rapa-nui wrote:Just looked at M&M 2e on wikipedia and it looks like it might be OK. Do things generally stay on the RNG or does it fall apart at higher PL?
PL defines the RNG, so that part won't be lost at higher PL.
The biggest flaw is that powers need to be vetted by an experienced DM, because it can create the Avenger's balance. The BMX Bandit might have the same attack/AC/damage as everyone else in the party, but the Angel Summoner can literally call forth 500 flying invisible supermen that each punch just as hard from a kilometer away. The DM needs to tell the BMX Bandit to have better tricks than popping a wheelie, and smack the Angel Summoner for trying to take the action economy into his BDSM Dungeon. The genre makes it easier to buff the 'Fighter', because the most mundane power source exemplar (Batman) still has supertech.
The second flaw, which a few people will bring up, is that the advancement is 'meh'. It's largely better to just plain rebuild at the higher PL rather than spend your PP one at a time
Last edited by virgil on Fri Jun 20, 2014 6:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
I don't have any experience with higher PL (I think we played around PL 8-10), but I can vouch for M&M 2e as a pretty decent system. I mean, it's a bit twinkish, in that one player was banned from saying "hypothetically" because it always led to some horribly broken, yet entirely legal concept*.
Now, because of this, system mastery actually matters EVEN MORE than D&D. Oh, that, and making sure everyone's using the same order of operations. No, seriously. I ran into this. So far as I know, I was using actually correct order of operations for my power calculations, but the game wanted you to use some entirely different one. I don't actually know if that's the game, of if the character builder program my MM used was programmed incorrectly, so, you know, double check that shit.
*Like a psychic on par with igniting the atmosphere of the Earth. Basically the idea was a powerful psychic in a coma, so phys. stats were bare human minimum, non-important mentals were middle high, and all other points put into Alternate Form. ...which gives you a second form with mental stats based on your normal ones. Alt Form is about 5 points per rank, and gives 5 points per rank to build your alt form. Of course drawbacks and flaws can modify that. So if your Alt Form is a Projection, it costs 4 points per rank. That's not a huge discrepancy, but it's something, especially when you're working with 150ish points, and only have a handful of points in abilities which are probably paid for with the points you get from reducing the others. Then that form has full insubstantiality with no physicals (12 points), a Will-targeting AoE Disintegrate with Limited: Biological/Thinking Targets only (3/rank, 5'radius/rank), and a psychic sense with a range just a bit larger than the Disintegrate.
This was for a villains mini-campaign, and was thankfully just a thought experiment.
...meanwhile I actually did play a demon lord trapped in a neighbouring dimension kind of like Silent Hill, except it was meant as a punishment, so it was more like if Heaven interacted with the mortal world the way Silent Hill does. His main power was Minions, configured so that I just summoned "demons" onto the mortal realm, and could configure them however I want. Minions is another point filter, usually costing 2 points per rank, which gets you 15 points to build your minions with (which use your PL limits). Now there are add ons and flaws and such you can put on that, so mine was:
Summon Demons--10 ranks
Full Action (-1/rank)
Distracting (-1/rank)
Heroic (minions don't use the mook rules, +1/rank)
Broad Type-Demons (+2/rank)
Range (summoning has a range increment of rank*10', max range of rank*100', +1/rank)
Dimensional (+1)
Mental Link (can communicate and order despite distance, +1)
Sensory Link (can sense through them, +1)
Progression (modifies number of minions summonable at once, +11--ie, 2500 minions at once. This may have been excessive.)
5 points/rank
So I had the ability to summon 2500 build-to-suit demons built with 150 points that used the same rules as everyone else, per turn. That I could control at any range, and see through. I kept sending minor shit like vrocks and hell hounds out into the world, so some Dr Strange type sealed me with basically a nullification on the Dimensional part of my summons. It took me a moment, but I realized there was nothing stopping me from summoning minions on my plane that had their own dimensional powers. So I summoned 2500 bob-omb imps with Blast (Area-explosion, reaction, side effect: affects imp, Dimensional, limited: mystics only) and blew them up in a blast that covered the Earth in "Kill mystic powered people because I don't know who sealed me" energy.
And I gave God a headache.
Now, the "downside" of this was that God came down to negotiate and basically said "Ok, look, you want out, I'll send you home. The catch is that you just have to stay there until the Apocalypse." Which was what my character wanted anyway (well, minus the catch) so it kind of took away his reason for playing the game that Expyzptlk had set for us, so I had to make another villain. Of course, in hindsight, I could have just changed goals, but I think there may have been a "no interfering with earth" catch too.
So Mutants and Masterminds has several paths to Real Ultimate Power, and they're stuff like broad type minion summoning, alternate forms, and broad type shapeshifting.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
Is there a spell in 3.x that actually lets you obtain a soul? I know the Book of Vile Body Piercings talks about using souls for things, as do some Tome materials, but I was wondering: how you're supposed to collect them in the first place?
There's a material from Complete Warrior that hoovers up souls. Thinaun?
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.
About the M&M 2e RNG, there are actually two issues, both of which are fortunately easy to house-rule.
The first is that even when buying unflawed base defense, half your defense (being a Dodge bonus) is lost when you are flat-footed or targeted by a "surprise attack". (System term, fortunately. It's clear what is and isn't a surprise attack.) And if it's due to a "surprise attack" you take -2 to defense on top of that. This adds up to almost anyone being trivial to hit if you can reliably feint, hide or turn invisible, and to defense being overpriced because it's so easy to circumvent.
The fix for this is: Let unflawed base defense apply at all times, so only AC from Dodge Focus or similar effects (like Shield), which are actually discounted for it, is lost when surprised or flat-footed. If you care about the nitty-gritty details like me, you should encourage everyone to buy at least a few points of their Defense as a Dodge bonus if you use this rule, since almost anyone is in fact easier to hit if you get the drop on them. The exceptions, who buy it all as base defense, would model people like Juggernaut who don't bother to dodge either way, and people who are so alert and skilled that it's actually impossible to sucker punch them.
The second is effects (mostly area damage) that let you save for half, and flawed Immunity which gives "half effect".
Saving for "half" actually doesn't work with M&M's damage system, because it means the difference between a successful and failed save, and the effect of a partial immunity, gets larger at higher PLs. A rank 10 effect, which is where most of the balance attention went, is DC 20, or 15 if you pass the initial save. That works well enough. But a rank 4 effect is DC 12 if you save, which is almost no change, and a rank 16 effect is only DC 18 instead of 26 -a huge difference. Bad enough in itself, even worse because the power rank scale isn't actually linear in what a 1-point difference in ranks represents.
The fix here is even simpler: Anything that reduces an effect by"half" instead reduces the rank of the incoming effect by 5.
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Pixels wrote:Just from the SRD: Trap the Soul and Soul Bind are permanent soul grabs. Magic Jar can be used for short-term soul imprisonment in a pinch.
Thanks. Those are what I was looking for. I remembered Magic Jar, but it wasn't permanent. I was looking for a way to place them in crystals, so, Soul Bind works perfectly.
A WoD ST I know recently came to me looking for advice. He wanted to add another system of specialized spells and fatigue costs and xp and... stuff... to help fix this problem he perceived where Mages don't have any long-term squishiness-reduction options.
I responded by pointing out that (in 2e - the concept extends to other versions even if the exact numbers don't) it's really quite easy to, for instance, use Life-3 and Arete-3 to cast a ritual to boost a stat to 5 for 6 months, that it only takes a few hours (again, twice a year), and that even if you do it recklessly, you can expect to gain paradox from it something like once every 42 years. I also pointed out that the same principle could be extended to things like healing 6 levels of damage every time you take any, or going through life at 4x normal speed, though I didn't do the exact probabilities for them.
His argument was that if a player was going to be such a dirty powergamer, he'd grant them a point of paradox for every dot of attribute, combined ("your attributes are all at 5, multiply that by the number of attributes, [you have 45 paradox]").
Now, there's probably not much point in discussing whether that's a good way of dealing with it or whatever. My question for you guys is this:
As a player, I've run into that sort of thing a lot, and it's always a matter of some invisible line you can step over and suddenly god smites you for being uppity. Very mythic Greece. Maybe it's me being socially stunted or something, but I don't understand these silent agreements and invisible barriers and I don't like them. When you're a player, how do you tell what'll fly and what won't? How much of a margin do you leave? Where do you learn what's 'obviously' overpowered/munchkinny/whatever?
Barring that, where do you all find your super perfect gaming groups that don't play fucking WoD and don't get offended by the idea that people could talk about rules or expectations rather than (trivially) proving in-game that they can kill you?
Reminds me of one DM who was struggling with this one published adventure's predilection for giants and ogres with x3 crit weapons, the concern being their attacks having the non-zero probability of OHKO players because of the sheer size of their crit-damage.
I suggested that he give us magic items that can negate critical damage, of which there were a couple in the Magic Item Compendium at the time. They only worked once to thrice a day, but the giants weren't critting that often.
They ignored me and chose to forever house-rule all criticals to only multiply the base weapon damage.
Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
momothefiddler wrote:Maybe it's me being socially stunted or something, but I don't understand these silent agreements and invisible barriers and I don't like them. When you're a player, how do you tell what'll fly and what won't? How much of a margin do you leave? Where do you learn what's 'obviously' overpowered/munchkinny/whatever?
I ask them if all the things I want to do fall within their arbitrary invisible lines or not, and I adjust what I want to do based on what we face and ask more. This can turn out one of several ways:
1) They refuse to answer. So I give them a long speech I have given several times and probably typed up here about how people are supposed to know what they can and cannot do without the DM getting mad, and that asking me to figure it out and then punishing me when I get it wrong is childish bullshit, and they are bad people, then I leave.
2) They do answer, and I either play with them or not depending on how reasonable I think their arbitrary lines are or whether or not their lines allow me to do things I find interesting. (EG, I don't play if their lines exclude casting the Stinking Cloud spell for being too powerful.)
3) They do answer for a while, and the as the game advances it turns out that asking too many questions at a certain point somehow passes their arbitrary silent agreement. See results in 1.
momothefiddler wrote:Barring that, where do you all find your super perfect gaming groups that don't play fucking WoD and don't get offended by the idea that people could talk about rules or expectations rather than (trivially) proving in-game that they can kill you?
To quote a song I quite like, the way out is through.
I liked WoD as a teenager. Most of my friends did too. We all played it, and we all got tired of it, and we stopped. Then we started meeting with D&D players who had also gotten tired of D&D, and sort of merged. You have to get tired of setting without mechanics, just as you have to get tired of mechanics without setting. Once you've done that you can talk about setting and about mechanics and actually enjoy the conversations.
People tend to start off blind to the flaws of their favourite games, and insist that their workarounds to those flaws are sensible. When you point out that those workarounds aren't, they get pissed off - as in your example. However, sooner or later they have this awakening that goes "My god! This is terrible! I need to explore something else!" Then they get into indie RPGs and you can actually talk to them meaningfully instead of running up against the wall of denial.
I think it also helps to live in a big city like I do, so there's enough gamers that we don't all have to play together. We can instead pick out the ones we like.
Last edited by Laertes on Thu Jun 26, 2014 9:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
momothefiddler wrote:When you're a player, how do you tell what'll fly and what won't? How much of a margin do you leave? Where do you learn what's 'obviously' overpowered/munchkinny/whatever?
The best way is to look at what the other PCs have made for characters. If what you're going to make blows them away, it's probably too OP.
Is there a list of pathfinder spells organized by [tags]?
Just wondering, soon I will be playing in a game with a court bard in the party, which gives penalties to fear and charm saves. There will be an enchanter in the party so that will be covered, I'm just wondering if I could browse the spells for fear effects so I can also take advantage of the debuffs?
In this moment, I am Ur-phoric. Not because of any phony god’s blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my int score.
Descriptor lets you filter fear effects. Unfortunately, it doesn't list all fear tags, and instead fear, something else tags. Look out for (evil, fear), (curse, fear) and (curse, fear, mind affecting), (emotion, feat, mind affecting),
Rules Compendium wrote:If you can’t see the target, such as due to being blinded or the target’s invisibility, you can’t have line of sight to it even if you could draw an unblocked line between your space and the target’s.
...
If you don’t have line of sight to the opponent you want to charge at the start of your turn, you can’t charge that foe.
If I know where an invisible creature is (e.g. via listen checks, scent, another pc with true sight and telepathy), can I charge them?
What if I don't know, but strongly suspect they're on a particular square?
Can I charge an invisible enemy if I detect them with blindsense or tremorsense?
Can you jump during a charge?
I'd like to know both RAW and how you'd resolve it if the two don't match.
Last edited by radthemad4 on Wed Jul 02, 2014 12:08 am, edited 3 times in total.
radthemad4 wrote:If I know where an invisible creature is (e.g. via listen checks, scent, another pc with true sight and telepathy), can I charge them?
Apparently not. The rules state you have to be able to see them, no exceptions. I'd argue that as long as you have some means of certainty of their square and size, you're good. But that's my ruling.
What if I don't know, but strongly suspect they're on a particular square?
The rules say no, I would also go that way.
Can I charge an invisible enemy if I detect them with blindsense or tremorsense?
According to the vision thing above, no. It sounds okay to me though.
Can you jump during a charge?
According to RAW, you have to draw the closest straight line to take you from your position to the enemy. So you can only jump if that gives you the diagonal vertical movement needed to reach the enemy. Any jumping for other reasons (such as to clear an obstacle in the path) is disallowed as that makes a wonky line (meaning if you can't run through the intervening square, you can't charge). Exception: you have to make a jump check to benefit from the Leap Attack feat, but that jump check doesn't actually result in you changing course by jumping.
I would probably veer on the side of leniency for that one, letting people jump over intervening obstacles. That might result in somebody making a jump check in a game.
Count Arioch the 28th wrote:There is NOTHING better than lesbians. Lesbians make everything better.
Koumei wrote:According to RAW, you have to draw the closest straight line to take you from your position to the enemy. So you can only jump if that gives you the diagonal vertical movement needed to reach the enemy. Any jumping for other reasons (such as to clear an obstacle in the path) is disallowed as that makes a wonky line (meaning if you can't run through the intervening square, you can't charge). Exception: you have to make a jump check to benefit from the Leap Attack feat, but that jump check doesn't actually result in you changing course by jumping.
I would probably veer on the side of leniency for that one, letting people jump over intervening obstacles. That might result in somebody making a jump check in a game.
If the obstacle being jumped is low enough, then jumping over it should not make the character enter a higher-elevation square, unless the length of the long jump forces the character to jump that high. There does not appear to be anything in the rules to say how much vertical elevation a long jump gives.
I know not everyone likes the rules compendium, but just in case you don't think it is bullcrap:
3.5 Rules compendium wrote:Jumping during a Charge
You can make a long jump to avoid an obstacle as part of a charge, as long as you continue to meet all other criteria for making a charge before, during, and after the jump.
Last edited by ishy on Wed Jul 02, 2014 11:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
Gary Gygax wrote:The player’s path to role-playing mastery begins with a thorough understanding of the rules of the game
Bigode wrote:I wouldn't normally make that blanket of a suggestion, but you seem to deserve it: scroll through the entire forum, read anything that looks interesting in term of design experience, then come back.
I can't find a requirement for seeing your target in charges. I see a requirement for "line of sight," which does not appear to be formally defined, but is the same wording required for ranged attacks (best guess is looking at concealment, anything less than total concealment means you have LoS). So, it seems to me that anything subject to ranged attacks against is subject to charges.
A strict interpretation might say that you can't make ranged attacks based on blindsight (or attack invisible creatures), but I think that is clearly not the intent.
I've also always played that you can make attacks on arbitrary squares, at a penalty, to try and hit invisible creatures there. I'm not confident that's RAW, but it at least seems to be a common understanding. If that's allowed, you should also be able to charge arbitrary squares in exactly the same way (though it's probably a tactically bad idea).
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.
PHB #310 wrote:line of sight: Two creatures can see each other if they have line of sight to each other. To determine line of sight, draw an imaginary line between your space and the target’s space. If any such line is clear (not blocked), then you have line of sight to the creature (and it has line of sight to you). The line is clear if it doesn’t intersect or even touch squares that block line of sight. If you can’t see the target (for instance, if you’re blind or the target is invisible), you can’t have line of sight to it even if you could draw an unblocked line between your space and the target’s.
Gary Gygax wrote:The player’s path to role-playing mastery begins with a thorough understanding of the rules of the game
Bigode wrote:I wouldn't normally make that blanket of a suggestion, but you seem to deserve it: scroll through the entire forum, read anything that looks interesting in term of design experience, then come back.
some creatures have blindsight, the extraordinary ability to use a nonvisual sense (or a combination of such senses) to operate effectively without vision. Such sense may include sensitivity to vibrations, acute scent, keen hearing, or echolocation. This ability makes invisibility and concealment (even magical darkness) irrelevant to the creature (though it still can’t see ethereal creatures and must have line of effect to a creature or object to discern that creature or object
So it looks like blindsight lets you charge invisible creatures.
DSMatticus wrote:It's not just that everything you say is stupid, but that they are Gordian knots of stupid that leave me completely bewildered as to where to even begin. After hearing you speak Alexander the Great would stab you and triumphantly declare the puzzle solved.
Roog wrote:If the obstacle being jumped is low enough, then jumping over it should not make the character enter a higher-elevation square, unless the length of the long jump forces the character to jump that high. There does not appear to be anything in the rules to say how much vertical elevation a long jump gives.
d20srd wrote:At the midpoint of the jump, you attain a vertical height equal to one-quarter of the horizontal distance. The DC for the jump is equal to the distance jumped (in feet).
ishy wrote:I know not everyone likes the rules compendium, but just in case you don't think it is bullcrap:
3.5 Rules compendium wrote:Jumping during a Charge
You can make a long jump to avoid an obstacle as part of a charge, as long as you continue to meet all other criteria for making a charge before, during, and after the jump.
They don't? I use it often (and should've noticed that). What's wrong with it?
fectin wrote:I can't find a requirement for seeing your target in charges. I see a requirement for "line of sight," which does not appear to be formally defined, but is the same wording required for ranged attacks (best guess is looking at concealment, anything less than total concealment means you have LoS). So, it seems to me that anything subject to ranged attacks against is subject to charges.
Rules Compendium wrote:Line of Sight
If you can’t see the target, such as due to being blinded or the target’s invisibility, you can’t have line of sight to it even
if you could draw an unblocked line between your space and the target’s.
... Initiating a Charge
If you don’t have line of sight to the opponent you want to charge at the start of your turn, you can’t charge that foe.
fectin wrote:I've also always played that you can make attacks on arbitrary squares, at a penalty, to try and hit invisible creatures there. I'm not confident that's RAW, but it at least seems to be a common understanding. If that's allowed, you should also be able to charge arbitrary squares in exactly the same way (though it's probably a tactically bad idea).
What happens if someone guesses wrong and charges an empty square? Are they forced to keep moving for a bit?
name_here: Yeah, blindsight, but not blindsense or tremorsense by RAW, though I think I'll allow it.
radthemad4 wrote:They don't? I use it often (and should've noticed that). What's wrong with it?
It has some things that seem like copypasta errors, more so than the original books it is collected from. Also, there some secret rules changes that are just incomprehensible. Like when it tells you that you can't have resistance to Force damage or Poison damage, when you blatantly obviously can.
