What we learned from tonight's M&M

[james_davis_nicoll]

The GM is busy so we got together to play with the rules. What we really learned is that we need an M&M guru to question.

Anyone got thoughts on what "save for half damage" means in M&M, which has no hit-points?

Oh, and it turns out the mentalist can mentally grabble either the entire population of the Eastern Seaboard at once or everyone in North America, I forget which. Selectively, too. This kind of puts Ben's motto of "never stop fighting until you've done at least a million dollars damage" into perspective. Although in the test combat we did, the characters did manage to stop a robbery that would have netted tens of thousands of dollars with only major structural damage to the bank.

Comments

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Oh, and on an average rush on an average human, Ben can push them back 500,000 feet. This seems excessive.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

94.6 miles? I'd call that excessively awesome!

What do they use instead of hit points?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Several kinds of damage related conditions, ranging from a minor bruise that just gives you a -1 to most rolls all the way to being out cold or dead. The kind of damage condition you are stuck with depends on how badly you blew the toughness roll. You can get a lot of bruises and yes, they add.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

That sounds interesting.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

The effect is that both people either get nickle-and-dimed as to-hits and saves become increasingly crappy - imagine the duel at the end of Robin and Marion - and then one good shot takes someone down. At least for bricks. For the nimbles, there are lots of misses until one lucky shot reveals just how crappy any given martial artist's toughness is.

If a character has impervious - which Ben does - and enough immunity to ignore criticals - which Ben does not (yet) - minions probably can't touch a brick. In fact, we were on our way up the usual ladder of miniony escalation (punch the brick to no effect, shoot the brick to no effect, toss the empty pistol in the hope that it will count as a feint and give the minion time to flee) when Ashton crushed their minds. Minions go down on the first bruise.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Having thought about this, I think round one of most battles should involve Aston hiding behind something solid and doing the mass selective brain crush thing on every minion with a mind.

Of course this only encourages the GM to toss more robots at us.

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

In the PbP adventure I'm running, I had baby chickens inside the robots, which looked like alien creatures. The mentalist knocked out the baby chickens and read their minds ("these creatures are hungry!") but didn't figure out that the chickens weren't running the robots until the robots exploded.

The chickens were unharmed.

And the robots had meanwhile telemetered the information to the Bad Guy describing what powers the heroes had and could use, so the giant Android Duplicate has the right abilities. (I kept a list of powers used during the combat and the ranks.)

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

Immunity to criticals is (I think) a 2-point power. (Mind, that only means that critical attacks don't get the +5, not that critical attacks do no damage. So sayeth the designer over on Atomic Think Tank.)

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Still worth the two points.

[rwpikul.livejournal.com]

OK, that tops what one of my players could do with his Ninjas & Superspies/Heroes Unlimited character. His 'open hand push' at first level did a one mile[1] knockback, but no damage.


[1] It was 1' per point of Chi, which would typically mean something on the order of 30-50'. He was a pre-revision Ancient Master who had focused on martial arts that maxed out Chi multipliers.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

And also most of the people in the bank were simultaneously nauseated and infatuated with Ben (Two unrelated powers that combine to make yuck).

[caprinus.livejournal.com]

Does a bank count as sacred/hallowed ground for Libertarians?

[caper-est.livejournal.com]

Right now, it probably counts as Dracula's castle.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

La la la la la I CAN'T HEAR YOU!

But aren't modern banks inextricably entangled with government? So probably not.

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

So you did a bank robbery as the test combat?

I think there are three situations (not counting all the powers that can be there) for combat. One is minions: a proper test with demolishing minions should make you feel, well, super. Another is a single villain, suitable for everyone. Given that it's three to one, you should win as long as it doesn't have Impervious or you look up the things that add to damage so you can get past the level of Impervious. The third is an actual group of supervillains.

It all gets complicated by mental powers (which are Will saves except the DC gets 15 not 10 if it's damage) and the sheer variety of powers that use some other save.

Actually, I've been thinking about how you model the current guest character in Sidekick Girl (he gets bigger and smarter each time you hit him). Absorption and enhanced Int/Wis I think, but I haven't played with Absorption before so I'm not sure about the fade stuff.

Good. Glad you had fun.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

It is my firm belief that the odds against going to a bank in Freedom City and getting out without the transaction being interrupted by at least one attempted bank robbery are roughly infinity to one. Apparently all the smart crooks left the city ages ago, leaving the ones haven't figured out that the odds of carrying off a bank robbery in broad daylight without some mask showing up to spoil things are also roughly infinity to one.

Of course, trying to explain that to Rant and Rave got Ben staggered and stunned in round one.

[rwpikul.livejournal.com]

Shades of a Supermegatopia comic:

"While the banks of Supermegatopia may be frequently robbed, the money is never gone for long."

[poeticalpanther.livejournal.com]

We used the Rant & Rave mini-adventure from the main book. I ran it, Ben and Ash responded. The minions were all trapped, but they did get away after doing some structural damage to the bank, meaning the heroes had to be all heroic and help people out of the building and stuff. Classic hero point complication. :)

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

Did you adjust the PLs at all? I know Rant and Rave are technically PL10, but the way they are played has a great effect too--I've seen them played as straight villains or as incestuous yahoos. The adventure is for about 4 PL10 heroes--how did it work for two PL8 heroes? (Though Ash's mental powers might make a difference: most villains don't buy up their wisdom for a good save against mental powers.)

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

They were PL 10 and their first shot was a pretty good one (but only because I rolled an incredibly crappy toughness roll).

[poeticalpanther.livejournal.com]

We didn't bother about balancing it much - just wanted to see how the various attacks and so on worked. Rant got a spectacularly good roll on the first attack against Ben, which sorta made it difficult for the two of them to get out of it hands-clean (i.e., building not falling down).

[hellkat9940.livejournal.com]

If I recall correctly, Critical Hits in MnM add +5 to the damage roll. So I would assume for half damage instead of double you'd take that in the opposite direction, for -5 to the damage roll.

[mikedavsi.livejournal.com]

James,

You halve the damage DC. i.e., say you're flying along and you get hit by a rank 10 Blast. Normally the DC for that is 25: 10+15, which is the base for Toughness saves. Now if you halve that damage (either because it's an area effect and you pass the save, or because you have a half-immunity), you make it 5+15, or DC 20.

[poeticalpanther.livejournal.com]

The situation was of someone making a Reflex save to evade an effect - which then means a "half-damage" situation, but we couldn't find anything saying where half-damage was defined. You're saying it's "half the damage bonus"? That'd make sense.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

only major structural damage to the bank

Which the PCs did not directly cause. Go Team Us!

I'm going to assume banks in Freedom City know enough to install safety glass so when Ben blew the front windows of the bank out nobody on the sidewalk outside was killed by flying shards.

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

I figure there are two kinds of banks in Freedom City: one installs high-tech defenses and the other makes enough in service fees to pay for safety glass and structural damage. Both kinds keep signs around that say "Robbery free for xxx days" where the xxx is a flipchart with numbers.

There's probably a test for bank tellers in Freedom City that's a bit more strenuous than in the rest of the country. And if you'll recall, I had the half-armed supers (the ones with only a good defense or attack) as guards.

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

And, having slept on it, I realize that Freedom City banks have irregular access to Dr. Metropolis, who instantly repairs structural damage. That's got to affect their insurance somehow (if only in foot-dragging about paying). Hmm. There's a scam to be run there, especially if Dr. M preferentially visits the site of superhuman battles.