, R#: 2] Camera has range of 9 AP's, Recorder has range of 4 AP's

Plastic Explosives (x2) [Body: 1, Bomb: 8] Limitation: If used on another character, the user automatically enters Killing Combat

Rebreather [Body:1, Sealed Systems: 8, R#: 2]

Smoke Pellets (x6) [Body: 1, Fog: 10]

BATMOBILE [Str: 7, Body: 9, Flame Immunity: 8, Fog: 7, Heat Vision: 7, Military Science (Tracking): 10, Radio Communications: 17, Recall: 12, Running: 7, Security Systems: 10, Skin Armor: 5, Thief (Stealth): 8, Vehicles (Land): 5, R#: 2]

10 AP ABCD Omni-Gadget

But Batman's EASY. He's just a guy.

A game that does a good job making SUPERMAN easy, that's a game that's worth playing. A game that makes Deadman, Rogue, Doctor Fate, Beast Boy, Metamorpho, etc easy, that's a game that's worth playing. ANY game can make Batman.

I will admit that when I flipped through M&M, I did see a lot that seemed... let's say... "inspired" by DCHRPG. But any game where you have to trade off "hard to hurt" and "hard to hit" is just not a game that simulates comics at all and therefore could never be a game that I would have any interest in.

[SimonMoon6]

But yeah, I'm not seeing much that DC Heroes does that M&M doesn't, including the logarithmic stats. I think a comic-accurate Flash has a Speed stat in the mid-40s, at that point you're comfortably faster than light.

The Flash is not comfortably faster than light. He *can* run that fast, but it isn't how he moves on a regular basis. He only typically has a 25 Superspeed (which can be pushed to light speed and beyond, when he needs to)... or for immediately post-Crisis Wally, he only has about a 12.

The real trick to getting the power system is learning how Alternate Effects, Simultaneous Effects, and Triggers work.

And DCHRPG doesn't require you to learn anything like that. DCHRPG is perfect for people who don't want to have to learn the game in detail just to make a character. That's the whole D&D 3.x problem. Without system mastery, you can make a terrible character in 3.x even if you think you know what you want (I want to be a "tough" character so I take the Toughness feat... bad idea!). In DCHRPG, if you know what you want... you get it. If anything, the game has the opposite problem: it's too easy to make an overpowered character by accident since the game doesn't give guidelines for what's appropriate, and you can only tell by looking at other official characters (or by asking an experienced GM).

[Max_Killjoy]

And yet oddly I find the ground-up builds of HERO far easier than 3.x or DC.

[ngilop]

I have always enjoyed HERO syetm (I still call it Champions) the best

BUT.. there is the old 80s Marvel Super Heroes that is awesome.

Villains and Vigilantes is great too

special mention for ICON (or is it ICONS?) (also from the 80s) it was a Indie superhero game that while suffered from organization issues. the rules are solid and the random character generation (that is totally optional) is super fun.

GURPS does superhero as well... but its GURPs so it is not the best translation of the whole super hero feel. GURPs in and of itself is wonderful.. it just doesn't do high-fantasy or super powers as well as a dedicated system due to the baseline being a bit more 'gritty'

There is also Aberrant, I have no played it, but my friends have said good things about it.

for some awesome off the wall-ness try GODLIKE. thing world war 2, but with superheroes and you have it. Just as bonkers as you would think, I had a blast playing the single session of this.. but, probably for the wrong reasons.

there are a bunch of decent indie super hero systems as well, like masks, truth and justice, and the like.

Now that I think about it.. the best superhero systems are all from the 80s (in my opinion) I really wish that somebody would breathe life into the old FASERIP system and maybe make it a standalone thing instead of attached to a particular comic book company.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I will admit that when I flipped through M&M, I did see a lot that seemed... let's say... "inspired" by DCHRPG. But any game where you have to trade off "hard to hurt" and "hard to hit" is just not a game that simulates comics at all and therefore could never be a game that I would have any interest in.

Different strokes for different folks. I personally find that M&M does a phenomenal job of simulating superhero action, especially with the Power Stunt mechanics. I've had so many moments when tropes and mechanics lined up to make my comic-book plans work-- and not just work, but work really well. Though I admit that it does shade more towards the DCAU side of things, where Batman and Superman can both deliver and take nasty blows from the same villain without someone getting turned into paste.

[Anonymouswizard]

The Flash is not comfortably faster than light. He *can* run that fast, but it isn't how he moves on a regular basis. He only typically has a 25 Superspeed (which can be pushed to light speed and beyond, when he needs to)... or for immediately post-Crisis Wally, he only has about a 12.

I mean, officially Flash is Speed 20, because actually replicating his comic speed with another 20 ranks is a little bit silly. But yeah, to model his highest speeds in M&M you'd generally take at least Speed 40 and use Extra Effort to push it to 41 occasionally.

Here's the thing, I like speedsters, and one of the things you have to realise about DC speedsters is that most of them are at insane levels. Marvel might have limited theirs to 200mph for a long time, but that still makes them rather powerful. In M&M most of the time a Speed rank in the mid teens is more than enough

And DCHRPG doesn't require you to learn anything like that. DCHRPG is perfect for people who don't want to have to learn the game in detail just to make a character. That's the whole D&D 3.x problem. Without system mastery, you can make a terrible character in 3.x even if you think you know what you want (I want to be a "tough" character so I take the Toughness feat... bad idea!). In DCHRPG, if you know what you want... you get it. If anything, the game has the opposite problem: it's too easy to make an overpowered character by accident since the game doesn't give guidelines for what's appropriate, and you can only tell by looking at other official characters (or by asking an experienced GM).

Eh, I've never got why Arrays are so much trouble. One point for an additional affect of no greater point value than the main effect, but they're mutually exclusive uses (I once had a character who could attack or create walls of wind, but not both at once). Linked Effects are simple as well,; just pick two or more effects you want to go off at the same time (e.g. Damage 10, Weaken Strength 10, and Weaken Stamina 10) and note that they go off together and only together.

Triggers are more annoying. They allow you to do stuff like explode (Damage (Area [burst]) 10) on contact, and can be heavily abused if you know what you're doing. You can probably leave out Triggers for 90% of characters beginning players want to be honest, similar to Variable.

Otherwise, the main thing M&M does is stop pretending that the end result is different for different powers, if it does damage it's a Damage Effect, if it hinders it's an Affliction, moving things is Move Object, and moving substances is Move Element. The only real time where means is built into effect is movement effects, because there the means can matter.

I've never seen anybody have trouble building a M&M character, although I've seen people have trouble grasping 'if it's thematically related but won't be used at the same time, make it an array'. And occasional times where working out if Create, Damage, Summon, or Variable is the correct effect (which is an interesting one, considering I had a character with Create (Meteal) [Precise] who made himself weapons* and armour, while another character in the group who summoned magic weapons and armour would have been better served with a Variable power).

^ The question of if I could create a working gun never came up, I could also move my creations and had a ranged damage effect to represent launching swords. Similarities to Archer might be intentional.

[Max_Killjoy]

Otherwise, the main thing M&M does is stop pretending that the end result is different for different powers, if it does damage it's a Damage Effect, if it hinders it's an Affliction, moving things is Move Object, and moving substances is Move Element. The only real time where means is built into effect is movement effects, because there the means can matter.

Very similar to the predating approach of HERO/Champions.

You don't buy "gun" or "blaster" or "optic blasts", you buy the Energy Blast power, maybe with Advantages and Limitations to make it into something that models the fiction-level effect you're translating into the mechanics. Guns might get the Charges limitation, the Focus limitation, etc. (a "focus" in Champions means that the power is in an external object, not the character, and thus can be taken away...)

[Anonymouswizard]

Very similar to the predating approach of HERO/Champions.

Which reminds me, I should see if I can get a copy of HERO, which sounds like my kind of system (I mainly own M&M because most people I know can't deal with maths in their numnbers games).

[Max_Killjoy]

Which reminds me, I should see if I can get a copy of HERO, which sounds like my kind of system (I mainly own M&M because most people I know can't deal with maths in their numnbers games).

I recommend 5th edition if you can still get it, 6th edition went a bit sideways IMO.

[ngilop]

I personally have never encountered the 'math is hard' thing for the HERO system. Unless it is from people who math like this

Spoiler: Math is hard

Show

https://pics.onsizzle.com/the-la-lak...ax-2150680.png

I've not played M&M, have looked over the rules and decided other systems do it better (in my opinion) I have done significantly more math in any d20 based game than I have at any point for HERO, Once you get out f creating your character HERO is basically math free.

[Beleriphon]

And DCHRPG doesn't require you to learn anything like that. DCHRPG is perfect for people who don't want to have to learn the game in detail just to make a character. That's the whole D&D 3.x problem. Without system mastery, you can make a terrible character in 3.x even if you think you know what you want (I want to be a "tough" character so I take the Toughness feat... bad idea!). In DCHRPG, if you know what you want... you get it. If anything, the game has the opposite problem: it's too easy to make an overpowered character by accident since the game doesn't give guidelines for what's appropriate, and you can only tell by looking at other official characters (or by asking an experienced GM).

You don't need to know about Triggers, Dynamic powers and what not for M&M. Some of the best characters are actually the most straight forward builds. Complicated builds online are just people showing off or compressing a known character like Superman or Iron Man and compressing them to fit the suggested starting power levels and points totals.

Often the most direct route to an end is the best one. Anonymouswizard references using Create or Variable for making weapons and which one is better.

Depending the actual result you want neither. If the end result is that you attack a guy with a sword and just make a new one if you're disarmed then a straight Damage effect with a 1 point extra to make it a Variable descriptor (so you can make say a mace, or a katana, or a halberd, or a bat'leth). M&M at its core is an effects driven system where the player needs to ask "What does my character want this to do in end?"

The Spelling Bee might bee able to summon a swarm of bees, which sounds like it should be the Summon effect right? It could bee depending on what he's doing. Summon gets you another character based on the way the effect works, but if Spelling Bee's swarm just sits on an area and damages goons then the effect should probably bee Damage with Extras to cover an area at a minimum.

Same thing if a gun magically summons bullets, no need for Create. If part of an effect ca be reduced to "just flavour" use the most straight forward effect you can manage. It will probably cost less points and be easier to use in play.

All that said, Alternate Effects, or Arrays, are a way to arrange similar powers that can't be used at the same time to save points. Generally they should be thematically linked. As an example the Star Trek hand phaser has a stun and a kill setting, this is a good alternate effect setup. In M&M terms its probably Affliction and Damage with the more expensive of the two being the primary effect.

We can get fancy and make alternate effects dynamic, so we can have a few activate at once. I like to think of it as routing one power source to multiple systems. We could make Iron Man's omni-beam and flight dynamic, so he can decide how much of each to use at any one time. He can fly full speed but can't use the omni-beam, or he can use a full power omni-beam but can't fly, or some combination of the two.

[Anonymouswizard]

I recommend 5th edition if you can still get it, 6th edition went a bit sideways IMO.

Would you reccomend HERO or Champions? It's a case of already having a system I love for almost every genre, so would I miss out on anything by getting the superhero book instead of the generic book?

I personally have never encountered the 'math is hard' thing for the HERO system. Unless it is from people who math like this

Spoiler: Math is hard

Show

https://pics.onsizzle.com/the-la-lak...ax-2150680.png

I've not played M&M, have looked over the rules and decided other systems do it better (in my opinion) I have done significantly more math in any d20 based game than I have at any point for HERO, Once you get out f creating your character HERO is basically math free.

I've noticed a weird thing that people aren't willing to tolerate maths, unless it's a d20-based game. M&M doesn't really have anymore maths than GURPS, but I've seen people violently opposed to GURPS happuly play M&M.

I personally find GURPS maths easier, but that's to do with presentation.

Often the most direct route to an end is the best one. Anonymouswizard references using Create or Variable for making weapons and which one is better.

Depending the actual result you want neither. If the end result is that you attack a guy with a sword and just make a new one if you're disarmed then a straight Damage effect with a 1 point extra to make it a Variable descriptor (so you can make say a mace, or a katana, or a halberd, or a bat'leth). M&M at its core is an effects driven system where the player needs to ask "What does my character want this to do in end?"

Oh there were two characters here. Mine was Armsmaster, who has gone through three iterations. Armsmaster Mk1 could create weapons and armour, and used Create because he could theoretically create a functional battleship (never had the ranks in Create for it), v2 was a replacement after he became an NPC, who used either Variable or an Array to simulate his tendency to summon melee weapons and armour. Armsmaster Mk3 is one of the mid-tier heroes in my superhero setting, who uses Create (metal) both to form weapons and a suit of armour but also to hem in opponents with walls and obstacles. In the final version Create is the right effect, because the damage is actually a small part of the powers (and the more used on weapons/armour the less for walls and the like, Create doesn't give much mass to work with).

The other I forget the name, but they summoned magical weapons and armour with the Summon effect, because the GM misunderstood the rules. They should have had either a Variable power or a set of three:
-An array of Damage and Affliction effects to represent the wide variety of magical weapons they could summon, many of which had unique secondary effects.
-An array of Protection effects to represent their array of magical armours, many of which had secondary powers.
-A Summon effect to represent the ability to summon and remotely control one of their suits of armour. The ability to make these suits explode was used rarely enough to be represented by Power Stunting.

Now a lot of problems were caused by the GM not understanding the rules, hence the use of Summon for something it just straight up can't do.

But yeah, a straight up Brick or Speedster is the basic level to which you're building towards, and competitive with Array-focused builds if the GM gives some thought as to what makes sense in an array. It's more important for everybody to be on the same page and using the same rules, it wasn't fun for me when I realised that my PL11 speedster couldn't affect the enemies because they had to tank the hits of the PL18 tank when his 'only when innocents are threatened' limit wasn't weakening him*.

* Which annoyed me, he could have done his concept at the same PL as the rest of us just by accepting that he couldn't pump his Strength to 18 without any downsides.