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Known Issues

This page is for known issues that were major enough that I wanted to write them down so that readers may be aware of them. This is not a complete list: my private notes contain more.

Balance

Balance: transcendence. Transcendence needs an overhaul: some are very broken and the rest are too cheap. Except Alter Metaphysics which is perfect (after some rewording).

Limitation

Limitation: affects others actions. You can't modify the action of Affects Others and you can't use Affects Others on attacks. I tried to replace the modifiers Affects Others, Attack, and Activation with an Enhanced Trait that provides a power. But I wasn't able to because I couldn't figure out how to handle the cost of a Continuous Enhanced Trait: Portal Teleport.

Limitation: single characters. This system only works for building single characters. It sucks at building armies, cities, and machines that multiple people built. There are also some known holes, that is things that are not covered by these rules, such as a sword of dragon slaying (although I have an idea for that).

Snafu

Snafu: equipment ranks. Currently all of the Damage ranks that equipment have were determined by Mutants & Masterminds 3rd edition. The Police baton and Holdout Pistol both have Damage 2. In what world does the M&M author live in where that makes any sense? Simple: a world designed for superheroes and not equipment. Guns are weak so that we can see swords and stuff in use and not just a bunch of guns. The first problem with trying to fix this is just that: if guns are 5 times cheaper why not buy them? The second problem is that it's hard to determine how much damage things should be. "Guns can 1 hit a normal human so they should do 6 HP of damage on average" ok but what about a rocket launcher? You can't just say "would kill a normal human exactly 3 times over" because that can't be measured. So you'll need difficult estimates that will likely be based on the human DC snafu below.

Snafu: fighting. Fighting is a redundant ability. As far as descriptions are concerned fighting should be replaced by agility since they are both for controlling the body as a whole. There's only 1 skill that uses fighting (Close Combat) which can be changed to use agility without issue. The only other thing fighting is used for is parry active defense but if that's also changed to use agility then both active defenses (dodge and parry) would be based on the same ability which is a possible balance issue. The plan is to change close combat, remove fighting, remove parry, and play test it before making the change official. Alternatively I could remove fighting and change close combat and parry to dexterity but I don't like that as much. First I don't feel like there needs to be 2 active defenses (1 is more simple). Second parry has a misleading name (since there's no counter attack) which is fixed by renaming it to "block" or by removing it. Third while fighting does use hand-eye coordination most of it is speed of moving limbs and torso which would be agility.

Snafu: human DC. I changed the game to use 3dF for several reasons (see the reason for major version 3) one of which is the ranks and measurements table. And while this is a step in the right direction it's now a little inconsistent with DCs. Each unit of ability, skill, or power etc represents a double effectiveness however DC 4 is not beyond the best of human achievement. While it makes sense for powers to double in effectiveness (to fight against the law of diminishing return and because they are all superhuman) it doesn't make sense for skills: every rank counts towards a DC and is therefore useful but human achievement is measured with more granularity than 2^n. Thus there are only 2 solutions: 1 is to declare that powers double but skills don't and give them separate rank/measurement tables. The other is to lower the skill DCs so that DC 4 is in fact beyond human ability. Either one would require a complete overhaul (and thus be version 4.0) and although it might not require much conversion the implications are massive and thus requires a lot of consideration and planning.

Useless

Useless: area. A Selective Burst Area is strictly better than selective areas: cylinder and cone.