Only thing is, if you want to use the D20 system to simulate superheroes, Mutants and Masterminds does a better job than what this would really be.

I like the D20 modern system, kinda, but I don't think it's easy to just adapt to different settings.

In reply to willvr (msg # 2):

Yes m&m does supers better but does not do a great job for fantasy. The idea is fantasy first with super powers added in.

That kind of feat progression would be awsome
This message was last edited by the user at 01:20, Sat 21 Jan 2017.

The D20 version of Aberrant is/was D20Modern based. Just treat Background Feats as Talents and you're good to go.

With Future and Urban Arcana, that makes D20 Modern fairly universal, making the combination of Fantasy rules with Super rules possible using D20 Modern.



Or you could just use Gurps and give super powers the Magic Source power modifier.
This message was last edited by the user at 03:35, Sat 21 Jan 2017.

Of course, Fantasy-Freedom in Mutants and Masterminds could do it. If set in Freeport it would have to be limited to heroic levels. It could be set higher if changes were made.  I'm interested.
This message was last edited by a moderator, as it was moot, at 05:20, Sat 21 Jan 2017.

Warriors and Warlocks too

Don't want m&m. Doesn't have the same feel as d&d. I like the level progression. That's part of the fun. Plus, the m&m character build is excruciating to me. I like the (relative) simplicity of d&d characters. And there is a classic fantasy gaming nostalgia to d&d characters that I want to capture. The "build anything you want" style of m&m gets away from the archetypes of d&d.

No it has to be a class/level based system with limited super powers.
This message was last edited by the user at 04:04, Sat 21 Jan 2017.

Might want to take a look at Silver Age Sentinels by Guardians of Order.

What if I combined d&d with m&m. Normal class progression with, say, 5 pp per level for use on powers?

I would be interested.

M&M assumes that your characters' powers can potentially manifest in full-fledged form.  Cyclops, for instance, didn't start out with magic missiles coming out his eyes, and then gradually develop to punch holes in mountains.

Its powers, by the same token, aren't really designed to grow in that kind of linear fashion.  The structure of trade-offs and arrays, and the fashion in which powers rank and scale, makes PP/level a rather wonky way to drib out power.

So I think you may want to pretty carefully consider the mechanics you use and how they affect the thematics and mechanics.

So I'm curious... what's the intent?  What's the tone you're trying to set, and the themes you're looking to hit on?  Are you looking for a sort of magic-anime fantasy where characters have a magic trick or gimmick?  Or are you looking to have more generally superhuman characters, who can routinely fly, turn invisible, and bench press small castles?

I'm all for dialing D&D up to 11.  But when considering super powers, I consider progression to be a double-edged sword...

Good points, GreyGriffin. Something to consider for sure.

I'm not sure exactly what I'm going for here, hence the proposal in this forum to help flesh out the idea. I like super hero games. I grew up on classic d&d. And I enjoy blending things together (mashups). So the thought came to me to create a superhero d&d game. Not just superheroes in a fantasy setting, which could be handled with m&m or probably any other system, but truly D&d with superpowers. The initial thought, as posted here, was to keep things simple and just use d20 modern talent trees with faster advancement and higher maximums. That seemed the simplest option and it still might be the best. Then someone suggested M&m and I thought just using the powers might work.

Now you raise an interesting point. For one thing, superheroes tend to not advance much over time, which I think is why superhero games are less enjoyable in the long run. Certainly the powers system is not optimized for slow advancement. However, a lot of the powers do seem like they would work fine with that kind of progression. The whole thing is an experiment anyway, so if it ends up not working, I wouldn't be that hurt.

I kind of disagree on the point of progression.  I could wax philosophical on the point, but in short, I think that mechanical progression is often taken as collateral in lieu of narrative or internal character development.

Another point is that a PbP game is pretty slow burning.  If you're counting on XP to carry your PCs up a tree of feats, you may not see your characters develop "super" powers for several RL years.  Most Supers games start with your characters effectively already advanced, with powers fully fledged, specifically so you don't have to wait through three levels of "Ray of Frost" before you get to play Iceman.

The main bugaboo that I would have with a system similar to d20 Modern's Talents is opportunity cost.  If the talent trees really do develop into genuine super powers that have enormous mechanical effects, there will be an enormously high opportunity cost to take colorful, diversifying, but less powerful effects than, say, FISS+B (Flight/Invulnerability/Strength/Speed/+Blast).  Since Talent resources would only be available as characters "level up," they are effectively required to meet performance standards to face appropriate challenges.  This means that if they didn't pick talents that enhance their abilities in a mechanically relevant ways to meet those challenges (say, if they wanted to branch into a new type of talent, or they are maintaining a varied power set over multiple branches and can't "go deep."), they become increasingly mechanically irrelevant.

This is very similar to making "bad" advancement decisions in 3.5, and is an issue inherent to level-based advancement.  In a level-based system (rather than a free-points system like M&M), you have to chase a mathematical curve with very limited resources, and this can result in some very unsatisfying choices that don't really make your character any more interesting. (See: Spell Penetration).

I personally feel that that problem could really be exacerbated by making access to cool super powers like at-will flight and cutting mountains in half dependent on staying on the bleeding edge of talent trees.  Or worse, characters could gain those incredible talents and then just have to let them mechanically atrophy into irrelevance just from lack of resources to commit, owing to the rapidly scaling mathematics of 3.5. (See: Turning and Cleric PrC's)

Some people do consider that a feature, though, and not a bug.  Rewarding specialization and enforcing niche protection is something that point-buy systems (and especially games like M&M) struggle with, without cooperative and communicative players and GMs who really understand the systems and their pitfalls and are willing to write weaknesses into their stats.

Concerns of that nature would push me towards True20/M&M over trying to hack D&D, if powers are a central part of the game.

However, if it's leaning more towards D&D with everybody having a few spell-like abilities or extra bonuses, that's a much simpler add-on.

Definitely leaning more towards the latter. Not really interested in a fighter who can laser a mountain in half. Not DC God level powers. More street level or street level plus. A thief with spiderman like powers. A monk who can punch through a wall. A fighter who can grow to 20 feet tall, etc.

And I have no problem with the limited resources argument. I would consider that a feature. Making difficult choices is part of the game. Slowly leveraging up powers is precisely what I'm looking for.

Definitely hear you on the slow level progression. That is a tricky balance in pbp. Don't want to level things up too quickly and take the fun away. But don't want to take years to get a decent level.

Thanks for all the feedback!

So we would need to leverage some stuff found in 3rd party supplements (i.e. Mongoose Publishing's Quintessential series.) Because a monk with certain feats can punch through a wall, a thief with certain skill tricks, feats and class abilities comes close to spiderman or at least Catwoman. The growing for the fighter might need a magic item or at the minimum a spell like ability or a custom feat allowing the use of an enlargement spell or expansion psi-like ability.

Flight sounds like it would need to be focused on a feat or magic item requiring Concentration checks maybe?
Invulnerability- Depending on how hardy, repeated stoneskin applications might make it stick.
Super Strength- Anything from good starting rolls (13+) or repeated application of Bull's    Strength
Super Speed-Cat's Grace spells?
Blaster- This would have to be an infusion or a feat from a Complete Supplement.

How is a monk who can punch through a wall not just a higher level monk?

edit: Pardon the pithy short post.  I'll elaborate a little more.

If you are working within a 3.5 framework with limited resources, how do you plan to balance strictly superior and inferior powers?  Wall Punch Monk seems like a straight up strength bonus, which has huge benefits for a melee combatant.  Spider-rogue, on the other hand, can climb walls, but any charop wonk can tell you that Spider Climb at-will doesn't really stack up to, say, +12 Str.

(As an aside: Spider man can throw cars and swing around at freeway speeds, and has near-precognitive senses that he combines with superhuman agility.  And he can stick to walls.  And sometimes shoot webs.  He's dodged blasts from Thanos and is considered on-par with most of the Avengers.  Spider man is "street-level" because of the types of conflicts he takes on and the way his superheroic pursuits affect his character and the characters around him, specifically how much it usually sucks to be Peter Parker.  It's not because of his power level.)
This message was last edited by the user at 19:05, Mon 23 Jan 2017.

Said monk would need certain feats to protect themselves from repercussions.  For example, limb damage

I did start by saying it was a wacky idea...

I think it is an idea that could work and be fun. Maybe it is not for you GreyGriffin. Though I appreciate your analysis and comments, it sounds like this is not a game you'd enjoy.

Part of this requires a bit of a commitment to the genres represented rather than an approach from Munchkinization.

I do think the concept does beg the pretty fundamental question: With the high walls of math surrounding powers and abilities being relevant past low levels in 3.5, do you have anything in mind to keep super-abilities relevant?  Especially fringe abilities that don't affect or increase core stats?  If you want a super-powers vibe, how do you keep those colorful abilities from being overshadowed by the regular progression of your average D&D character?

I don't think this is necessarily a "munchkin" question to ask.  In D&D, being mechanically relevant in some way is an important part of the game.  Even if you're not building Pun-Pun, you want to meaningfully contribute when the chips are down and the dice hit the table.  And when you're looking at a game with progression mechanics that profoundly affect your abilities, like D&D, it sucks when stuff you pick because it's cool or interesting falls off to the wayside just because you're up against stiff math.

For instance, an example in the core mechanics: bull rushing things off cliffs or stairwells or into flaming braziers is cool and thematic and theatric, and potentially really useful at low levels.  Not so much at higher levels, where monsters are bigger, stats are higher, and 1d6 fire damage from hot coal is so inconsequential you may as well not roll it.  And, at higher levels, if you didn't make Bull Rush Man, taking all the bull rush feats and investing in bull rush items, getting bull rush buffing spells from your cleric buddy, using this cool and interesting and battlefield changing mechanic is usually a flagrant waste of your turn bouncing off a giant's ankle.

My core concern isn't about how to dominate mechanically with super powers and turn up my character's output to over 9000.  It's how these powers, which are kind of the game's hook, will stay central and interesting to the characters as they advance, if you choose a system with profound advancement mechanics.

I do think the game has real appeal to me, but in either case I'm glad you can listen to my input.  I hope some of the questions I've asked and input I've provided has been useful.

Honestly, D&D's game-mechanics (level-based, class-based, abilities strictly segregated by class, etc) just plain aren't well-suited to the superhero genre, so I wouldn't recommend running superhero-ish characters under D&D game mechanics in the first place. I mean, would you run Merlin in a Twilight 2000 campaign? Same general problem. But if you've already decided your heart is set on a "superheroes in D&D" campaign, perhaps handle each "superhero" as a class unto itself? Work up the various class abilities, class-related feats, etc, which can let that character do their superhero-type thing effectively.

Alternately, you could formulate the entire campaign in such a way that the standard D&D game-mechanics which otherwise would end up making superhero-ish PCs worthless, simply aren't relevant.

Both of these options mean that the GM of a "superheroes under D&D rules" campaign is going to be taking on a whole bloody lot of extra work, of course. But if a GM happens to think that that's the sort of campaign they want to run, they may think that extra work is worth it.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the user at 09:07, Tue 24 Jan 2017.

GreyGriffin is absolutely correct. DnD, as with most RPGs to be honest; outside of pure freeform, being mechanically relevant is important. Giving up 'mechanical advantage' to do 'cool stuff' doesn't make you an inherently better player. Wanting to be mechanically relevant doesn't make you a munchkin. To make that concept work, you need to look at the system, and see how you can make sure everyone can continue to do cool stuff. It's not fun playing a character who is always outclassed in combat situations. It's damned frustrating. The only way to do that and have everyone having fun, is for it to be a game mainly about character development as opposed to mechanics advancement.

But that seems to run  at odds with running a level-based game. The variety of skill-based games without a class/level base do that kind of game rather naturally, so I'm not sure of the advantage of doing it with a class/level game.

I haven't had a chance to read everyone's comments on the subject but I'm just reacting to Bodman's title and 1st post. I'm just want to chime in and say that I'm running a 'realistic' Supers D&D game set in our modern world.

I've found some troubles using D&D 5e for the game and so I had to do some heavy tweaking of the class/racial skills. But the good thing is, my game does not focus on level progression (which I notice is something you want and thus, can't help with giving advice on that front).

What I can offer is a suggestion to use some of the DnD spells (e.g. Flight, Invisibility, Heal) as super powers. So, as long as your superhero has access to that 'spell' as a super power, you just use the standard DnD rules to resolve what he or she wants to do with their power. That takes care of the mechanic side of things and lets you concentrate on telling a good superhero story.

In reply to lady_politic (msg # 23):

Tying super powers to spells in a more direct fashion does pose an interesting solution - just make everyone a Gestalt sorcerer with free Still/Silent/Eschewed spells (and maybe fewer spells known).  While this might necessitate some creation of custom spells to keep certain power paradigms on the level, it's a fairly simple slot-in solution.

This doesn't really tackle the issue of persistent super powers, like being bulletproof or having super strength, but you could use a mechanic like (for instance, totally off the cuff) sacking a spell slot 3 levels higher to make a spell with a duration permanent.

Absolutely agree. Hence, it would boil down to the kind of Supers game you want to run.

I don't have that problem because my game handles things like 'Superhuman strength' or being 'Bulletproof' as a non-persistent thing because I introduced things like physical and mental fatigue (which prompts disadvantages etc.)

The only thing that is persistent is that you can carry a car easily with superhuman strength. But it doesn't mean you aren't going to bust a lung or break an arm trying to do that ten times a minute.

If you're bulletproof it means you can walk into a line of fire and probably only come out bruised in the chest. But if you do that consistently, you're going to be suffering a lot of internal damage which may eventually lead to death.

So, players are wary about using their powers. But powers do 'grow' over time, but there is always a consequences attached to the growth.

I actually think the d20 modern route makes the most sense, if I want to keep the level component intact. Using spell mechanics is interesting, but doesn't force the level progression choice of specialize or diversify that I think is important.

I totally disagree about the need to maximize the rules in your favor to make d&d work. I think the feeling that you need to do this is what ruins d&d games. Yes, there is a high degree of choice involved, and some times those choices are difficult, but if everyone in the game is pushing a thematic angle, the dm can adjust. It is the constant escalation that causes the problem, but that is something the dm has freedom to address.

Focusing on maximizing character effectiveness is the definition of munchkinization. That's not the kind of game I want, and I realize that perhaps using 3.5 is not the way to go since that's how people see the game.

It would be easy to do a lower level m&m game set in a medieval setting. But that's not what I was interested in exploring.

Thanks for all the comments, guys and gals. Very helpful insights.