Better buy:2e or 3e?

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MacynSnow
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Better buy:2e or 3e?

Post by MacynSnow »

I've been meaning to get some hardcopies of some of my books for awhile now(i honestly perfer hardcovers to pdf,as it canlt be lost easily....that,and i'm old-fashioned :) ) and was wondering which one would be more worthwhile to get in actual physical form....
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Ken
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Re: Better buy:2e or 3e?

Post by Ken »

3e. But I'm biased. I never could get into 2e.
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Re: Better buy:2e or 3e?

Post by FuzzyBoots »

As much as I think 2e is superior to 3e, I'd say to go for 3e. Simply said, that's what all future releases will be done in. Using 2e means you're either going to be doing a lot of conversion, or you're stuck with dwindling stock.
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Re: Better buy:2e or 3e?

Post by Arkrite »

The one you prefer more?
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Re: Better buy:2e or 3e?

Post by Jabroniville »

FuzzyBoots wrote: Thu Nov 02, 2017 3:11 am As much as I think 2e is superior to 3e, I'd say to go for 3e. Simply said, that's what all future releases will be done in. Using 2e means you're either going to be doing a lot of conversion, or you're stuck with dwindling stock.
What made 2nd Edition superior, to you? I know a couple of people preferred the old system to the new one, but I think most of the Character Builder-types like myself, Taliesin & Kreuz liked 3rd Edition better. It might depend on whether or not you prefer "Wildly Overpowered Grappling" to "Wildly Useless Grappling" :).
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Re: Better buy:2e or 3e?

Post by MacynSnow »

Jabroniville wrote: Thu Nov 02, 2017 8:57 am
FuzzyBoots wrote: Thu Nov 02, 2017 3:11 am As much as I think 2e is superior to 3e, I'd say to go for 3e. Simply said, that's what all future releases will be done in. Using 2e means you're either going to be doing a lot of conversion, or you're stuck with dwindling stock.
What made 2nd Edition superior, to you? I know a couple of people preferred the old system to the new one, but I think most of the Character Builder-types like myself, Taliesin & Kreuz liked 3rd Edition better. It might depend on whether or not you prefer "Wildly Overpowered Grappling" to "Wildly Useless Grappling" :).
Here's my brothers(Tatsuie40) opinion on it:while he think's 2e had slighty better character build options and power mechanics,3e has better combat and point management. He think's i should go with the cheaper option (which would be 2e) and just convert as needed.
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Re: Better buy:2e or 3e?

Post by L-Space »

I like 3e more for the most part. It fixed some issues, gave us the affliction power, and moved away from the D&D esque ability scores.

That being said there's a few crunchy bits that I miss from 2e, and liked that they came out with the Warriors & Warlocks and Mecha & Manga books. I also miss Drawbacks to a degree, since it gave more options than 3e's -1/rank flaws, -1 quirk, or complication.
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Re: Better buy:2e or 3e?

Post by Horsenhero »

FuzzyBoots wrote: Thu Nov 02, 2017 3:11 am As much as I think 2e is superior to 3e, I'd say to go for 3e. Simply said, that's what all future releases will be done in. Using 2e means you're either going to be doing a lot of conversion, or you're stuck with dwindling stock.
This pretty much echoes my opinion. I've always preferred a bit more granularity in my rules (but I also played Aftermath & Space Opera by FGU which required "in game" mathematics) and 3e is lacking in that respect...BUT...3e is the game that is being actively supported and it's a bit easier to introduce new players to due to the simplicity.

And as Jab pointed out, there's the whole "grappling" mess.
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Re: Better buy:2e or 3e?

Post by Jabroniville »

I prefer 3e for Affliction and things like it, though Ultimate Power might be the best M&M book ever, in terms of how much I read it (though they made that AWFUL design decision to split the powers in half, making searching a pain in the ass). But they still had some issues (all the various Affliction-like powers that were sometimes improperly statted-up- Pheromones in particular were the wrong cost).

I think I liked having Density as one solid power, though it made for some annoying math.

The BIG thing for me is Skills. 2nd Edition had a BOATLOAD of them, and that granularity made character building annoying, considering that's the most boring part of statting out characters, for me. Stat up one or two "Spy Guy" builds and you have an INSANELY long list to sort through- getting tired over this actually temporarily caused me to quit statting up characters a few months into my first run, as I just got SICK of having to list every little thing. 3e's more-simplified set-up was a great boon to me, and made it much more interesting (at the cost of having Skills now be too expensive in some regards; I would have ideally liked a "two-tier cost" system, making the big ones cost more).

2e was, however, much more idealized at statting up large groups of regular humans and making them stand out. Things like G.I. Joe & Street Fighter were easier in 2nd Edition, because you had like seven tiers of human strength. BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT, 3rd Edition is better at statting up SUPER-HEROES, because that granularity is now focused towards super-people (it's going from ST 0-7 and ST 0-4 in terms of human potential, giving superhumanly strong beings more options instead of cramming them all into 5-7 tiers).
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Re: Better buy:2e or 3e?

Post by Horsenhero »

Jabroniville wrote: Sat Nov 04, 2017 7:12 am I prefer 3e for Affliction and things like it, though Ultimate Power might be the best M&M book ever, in terms of how much I read it (though they made that AWFUL design decision to split the powers in half, making searching a pain in the ass). But they still had some issues (all the various Affliction-like powers that were sometimes improperly statted-up- Pheromones in particular were the wrong cost).

I think I liked having Density as one solid power, though it made for some annoying math.

The BIG thing for me is Skills. 2nd Edition had a BOATLOAD of them, and that granularity made character building annoying, considering that's the most boring part of statting out characters, for me. Stat up one or two "Spy Guy" builds and you have an INSANELY long list to sort through- getting tired over this actually temporarily caused me to quit statting up characters a few months into my first run, as I just got SICK of having to list every little thing. 3e's more-simplified set-up was a great boon to me, and made it much more interesting (at the cost of having Skills now be too expensive in some regards; I would have ideally liked a "two-tier cost" system, making the big ones cost more).

2e was, however, much more idealized at statting up large groups of regular humans and making them stand out. Things like G.I. Joe & Street Fighter were easier in 2nd Edition, because you had like seven tiers of human strength. BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT, 3rd Edition is better at statting up SUPER-HEROES, because that granularity is now focused towards super-people (it's going from ST 0-7 and ST 0-4 in terms of human potential, giving superhumanly strong beings more options instead of cramming them all into 5-7 tiers).
See, this is exactly an argument that makes no sense to me. Super-Strong characters in 2e had exactly as many "tiers" as 3e gives, but the skill thing is annoying to me. Sure, 3e is more "comic book accurate" where someone who's good at some technology is good at all technology and the like, but in general I prefer greater granularity because it allows for greater specialization so every dang character in a particular archetype doesn't start looking like every other character in that archetype.

Of course I'm also not as impressed with the "Affliction" ability as many others seem to be. The game has become too simplified IMO. Overall I prefer 2e, but 3e is the game that's being supported so whatcha gonna do?
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Re: Better buy:2e or 3e?

Post by Jabroniville »

Putting Skills with Limits is a good "cheat" for granularity (Deception- Limited to Disguise; Vehicles-Limited to Cars). It's just annoying to type.

Regarding Strength, humans in 2e went from ST 0-7, which forced a lot of "stronger than people, but not by much" things to get log-jammed into that 6-8 range. I hated that animals, Foxbat and Ghost Rider barely did more unarmed damage than Cap. In 3e, the strongest guys barely hits ST 4 if you go by real weight limits, opening up ST 5-7 for the animals- the gap is thus bigger between Spider-Man and, say, Shang-Chi. I prefer that.

Like I said, though - the downside is that all marital artists are too "same-y" now, almost always being ST 3-4. Especially noticeable with Fighting Game guys, as those games use a wide spectrum of Strength levels.
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Re: Better buy:2e or 3e?

Post by Ken »

When I've tried reading characters in 2e, I've always had a problem with their strength scores since they seemed to have at least three of them. Apparently if you bought enough a high strength, you were required to by a super strength power besides. It seems very byzantine, and that's from a recovering Champions player.
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Re: Better buy:2e or 3e?

Post by Ares »

I overall probably prefer 3rd edition, but there are some things from 2nd edition I prefer as well. I was glad when they got away from the strictly D&D stats and the notion of (9-10 = +0), (11 - 12 = +1) nonsense and just focused on the bonuses themselves to clean things up. I prefer the 3rd ed. skill system overall, as my preference tends towards broad skill systems with some customization. Really what you needed was a way to buy the Pilot skill but then only buy certain aspects of it, like just Aircraft or the like.

Likewise, I'm always kind of iffy about a straight up "Fighting" stat, since that should logically apply to all combat and not just melee combat. They probably could have just dropped it entirely, kept Dex for all To Hit rolls, Agility for Evasion, and then used skills and Advantages to differentiate between melee skill and ranged skill.

I did like 2nd ed. Ultimate Power as a guideline to building superpowers, and agree that you should at least have a minimum of 5 ranks to differentiate normal humans (for a physical example: Average, Above Average, Athlete, Professional Athlete, Olympic Athlete).

And I'll admit, I don't really care for the number of conditions 3rd ed. has. There's just way too many of them for my taste. But that's just me.
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Re: Better buy:2e or 3e?

Post by FuzzyBoots »

Jabroniville wrote: Thu Nov 02, 2017 8:57 am
FuzzyBoots wrote: Thu Nov 02, 2017 3:11 am As much as I think 2e is superior to 3e, I'd say to go for 3e. Simply said, that's what all future releases will be done in. Using 2e means you're either going to be doing a lot of conversion, or you're stuck with dwindling stock.
What made 2nd Edition superior, to you? I know a couple of people preferred the old system to the new one, but I think most of the Character Builder-types like myself, Taliesin & Kreuz liked 3rd Edition better. It might depend on whether or not you prefer "Wildly Overpowered Grappling" to "Wildly Useless Grappling" :).
I will admit that, with the benefit of years of separation, most of my dislike for 3E is largely that it was, in many ways, an attempt at a clean break from d20, while not learning any actual lessons from the prior edition. Many questions that were immediately raised by new users of 3E were answered by Elric's index of answers from 2E's ORQ. The layout of the 3E book was confusing unless you already had knowledge of 2E. They split out the abilities with very little positive impact and changed terminology seemingly so that they could say that it was not derived from d20, and did so in a way that created more confusion (take, for example, Create Object being changed to Create, which meant that searching for the exception case became futile since "Create" is such a common word. Petty, I know, but that seemed the pattern with the changes. Or Feats and Drawbacks beings changed into "Advantages" and "Flat Flaws" that were so frequently confused with regular Flaws in canon material...). And, well, they didn't seem to have considered any past wisdom in the form of hard-learned lessons from 2E. The majority of questions from new users were things that had already been addressed in prior editions. *sigh* Honestly, I can't really swear that my animus to 3E doesn't largely reside in that they didn't really consult with all of the players of the prior edition. Combined with Steve Kenson having a more limited role, and the new people seeming more clueless about the legacy of the system, and it felt about as right as Wizards of the Coast taking over TSR.

Outside of personal feelings, I did feel that the skills become overly broad. Affliction was a good idea, but they tried to take the modularity of the system too far, making a mockery of things like smokescreens ("Your smoke bomib is an Attack Concealment... which somehow has a save... which means that people in the middle of the cloud of smoke, or outside it, can disbelieve it because... reasons") or Snares ("It fits perfectly within the system of Affliction other than saves changing... and requiring more points... and just deal with it, OK?"). Yes, Grabbing people (because "grappling" sounded too much like d20) became ineffective. Carrying things became simplified to a level of a straw breaking the camel's back. I mean, it had its good points. Grappling was no longer inescapable at higher levels. Directly suggesting disassociating abilities from skills meant things got more flexible when you wanted to claim that the detective wanting to determine the emotional state of the suspects should be an Investigation check with an Awareness modifier or that Expertise meant different abilities depending on what you wanted it for. But in the end, it felt like a proposed new system that was then left to float, free-form, without much guidance. And without respect for what had come before. *wry grin* Again, it felt a bit like when WotC took over TSR.

Ultimately, 3E is almost as good as 2E, and is, as I said, more supported these days.
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Re: Better buy:2e or 3e?

Post by Arkrite »

FuzzyBoots wrote: Fri Nov 10, 2017 3:30 am Ultimately, 3E is almost as good as 2E, and is, as I said, more supported these days.
Oh boy, do I want to use that as an opening for some sassy comments about the level of support it's getting ;~)

In my opinion neither edition is what I, as a player, am really looking for.
I'm far more fond of 2nd ed, but most of the games I really enjoyed were 2nd edition.

Fuzzy really hit it on the head with a lot of my issues with 3rd edition failing to build off of what they learned in 2nd edition. It felt a little disjointed like they were trying to do something completely different.

The part I like the most about 3rd edition is really just that the combat feels a little less terrifying. You're less likely to wind up stunned and destroyed, like you would be in 2nd edition. And that you could get minor usage of the combat feats (Power/Accurate/defensive/etc attack feats) without buying them was a nice touch.
And the concept of complications was a nice touch. It was a quick and easy way to really add character and personality in a few very quick statements, which helped build and define characters who might be a little plain otherwise.

That being said I enjoyed the expanded skills that the 2nd edition had.
In the second edition I could have a Gadgeteer with knowledge technology, A thief with disable devices, and a brick who's day job is as a mechanic with craft mechanical.
In third edition you have a Gadgeteer with Technology, a thief with technology, and a mechanic with... technology. And considering most people seem to spend about the same amount in skills?
You wind up with people feeling very samey and less unique.
And you can use expertise to get around it, but generally it winds up limiting your character more, and considering the cost of skills?

In second edition it was easier to be more unique from the rest of your group. And since skills were a little cheaper you could burn a point or two just to add flavor to your character without it costing much. The same investment doesn't go as far in the 3rd edition.

Admittedly it was a little harder for skill monkies in 3rd edition.

Honestly, I'd be really happy if the next version just kludged together aspects of the game. 2nd edition powers, 3rd edition combat, 2nd edition terminology, 3rd edition complications, some kind of option to swap to 3rd ed skills or 2nd edition skills as the players/GM prefer....

But I personally still lean towards 2nd edition. At the moment it seems like there's a lot more books for 2nd edition, and it really feels like Green Ronin has fallen out of love with M&M considering how long it's taken for their last few releases to be released.

... On the other hand it's a lot easier to get the 3rd edition books.
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