Home Rules

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Doctor Malsyn
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Home Rules

Post by Doctor Malsyn »

I know that in a lot of games, GMs like to add in their own little rules here and there for one reason or the other, and I'm curious enough to ask; What sort of rules do you people implement, and for what reasons? As someone who'd be running a game of M&M for the first time, would you find them at all advisable, or would it be better to play it by ear?
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Bladewind
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Re: Home Rules

Post by Bladewind »

Depends on your comfort level. Running as written is a good idea for novice GMs. Wait until you have experience before fixing what is only broken to the eye of the beholder...

I have a tendency more and more to do skills at 3 Ranks per Power Point instead of 2, and I give a social advantage per Rank of Presence as it tends to be a throwaway attribute.

Those are easy and any level of GM can try them.

It's when you get into things like "Impervious sucks and is overpriced so let's do x..." where you need to know where you are going before trying to use them...
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Ken
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Re: Home Rules

Post by Ken »

My group has our home rules categorised here: RC Universe House Rules
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badpenny
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Re: Home Rules

Post by badpenny »

Before you go changing anything, I think you need to run a few games and find out if anything bugs you. I can make a laundry list of broken M&M elements for you, but once you go down that road, there's no coming back.
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Ken
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Re: Home Rules

Post by Ken »

badpenny wrote: I can make a laundry list of broken M&M elements for you, but once you go down that road, there's no coming back.
Especially since, the degree of brokeness varies from person to person. I've seen some lists of "broken M&M elements" and disagreed with most of them. Which is why Badpenny is right that you need to find what does and doesn't work for you.
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Doctor Malsyn
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Re: Home Rules

Post by Doctor Malsyn »

Alright, thanks everyone who responded!
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Jabroniville
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Re: Home Rules

Post by Jabroniville »

From my thread. Note: Since I have a Character Build thread, I kind of TRY to keep it to the standard stuff as much as possible, so unless something sounds ultra-egregious, I leave it be. Personally, I've considered running "Unimportant Skills" as 3 points per rank, and "Important Skills" (Accuracy-based stuff, Interaction Skills) as the standard 2/rank, but I wouldn't do that in my thread.


JAB'S HOUSERULES:

I have a few tiny alterations to the standard 3e Set-Up. I dislike totally rewriting or rewiring a well-made game to suit whatever purposes I have in mind, so nothing is very major.

Skills:
-Investigation uses Awareness, not Intellect. The reason? Well, ASIDE from the fact that I used it that way for like seven years before someone pointed it out, and me refusing to edit EVERY BUILD EVER, I always figured it to mean "Deduction/Look For Clues/Reasoning" as opposed to a weird mish-mash of "CSI"-type skills combined with "how to get information out of people" (which should absolutely be Insight/Persuasion/Deception-related). It's weird that Reed Richards would have this insane natural bonus to something called "Investigation". It might have been simpler for me to type it out as "Expertise (Investigation)", but what the hell.
I must have read the Skill description at SOME point (though I often jump straight into building and leave the Skills as the "least-important" bit, so I'm not sure why I never caught the full description, or even looked at the Base-Stat for it (I KNOW I looked over all of the Base Stats for the Skills at SOME point, but obviously it didn't sink in).
-Expertise is a bit too expensive for some things. More pointless "job" oriented Skills like Cooking & Carpentry will be half-price (it will be noted in the bio), unless it's a world in which those are your only major attributes (generally non-Comic Book worlds).
-Expertise (Medicine) is merged with Treatment for similar "why'd they split THAT up?" reasons. If they're gonna double the cost of Skills, they should have checked whether or not it was worth it.
-Performance things like Acting & Music will use Presence as a modifier rather than Intellect. I think that's pretty normal.
-Things like Professional Sports will use either Dexterity or Agility as a modifier rather than Intellect. Golf & Baseball uses Dexterity, while Hockey, Football & Soccer are more Agility.
-I allow Flaws on Skills- I mean, you can buy Skills as an Enhanced Skills POWER, and put a Flaw on THAT, so why not? It fits for some things. I could technically just put this under "Powers", but it's less typing (and easier to read on the sheet) if you just put it under "Skills".
-Sometimes I'll give someone an uneven number of points for Skills, in order to make a half-point Power still come out to an even number on the final total. But only then. Very, VERY rarely does this come up.

Advantages:
-I charge a bit less for Languages- 1 point for a "few", 2 points for "a bunch", and 3 points for basically whatever you need. It's WAY too much to charge a guy just for speaking Japanese, AND it's nigh-impossible to accurately tell just HOW many languages any character knows- the writers just kind of assume they do or don't based off of the situation. And really- knowing every language automatically is a 6-point power. It's goofy to charge that much for the Language Advantage, even if it DOES double every time you buy a notch of it.
-Looking at the 3e Advantages list, they've left out a good handful from 2e's main Feats list, and ALL of what came with the 2e additional books- like the mass of Feats in Mecha & Manga and Wizards & Warlocks. Most of these I never really used, so that's okay, but I did enjoy some. So I "houseruled" in the more reasonable, enjoyable Feats from there to 3e-- Last Stand (spend an HP to ignore all Damage Conditions for one round) & Withstand Damage (Trade-Off Defense for Toughness- I would allow this for either Parry or Dodge). I've started stating what each one does in the build, because every 15 pages or so, somebody asks me :). Withstand Damage is so potentially unbalancing that I would instigate limits on it- maybe give up your Move Action, or have it only used as a Defend Action or something. Maybe only once or twice per fight or so.
-I used to use some of the other Feats from those books, but I've since dropped them. Some can be rather weird and/or unbalancing, and if I used them, I'd simply make them Benefits or something like it.

Powers:
-All "Flat +1 Extras" are called "Feats" because it's stupid to change it to something more confusing. It reads more easily when you can see the small "Feats" listed ahead of the "Extras" to figure out the points cost.
-The Removable Flaw is a bit iffy: characters get a HUGE discount for something that's unlikely to happen often (how many times does Iron Man REALLY get left without his Armour in the comics? The players would rightly complain if they were constantly de-powered like this, as well). Therefore, I would argue that anyone using a Device should get that discount as always, but have to deal with the occasional Side-Effect of taking damage or other attacks- perhaps roll on a unique Table every time they fail a save by more than 5- roll randomly and maybe Iron Man's Boot Jets are disabled, or his Toughness is permanently lowered (a plate got knocked out of whack), or his Sensors go awry- maybe he even suffers a loss to his Accuracy or Defenses! Stuff like that keeps it interesting (as opposed to "Useless Human Tony"), while also being worth the Flaw.
-If I was GMing a game, I'd probably change the cost of some things (Communication would be cheaper- a RADIO is like 1 point; Concealment would be a LOT more expensive, especially Visually), but I'll leave them the same for the builds.
-"Split" isn't really the most useful Power Feat out there, as it thins out the damage you can do considerably, especially for melee weapons. I think to boost it up a bit, buying the "Split" Feat to paired weapons or something should require the enemy to Disarm or Smash your weapon TWICE in order for you to lose the full ability.
-Summon normally requires a +2 Extra to summon double the number of minions (+2 is 2 minions, +4 is 4, +6 is 8, +8 is 16, etc.). I use it the same way, but you can also use odd numbers if you want to summon a less-divisible number (+3 is 3 minions, +5 is 6, +7 is 12, +9 is 24, etc.).

Other Stuff:
"New Villain Stink": I would generally always assume that the first time you meet a villain, he's a lot more powerful. Their attacks are unknown, and their tactics a mystery, and so it's harder to fight them. This is REALLY accurate to the comics, where guys like Typeface can beat Spider-Man in their first meeting, yet slowly turn into recurring jokes over time. Similar things can be given to "New" characters looking to make a name for themselves, but I'd give this a more "the GM boosts their power" thing. Notice how badly The Shocker kicked Spider-Man's ass the first time they fought? Spidey couldn't lay a finger on him and got the hell beaten out of him. He even had to trick him to win (by webbing his thumbs away from his 'shock gloves')! Nowadays? The Shocker's a PL 9 guy at-best, and couldn't beat Spidey with four guys helping him.
Similarly, a guy in his debut will be trying REALLY hard, whereas other guys will just start half-assing it over time as they win less and less. In the end, their talents will LITERALLY drop since they put less effort into it.

Unfamiliar opponents might gain the same kind of boost (like how in Acts of Vengeance, the villains thought it might give them an advantage. Never mind that the VILLAINS were fighting unfamiliar opponents, TOO...

Predictable Attacks: Something I added for my Fighting Game builds, but something I'd extend to actual superheroes, too- essentially, your accuracy lowers the more you use the same attack over and over again. This both makes sense (if Johnny Storm only throws out a standard Blast, eventually you're gonna know what's coming and move out of the way), and keeps players from defaulting to their maximum-powered attack, or just repeated Power Attacks. In this instance, I would consider the various Accuracy Modifiers (All-Out, Accurate, Defensive, Power Attack, etc.) to be different attacks for the purposes of this rule (I mean, martial artists ONLY HAVE unarmed attacks for the most part).

Re-Roll Failed Toughness Saves: In various games I've seen, this tends to be the use of a Hero Point about 75% of the time. I would reduce players to doing this once per fight, maximum. GMs, too.
MacynSnow
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Re: Home Rules

Post by MacynSnow »

I added something intresting recently(In fact,I'm using a version of it in my MonsterVision Studio's Thread),just to simulate some of my Favorite Movies.It's called
The Villian Save-it's basically the same mechanic from Monstervision,but it's used to ensure either the "Heroes"(if you've read my post's before then you know all about GREED-E)are grabbed for the Deathtrap or that the Villian escapes...
Flynnarrel
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Re: Home Rules

Post by Flynnarrel »

Jabroniville wrote:Other Stuff:
"New Villain Stink": I would generally always assume that the first time you meet a villain, he's a lot more powerful. Their attacks are unknown, and their tactics a mystery, and so it's harder to fight them. This is REALLY accurate to the comics, where guys like Typeface can beat Spider-Man in their first meeting, yet slowly turn into recurring jokes over time. Similar things can be given to "New" characters looking to make a name for themselves, but I'd give this a more "the GM boosts their power" thing. Notice how badly The Shocker kicked Spider-Man's ass the first time they fought? Spidey couldn't lay a finger on him and got the hell beaten out of him. He even had to trick him to win (by webbing his thumbs away from his 'shock gloves')! Nowadays? The Shocker's a PL 9 guy at-best, and couldn't beat Spidey with four guys helping him.

Maybe a Favored Environment (Fighting someone who doesn't know you)
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Re: Home Rules

Post by kirinke »

As a player, I loathe min-maxing. I prefer solid, balanced builds myself.
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Davies
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Re: Home Rules

Post by Davies »

House Rule

Impervious Toughness works as the Hero's Handbook states; the character doesn't have to make a Toughness save against effects with a damage modifier less than half of its rank. This is to keep its value consistent with Immunity (Toughness) which costs 80 points.

But Immunity (Fortitude) and (Will) cost only 30 points.

So Impervious Fortitude and Impervious Will work like this: the character doesn't have to make a Fortitude or Will save against effects with a resistance modifer equal to its rank.

(Frankly, I might shift Immunity (Toughness) down to 60 points, so that they're all equivalent to "ignores 30 ranks or less".)
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RainOnTheSun
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Re: Home Rules

Post by RainOnTheSun »

I just have one house rule I want to try out, but it's a doozy: instead of making skills cheaper to buy, I want to do the opposite. I want to make skills cost one point per rank.

BUT

Skills could be added to any ability check instead of being limited to one specific ability. A character with an Athletics skill could add it to Strength checks to run faster or jump farther, to Agility checks to balance or reduce fall damage, or even Dexterity checks to catch things, for example. A character with an Investigation skill could add it to Intellect checks to find and analyze evidence, but also to Awareness and Presence checks to gather information and interrogate suspects. A Vehicles skill could be used not only to pilot/drive vehicles, but also to repair or sabotage them, and to answer any questions about them that might come up during the game. And so on.

Ideally, skills would offer more breadth of usefulness for the same number of points, but at the cost of making it more expensive to hyperfocus in one thing. Skills would be more distinct from abilities in function, and also take less time to buy during character creation.

The problem is, I've never actually playtested this house rule, and it's a big enough change that I don't want to put it into my ongoing game. So it might be a while before I get a chance to use it.
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