Stretching the Ranks & Measures Table

[gigolojoe]

So one of the things that gets mentioned a lot (and I've personally experienced) is that Mutants & Masterminds has an effective floor on the power level you can play at. Not because the rules don't support it, they do (with very minor house-rules), but because at the low-end there is little numerical difference between the ranks of your average civilian spread.

A rent-a-cop security guard is PL3, a beat-cop is PL4, a SWAT cop is PL5, and a "mega cop" with the beginnings of super-strength is PL6. That's a mere +3 difference in key features between Paul Blart mall cop and the newly enhanced cyber-police of Villain City. Yet the difference in key values between Mister America (PL8) & Hal Jordan (PL14) is +6. A competition between Hal & Mister America is practically guaranteed whereas one between Blart & one of the Mayor's new cyber-enhanced police force is only very slight tilted against the mall cop on his Segway.

Now, I understand where that comes from. After all, based on the Ability Benchmarks, '0' is your average person, 3 is just "gifted", but a 6 is "one of best in the world". Which stems (at least partially) from Ranks & Measures table. We start at how fast, strong, etc the "average person" is, then double that for every rank of ability given, which very quickly leads to world record levels of weight lifting, sprinting, etc. For Avengers-level heroes - that's OK. But drag that back down to the level of shows like Heroes, Alphas, and the movie Push and the difference between the weakest & strongest of the cast starts washing out.

My little brainsnap the other night was to simply stretch out the Ranks & Measures table. To simplify conversion between the standard and stretch table - keep the exponential nature, just double the ranks. So instead of table values being "(Rank 0 Value) x 2^Rank" it would be "(Rank 0 Value) x 2^(Rank/2)". Everything with a fixed DC (either completely or by addition) doubles, PL levels double (i.e PL10 becomes PL20), etc.

The only problems I can think of with this solution is that:

1. The R&M table is now 40 lines long and isn't "quite" as easy to calculate values in your head for odd numbers.
2. The d20 spread is essentially a d10 spread, which may affect the ability of lower PL characters being able to hit higher PL characters (not necessarily an issue)
3. Skills might need some jiggery pokery in cost to balance out the effect of Abilities being essentially halved (intuitively though, I think it might be fine given DC's all double).

Thoughts, opinions, criticisms?

[RainOnTheSun]

This isn't just good for low power level games - it's good for high power level games, too, if you want the power levels to be more significant. What I mean by that is that M&M is designed to make it possible for Hawkeye and Thor to be on the same team, and that generally fits the comics and video games they're in. But it also means that Mr. Satan has a chance against Freeza (or insert a more modern shounen reference here), and a guy with a handgun and Power Attack can shoot holes in a tank. Stretching out the R&M table makes that less likely, which fits a lot of genres better.

[Davies]

I spent a while thinking about this. The following table takes more than a bit of influence from the logarithmic values and measures of TORG, which treated a value of 0 as equal to 1 kilogram, 1 meter, and 1 second. I adjusted the 0 to fit better with the assumption that it represents an average human, and this is what I got.

Revised Ranks and Measures Table

[greycrusader]

Your ranks and measures table is actually quite well done, Davies.

I think the issue with the lower PLs/ranks being compressed stems largely from 3rd edition translating the pluses/minuses of the old D&D-style ability scores into outright primary traits (e.g., a STR of 18 translates into a STR 4 in 3rd, roughly.). There are some odd distortions and weird effects that occur at the lower PLs, but honestly? Part of that is just because the game was designed to handle superheroes, from street level to "earth's mightiest", not ordinary soldiers or police officers. Sort of like how systems such as GURPS or Savage Worlds need a good bit of extra rules and modifications to handle superhuman characters, because they weren't built for that originally. And in one sense, a PL 3 nobody with a semiautomatic pistol being able to take out an elite SWAT team member is more "realistic", in that deadly weapons are equalizers in the real world.

All my best.

[slade the sniper]

I agree with your observations.
I basically just went back to 2nd edition so that there are numerical stats and bonuses instead of just bonuses. I also don't cap skills until +20, so that a human can conceivably have a +20 skill, and a +6 ability score.

I use the same scale as 3E, but the mass for push/drag from 2E is what I use for the "mass" in 3E.

That way a +6 in 3E (3,200 pounds) translates to a 23 in 2E with a +6 bonus (3,000 pounds push/drag).

It allows the "lower" superheroes to have some decent strength and skills (4 per power point instead of only 2).

Basically, I play M&M 2.5 Edition.