Impressions
Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2006 10:34 am
I've been working the the M&M2 rulebook for a few days making a character and let me tell you, it's been a rough time.
The point buy system is deceptively easy looking. But for my particular concept, an IronMan-like character, it's a hellapain.
There are 2 main problems, and 1 minor problem.
The first problem is that any kind of super equipment falls under the Power of Device. This could be Cap's Shield, Spidey's webshooters, Batman's Batarangs, or IronMan's armor.
This is the way Device works. If it's difficult for a badguy to take your device away from you (can only do it when you're defenseless), then it costs 4 building points per rank. Each rank that you buy gives you 5 powerpoints to spend on the device's abilities. That seems fairly straightforward. Except you have to convert back to ranks and points about 2 more times.
When you buy the devices abilites, you're buying ranks again, with different point values/rank. So if you want Protection, it's 1 point/rank. If you want that Protection to be Invulnerable, it's 2 points/rank.
So you spend the 5 powerpoints to buy ranks of Powers. Ok. I buy 5 ranks of Protection(Invulnerable) which costs 10 powerpoints. So even though my Protection rank is 5, I bought TWO ranks of "Device", which in turn costs 8 building points.
After a few times of that, I bought all of the Powers first, like I was giving them to myself, then figured total cost and made sure it was divisible by 5 (cause 5 pp/purchased rank remember). Then I figured out how many building points it cost me. Essentially, I multiplied the total by 4/5.
So that's a real frickin pain to begin with. But then if you want to tweak it a little, to save or expand points, you've got some serious calculations to do.
For example, I came out over the 150 points (surprise)(though not by much). I look things over and say, "hmm, I want to save 7 building points." Well, that's not a whole # of purchased ranks (remember, 4 build points /device rank). So I'll have to take off 8 building points, which is 2 ranks, which is 10 power points. So if I go back to my various powers, all with their own point/rank ratio, I have to shave 10 points there to save 8. Then I have 1 extra point that I can spend in another category (abilites or saves or something), which has a 1/1 point/rank ratio.
Again, pretty much a pain.
So that's problem #1.
Problem #2 is with a Power Feat (feat that modifies a power) called "Alternate Power". Now the book points out in several locations that this is a "key" concept and ability. But when describing it, they leave a few things out of the description. Here's a brief example.
You have a sonic attack ala Banshee. Your primary power is Blast(Sonic). With the Alternate Power Feat, you can make your Blast(Sonic) do other things besides Blast people. You can mimic other SuperPowers. For example, Fly. And there are some rules, can't use them at the same time, second has to be equal or less power than the primary, etc. So far, so good.
The part they don't explain is whether the Alternate power costs the same as purchasing a second full power, or if it costs the same as adding any other power feat onto your primary power (which normally increases the cost/rank by 1. So a 1/1 becomes 2/1).
This is a somewhat important distinction to make in a point based character building system. And it ties into problem #3.
Problem #3 is that the example characters they give, for the Battlesuit archtype for example, don't seem to add up. Nor do they break down the math in building the example archtypes. So I can't use the archtypical Battlesuit to tell me if the Alt Power for Blast costs as a separate power (which could be 3/rank) or as +1/rank. I don't know if this is an editing problem or if I'm not spending enough time on the rules. But I read the rules pretty closely, I think. So it's pretty annoying.
Even so, I think I have a workable character. I hope everyone else's character creation goes more smoothly.
The point buy system is deceptively easy looking. But for my particular concept, an IronMan-like character, it's a hellapain.
There are 2 main problems, and 1 minor problem.
The first problem is that any kind of super equipment falls under the Power of Device. This could be Cap's Shield, Spidey's webshooters, Batman's Batarangs, or IronMan's armor.
This is the way Device works. If it's difficult for a badguy to take your device away from you (can only do it when you're defenseless), then it costs 4 building points per rank. Each rank that you buy gives you 5 powerpoints to spend on the device's abilities. That seems fairly straightforward. Except you have to convert back to ranks and points about 2 more times.
When you buy the devices abilites, you're buying ranks again, with different point values/rank. So if you want Protection, it's 1 point/rank. If you want that Protection to be Invulnerable, it's 2 points/rank.
So you spend the 5 powerpoints to buy ranks of Powers. Ok. I buy 5 ranks of Protection(Invulnerable) which costs 10 powerpoints. So even though my Protection rank is 5, I bought TWO ranks of "Device", which in turn costs 8 building points.
After a few times of that, I bought all of the Powers first, like I was giving them to myself, then figured total cost and made sure it was divisible by 5 (cause 5 pp/purchased rank remember). Then I figured out how many building points it cost me. Essentially, I multiplied the total by 4/5.
So that's a real frickin pain to begin with. But then if you want to tweak it a little, to save or expand points, you've got some serious calculations to do.
For example, I came out over the 150 points (surprise)(though not by much). I look things over and say, "hmm, I want to save 7 building points." Well, that's not a whole # of purchased ranks (remember, 4 build points /device rank). So I'll have to take off 8 building points, which is 2 ranks, which is 10 power points. So if I go back to my various powers, all with their own point/rank ratio, I have to shave 10 points there to save 8. Then I have 1 extra point that I can spend in another category (abilites or saves or something), which has a 1/1 point/rank ratio.
Again, pretty much a pain.
So that's problem #1.
Problem #2 is with a Power Feat (feat that modifies a power) called "Alternate Power". Now the book points out in several locations that this is a "key" concept and ability. But when describing it, they leave a few things out of the description. Here's a brief example.
You have a sonic attack ala Banshee. Your primary power is Blast(Sonic). With the Alternate Power Feat, you can make your Blast(Sonic) do other things besides Blast people. You can mimic other SuperPowers. For example, Fly. And there are some rules, can't use them at the same time, second has to be equal or less power than the primary, etc. So far, so good.
The part they don't explain is whether the Alternate power costs the same as purchasing a second full power, or if it costs the same as adding any other power feat onto your primary power (which normally increases the cost/rank by 1. So a 1/1 becomes 2/1).
This is a somewhat important distinction to make in a point based character building system. And it ties into problem #3.
Problem #3 is that the example characters they give, for the Battlesuit archtype for example, don't seem to add up. Nor do they break down the math in building the example archtypes. So I can't use the archtypical Battlesuit to tell me if the Alt Power for Blast costs as a separate power (which could be 3/rank) or as +1/rank. I don't know if this is an editing problem or if I'm not spending enough time on the rules. But I read the rules pretty closely, I think. So it's pretty annoying.
Even so, I think I have a workable character. I hope everyone else's character creation goes more smoothly.