Mutants & Masterminds 4th Edition Playtest - Combat Discussion

 

Initial discussion in the previous post.

OK let's look at some of these new combat interactions. First up the general Degree of Success chart:

A critical hit here (Nat 20) adds one degree of success
A critical miss (Nat 1) adds a degree of failure

• Hits and misses are determined using a d20 + your relevant attack bonus vs. a DC of 10 + your Defense score. As long as you get a success - meet or exceed the target DC - you have scored a hit on the target and now you need to check for damage.
• An extra success here adds 5 to the Effect rank
• An extra failure here, if it somehow still hits, gives the target a +5 on their Resistance check
  
  
• Damage is handled by rolling the d20 + your toughness rank vs a target of 10+ damage rank. That's a change from the 15 + damage of 3E. Then Degrees of Success enter the fray:
• Success (two or more degrees): If the target has Hardened, Impervious, or Impenetrable resistance against the attack and this degree of success, they receive no damage conditions. Otherwise, this is the same as one degree of success.
• Success (one degree): The target receives the Hit condition. For each Hit condition, apply a –1 penalty to the character’s further resistance checks against Damage.
  
• Failure (one degree): The target receives a Hit condition, and the Dazed condition. If the target already has the Dazed condition, it becomes Stunned instead.
  Compared to 3E this adds Dazed - in 3E this was just a -1 to future Toughness checks
• Failure (two degrees): The target receives a Hit condition, the Stunned condition, plus the Staggered condition.
  In 3E this was just Dazed & a -1
• Failure (three degrees): The target receives the Hit and Staggered conditions, plus the Incapacitated condition. If an Incapacitated character fails a Damage resistance check, their condition becomes Dying. If a Dying character fails a Damage resistance check by any degree, they are Dead.
  In 3E this was just Staggered and a -1, and an additional Staggered result went to Incapacitated which could then go to Dying and then to Dead in the same way.
  
  Some significant changes here: From 3E the target number has dropped by 5, but the table has bumped everything up a notch for starters. Then we add in Hits being cumulative so even resisting the damage to a degree means they are still piling up. I like this as it puts more of a clock on the combat. 3E had a similar condition but it was only applied on a failure. Now with it applying to at least some successful saves it will accumulate that much faster. It also adds a benefit to doing really well on a Toughness check as you avoid this cumulative penalty. Players tend to be disappointed when they roll really well and there is no additional benefit to it so this feeds right into the drama of each roll. 
  
  (Also, this is starting to look like Savage Worlds' system a bit - "Hit", or "Hit and a Raise to add damage", failing the save by more causes a worse effect, etc. Lot of parallels there.)

Let's talk about Conditions real quick. Beyond "Hits" the damage table can make you:

• Dazed - One standard action, no reactions, still get free actions. 
• Stunned - No actions at all and Dodge rank is halved. I'm wondering if this is correct or if it's supposed to affect Defense scores as well? In 3E it was just the "no actions" part so I don't know. 
• Staggered - Dazed and Hindered (that means half movement speed)
• Incapacitated - Stunned, Unaware, Defenseless, and usually Prone. This is the KO you're looking for in a fight.
• Dying - Incapacitated and making death saves ala D&D 5E. 

Characters might be Resistant to a particular attack - that means they cut the effect ranks in half before making the roll. Immunity means you make no roll at all - so you won't be accumulating hits from those attacks. Susceptible means you have a penalty to resistance checks of half the incoming effect rank. Weakness is that plus your best result is one degree of failure on the check.

With the basics out of the way, let's say our Battlesuit faces off against their evil twin - how does that go?

• Evil Battlesuit flies up and blasts Justice Battlesuit:
•  Evil shoots with a d20+8 (Their Attack of 8 is the modifier here) against a Defense Class of 18 (the target's Defense of 8 + the basic 10). Needing an 18, an average roll will get them a 10-11 and so they hit!
• To resist damage Justice will be rolling a d20 + 12 (their Toughness) with a target of 22 (base 10 + 12 for the Rank 12 Force Beams). Another average 10-11 roll here will match that target for a success and while it is Hardened it is Rank 11 while the force beams are Rank 12 so no extra roll and Justice will take a Hit even with the success. 

This could go on for a while but at least those -1's will be piling up until someone gets lucky.

Let's say Justice has been rendered Vulnerable by some other attack or event. The Vulnerable condition reduces Defense by half so he would be a DC14 to hit - you just need an slightly better average roll of 11 + 8 (Attack Bonus) = 19 which is 5 over and so an added success on an attack check which increases the Blast Effect by 5.

Now the resistance target will be 27 (base 10 + 12 + 5) and an average roll for Justice will give us 11 + 12 (Toughness) = 23. That's a failure so he will be Hit + Dazed.

Clearly Vulnerable is a good thing to have on your side and outside of any powers it comes up when one is Surprised: "A surprised character is Stunned and Vulnerable, caught off-guard and unable to act. Surprised normally only lasts for one round." So there's one way to set things up in your favor.

It looks to me like combat could go on a bit but with those Hits stacking up on most attacks it should go quicker than 3E's combat. I do wonder about the effect of numbers now, both with a team of PC's attacking a single villain and with a group of mooks ganging up on one PC, and will that make for a significant impact in a fight.

Final point for today: One of the long time debates in 3E is over Defense versus Toughness. Many players thought Toughness was just better, as far as game effectiveness in 3E, and while that's not everything it did come up fairly frequently. Here's why: 

• Toughness is not reduced by Vulnerable or Defenseless Conditions
• Toughness is not ignored by Perception or Area Effects
• Toughness increase is 1/2 the PP cost of Dodge/Parry increase 

Most of these are still true. The only exception is that while an overall Defense is still 2 pts to Protection's 1 pt, you could raise either ranged or close defense for 1 pt per level. Despite this list remaining true I feel like the other adjustments to the way damage works alongside the Defensive Roll update should help balance this out. Against area effect attacks the 4E version of Evasion gives a +5 to avoid with 1 rank and "no damage on a success" with 2 ranks so there's another way to mitigate that. 

Defenseless is just bad for everyone, and Vulnerable is still mainly bad for Defense-shifted characters. The other consideration is that Vulnerable is still a first degree condition for the Affliction power so it's not too hard to land on someone. I'd say until I see a problem in-game that it's just something you need to be aware of.

That's all for now but I do want to try out some more combat examples. Look for that down the road a bit. Please feel free to check my math and thinking here too and let me know if you see something off.