#MnM3e

[steventrustrum]

Cthulhu is ready to rise in your next Mutants And Masterminds RPG session

[samueldays]

M&M 3e stuff

A collection of some of my M&M 3e hacks and houserules and stuff, subject to arbitrary revision. Free to use.

Feeling confident about:

Flight now costs 3PP/rank. I understand it’s an iconic, common power, but M&M is otherwise doing a decent job on being a balanced* system, not a system that discounts powers for being famous! Also, it has six suggested drawbacks, two of which made it better than other printed powers.

“Sustained” modifier is a -1PP/rank modifier when taken on defenses. Sustained versus Permanent is reasonably close on things like Enhanced Strength, where you might want to power stunt it into something else, and you aren’t attacking anyway if stunned. Sustained Protection is a much worse drawback, because you’re flimsy if you stunt it, and you still want the Toughness save when stunned.

Restraints can restrain noncontiguous movement powers too. If you attempt to use a noncontiguous movement superpower (henceforth “Teleport”) while tied to an object, the object comes along and you must have enough weight capacity to bring it, or else the power fails. If you are merely tied up, you can teleport as you wish but the ropes come along and you’re still tied up on arrival. If you attempt to teleport while restrained by an enemy super with Snare or a similar power, you need to win an opposed power check.

The Precise power modifier lets you teleport out of restraints. (Harsh GMs: Selective instead.)

Growth penalizes accuracy. Shrinking raises accuracy. Amount is the same as the respective penalty/bonus to active defenses. This way two large or two small characters retain the same relative chance of hitting each other, and Growth is slightly less OP.

Swimming is replaced by Speed (Limited to water, -1/rank). Thus it costs 1 point per 2 ranks, not 1 per rank. Really, why does the super Swimming power even exist as written when it costs the same as Speed? Super Speed increases your ground speed rank; default swimming speed is calculated based on... your ground speed rank.

Tentative:

Increased Range 1 is only bought once for Linked power sets. Fixes an issue where characters wanting Linked-at-range were encouraged to take Linked Close Range powers and then Elongation to increase their “close” range, since this was much cheaper than two Linked Long Range powers.

Expertise skills cost 1PP/4 ranks. This was the cost for all skills in 2e. 3e doubled the skill cost while merging several skills and eliminating several others, but didn’t change Expertise, which omnidisciplinary characters are likely to have several of. Such characters could arguably be modelled with Enhanced Intelligence (Limited to Expertises) instead, but I think that points back to an argument that Expertise should be cheaper to compare.

Flight has a 3PP surcharge on the first rank. The gap between “not flying” and “flying” is a good deal larger than between “flying” and “flying faster”.

The autohit function of Increased Range 2 can be bought on Close attacks for +1/rank. So-called ‘perfect attacks’, to paraphrase Exalted, should be relatively rare, but they should exist. (Mind-reading where the target is about to move is a possible excuse for a perfect attack, but it’s also an opportunity to have a rare melee attack that rolls to hit against Will defense rather than Parry.)

Swinging around a truck or other large object lets you Power Attack by an amount equal to its mass rank. Provides a little bit of use case for a super-strength character to pick up a truck and hit something with it, rather than merely use his super-strong fists.

Antagonists only:

The Grab condition track gains a third stage, Swallowed. A swallowed character is immobilized, disabled, defenseless, and has total cover. Possibly cut your way out of the giant monster as in D&D3e, but that has too many variables to deal with here.

PL X superweapons that would have ‘instakill’ damage on a direct hit can be modelled as PL near party and Alternative Resistance: active defense, to represent the fact that Toughness won’t protect you, getting out of the way will.

*I’m well aware you can break the game with Transdimensional Sniper-Artillery and Quickness-Inventor free action devices and a few other things. I’m still impressed by the overall high ratio of build options to broken builds given the genre.

[garbodude]

I’m trying really hard to wrap my head around running a Mutants and Masterminds game for some friends of mine, but two things have come up: despite (jokingly) being the forever DM of my friend group, I really don’t much like being in the driver’s seat (I do it because I like to facilitate people I love and care about having a good time), and the other thing being that I really can’t ‘get’ Mutants and Masterminds to click for me. I can make a character well enough, but as soon as I get to rolling the dice, it’s like my mind blanks, and I don’t wanna be a party pooper to my friends because I don’t know what I’m doing. Makes me an annoying combination of grumpy and melancholy cos like I feel like I should be better at this than I am, but I’m not and it’s making me feel like a silly goober

[garbodude]

I’m working on my first Mutants and Masterminds 3e campaign, super stoked! Gonna run it tomorrow for a few good friends of mine, wish me luck

[steventrustrum]

Dig into a supernatural superhero for MnM3e with the bound entity