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[-] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

Mutants and Masterminds is kind of interesting. I like how it's designed so character creation is entirely point buy. There's no classes. No spells. You pay for skills and abilities directly. There's basic powers, and modifiers you can use to make them more interesting. It's also geared towards balance as opposed to simulation, which means you can make whatever type of character you want instead of having to stick with what's optimal.

Unfortunately, it's not well-done. For example, they frequently forget the game uses a log scale and cut numbers in half. Someone with a Dodge rank of -2 who is Vulnerable has their active defenses halved, which brings their Dodge rank up to -1. Equipment is 3 to 4 times cheaper than Devices, with the only differences being flavor (Equipment is something a normal person can get) and a different method of calculating Toughness that very often makes Equipment stronger. I ended up making a list of house rules trying to fix all of them (and admittedly including a few alternate rules that aren't clearly better or worse) that's so long that it would probably be easier to make a new RPG.

I don't suppose I can get any advice on something I would like? My requirements are:

  1. A point buy system that lets you make any character you want.
  2. Costs are based on making characters balanced, and not how literally expensive a piece of equipment would be and that sort of thing.
  3. Must be balanced as far as reasonably possible without massive flaws like M&M.
  4. I'd really like having a wide variety of characters you can make and things you can do. Make it so you can just play a Swarm, or a character of any size class, or anything else you can think of.

EDIT:

  1. Must be free. I'm not going to pay $20 for a system I don't even know I'll like. And honestly, I'm too cheap to pay for anything I don't really need.
[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Maybe try GURPS + Supers suplement?

[-] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago

I forgot to add, it needs to be free. I did download GURPS Lite a while ago. I can't remember exactly why I didn't like it, but one problem I see is that it has a specific list of weapons. You can't just make your own with whatever set of attributes you want. And there's going to be statistically better and worse ones, so you have to choose between the weapon you think is cool and the one that deals more damage. In contrast, Mutants & Masterminds has weapons with a point buy system same as the characters. Though it's extremely bad at explaining that. It just has a list of Devices and their costs, and you have to notice that the example characters have weapons that aren't in the list, and that they cost the same as if you just build them into a player but with Equipment Points instead of Power Points.

Also, Lite at least doesn't seem to have any way to build characters with interesting powers. I don't really care if it's superhero-themed in particular, but I just think M&M's system of design your own spells is better than D&D or Pathfinder where you just have to pick one out of a list or or make your own and eyeball it.

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this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2025
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