So I love the system...BUT!

[FuzzyBoots]

Well, the Batman also has an Athletics score (and natural Attributes) that dwarf the Riddler.

{nods} But with a single target value to hit, all that may mean is that 10% of the time, Batman can outrun The Riddler and the other 90% of the time, all he can do is keep pace.

[Monolith]

Well, the Batman also has an Athletics score (and natural Attributes) that dwarf the Riddler.

The Riddler has an athletic roll of +9, meaning making the dc 15 check to run twice as fast is well within his realm of possibility too; and extra effort works equally for both of them. Within the concept of paper and numbers they are effectively the same: they both run 30', they can both use athletics to run 60', they can both use extra effort, and so on. Within the concept of movement they are essentially the same: and no different then Robin, Joker, NIghtwing, and so on.

[Batgirl III]

Well, the Batman also has an Athletics score (and natural Attributes) that dwarf the Riddler.

{nods} But with a single target value to hit, all that may mean is that 10% of the time, Batman can outrun The Riddler and the other 90% of the time, all he can do is keep pace.

That's where the GM needs to step in and let go of the rules; if it's a dramatic chase sequence as part of the story, then having two characters keep pace is probably okay... if the story requires a foot race ("Holy Wacky Races, Batman! The Beyonder will kill whoever loses this 100 m dash!") then you should probably make it an contested Athletics skill roll.

M&M is effects-based and story-driven, not strictly mechanical.

[kenseido]

Wait a second there, BGIII. Are you suggesting we should occasionally ignore the rules for the sake of the story?

I don't know how I feel about that.

The preceding was typed in the most sarcastic way imagineable; however, since there is a sarcasm filter on my keyboard, I thought I would clarify that for some of you. Others should feel free to Gibbsmack me at your leisure.

[pawsplay]

When a specific system doesn't give you a useful resolution, sometimes you look at the more general rule.

[CaptainFistula]

Well, the Batman also has an Athletics score (and natural Attributes) that dwarf the Riddler.

{nods} But with a single target value to hit, all that may mean is that 10% of the time, Batman can outrun The Riddler and the other 90% of the time, all he can do is keep pace.

Houserule the option to benefit from an extra degree of success *if* it is used in conjunction with extra effort? Riddler will have a much harder time hitting that than the Bat.

[FuzzyBoots]

{nods} There's also the Chase rules from the 2E Mastermind's Manual. If they ever do run a Vehicle Power Profile, they'd be well advised to include those rules. They work for vehicle, foot, or air chases.

[grundyhaspants]

Ahh I didn't realize you could push the speed barrier like that! So then, for mundane runners a high athletics covers it, but for my juicer I am gonna add a couple ranks.

Thanks again!

[Foreshadow]

As written you could keep everything but in cases like Impervious, nothing says it is or should be limited to 20 which rightly limits damage 10 or below attacks. If you notice Batman can deal out 6 + 5 = 11 damage and in one recent movie I saw where he battles superman and other where he battles Ultraman (sups equivalent) and throws the batarang multiple times only to see no effect that is where most of us have the issue.

It is easy to fix that, simply raise the Impervious of superman. He has toughness 18 (and could have a 20 since his defense at 10 would still be in line with the concept but there is no reason he could not have a higher impervious than his toughness. What point do you want to deny damage saves? 15 damage? Impervious 30 would require a +15 damage to force a save (or you could choose Impervious 26. Knowing how Impervious and power attack and damage works that would actually create a mostly True Invulnerability Superman. Superman then has +20 toughness, Impervious 30 to match your conception of "superman"

Is Superman basically as invulnerable as Juggernaut? Something like that right.

If the number is set to 30 impervious then who can harm him? Any rightly strong person like superboy and above, but then it is slightly too much for anyone like Batman and his ilk, or Bane and similar level villains. At least with toughness damage. Fortitude and Dodge based attacks, and especially Will are then your best choices, just like the choices characters make in the comics. You attack superman with that "magical" weapon like Hawkgirl has and suddenly Superman is taking knocks left and right. Or the weapon or attack is 'will based' like Psychlockes attacks or something Dr. Strange or Fate would use.

The decision was made to keep a softcap of 20 for base stats but things like Powerlifting clearly go beyond 20 and since Impervious, isn't PL limited (or is there a stated limit for I'm missing that it is limited to your toughness, if so then by PL and stated limits; and since Superman is decided to be PL 15, then Impervious 20 is the most you can give him). But if Impervious stops attacks at half the rank, I see no imbalance or reason to limit Impervious to toughness. If you want to spend 30 pp to do that go for it. Yes, you would need to spend 30 pp x Toughness, Fortitude, and Will (90 pp) and you'd best be off just buying up Immunity which I think is the same cost.

How would you react if you had seen Superman with an Impervious over 20, say Impervious 30, with a Toughness of 20. Would that be sufficiently 'Superman' for you?

Keep in mind he'd have a Vulnerability complication to magical damage where he loses the Impervious ranks to those attacks and I don't seen why it needs to be where he also loses access to his toughness too since having a +20 is tough but we know full well he might face a +13 magical mace or something, or a +16 magical blast and he might have some toughness bonus otherwise a single hit might put him out, so I'd rather see like half of his 20, +10 vs magical attacks. He is harmed by them which is to say he is not Impervious but in all cases I've seen he does not fold like a house of cards, but merely reacts like "darn that really hurts" and reacts like a character who had to make a save and didn't make his save, and +10 vs say a +13 save means he rolls with a -3 and has a chance to do just that.

On the flip side he should get a hero point as its a complication, each magical attack he receives (or perhaps not? what do you think?)

The same could get applied to Juggernaut. He has and can be harmed, but has a recovery or magical regeneration so there is a threshold, but it is a threshold set very high and clearly one higher than a guy like colossus or wolverine can hit (and colossus might do like +12 to +14 with power attack for a total of +17 to +19 if you built him like a standard Power House so he could reach the Impervious 30 threshold). Perhaps the idea for Juggernaut should be Impervious 40 then only damage 20+ can force a save, but then there are characters that can do that like the Hulk, Superman, etc. and it is a bit too much for the likes of Thing, Colossus, etc. or Wolverine with those claws, though I can see his claws with a high range of Penetrating.

Back to Superman....

[Monolith]

As written you could keep everything but in cases like Impervious, nothing says it is or should be limited to 20 which rightly limits damage 10 or below attacks.

It is easy to fix that, simply raise the Impervious of superman. He has toughness 18 (and could have a 20 since his defense at 10 would still be in line with the concept but there is no reason he could not have a higher impervious than his toughness.

Impervious is an extra, so it can't be more then your toughness value. If you have toughnesses higher then 20 then you can have impervious higher then 20, but as an extra it can only modify an existing value.

[Foreshadow]

In that case PL 15 limits Superman from having more than +20 toughness, +10 defense, and an Impervious 20. I personally think Impervious 20 should be fine but then I would not have had it stop only half its value. Otherwise just make it 2 pp per rank since that effectively is what it costs, but then you get this weird Impervious 19 doing the same job. Why Steve choose not to min/max such an iconic character I have not idea (as there is little good reason not to, other than "Today is a Skyblue Day" or other nonsense reason). I had a PL 17 Superman with a 23 strength and the same +11 attack (no power lifting) and I rose his Toughness to +24, +10 defense. He had Impervious 24 (so by the rules he ignored 12 damage or below). I liked how it played and considered it. Could it fit with the DCA builds? Sure, as we do find instances where people achieve Pl 17+ effects but then the only standard PL 17 build would be Superman, and thus would by necessity probably alter other key figures like Darkseid (who you could set at PL 17 or 18 as really he is like a dark superman of sorts). Say you go with PL 18 Darkseid. One thing that is easy to do is allow his Omega Effect to go over 20 damage. He has 12 attack so if PL 18 then you can go up to +24 damage, one more than superman's strength of 23, and in the book rightnow the Omega Effect is one more than Superman's strength, hence it would be right change if you made that change to superman. You then extend the range of PL to PL 18 at least, perhaps PL 6 yo PL 18 for all characters (rather than PL 8 to PL 16 like you see now). Doomsday would have a 24 strength. This would fall more in line with the range of stats you see in the older DC Heroes rpg from what I've seen of them. Power lifting still has a purpose, but not as a generalized one. If your goal is to give Superman a final strength potential of 25 strength, then a 23 plus extraordinary effort achieves that. If you go with a superman like I see in the DC Heroes rpg where he has something like a 27 strength in DCA terms, then you would add at least 2 ranks of Power lifting to superman. All boils down to what you want your final score to be.

I think part of the solution (if you keep the PL and stats as they are printed now) with instances like Superman's Impervious is to keep the rules and write up stats as written but alter one little paragraph of Impervious.

If the damage is equal or below the rank some boon is given. You bought it up to that rank and each rank, odd or even, should count. Impervious is like a limited Immunity really with a rank to determine up to what point you can ignore the damage. There are a few good suggestions on the forum as to how to do that.

[Monolith]

As I said in a post above, I think impervious was changed because in many instances it just wasn't fun for some players. Too many people in 2e had impervious and that made too many character concepts obsolete because there was no way for them to harm foes. It left people not wanting to play martial arts or costumed adventurers because they were generally relegated to fighting minions rather then the badguy.

Genre emulation's great, but at a certain point m&m's still a game that needs to make players happy. If no one's playing Batman or Green Arrow because they can't even punch through a tin can then it's not much of a DC game.

[FuzzyBoots]

{nods} Although honestly, I found that the opposite was more common. Assuming a balanced PL, Impervious only really protected you against minions because everyone at your PL could punch through your Impervious. Someone at half your PL could get a crit and break through. The only place it broke down were extreme tradeoffs such as the classic Martial Artist versus Battlesuit where the Martial Artist had a -5 tradeoff, the battlesuit a +2, and said Battlesuit having Impervious higher than PL.

The "half PL" effect of 3E Impervious suffers the additional problem of diminishing returns with increasing PL, much like how losing half of one's defense when flat-footed in 2E. As another thread pointed out, after a certain number, Impervious becomes useless because that halving means that the toughness bonus can't fail even for values that exceed what Impervious protects against.

On a side note, Penetrating in 3E changed to its 1E form where the number of ranks counted as damage against Impervious rather than adding to the value to break through. In 1E, that made the cost pretty prohibitive, but the addition of arrays/alternate powers has fixed that, so I'm all in favor of it now.

[Monolith]

{nods} Although honestly, I found that the opposite was more common. Assuming a balanced PL, Impervious only really protected you against minions because everyone at your PL could punch through your Impervious. Someone at half your PL could get a crit and break through. The only place it broke down were extreme tradeoffs such as the classic Martial Artist versus Battlesuit where the Martial Artist had a -5 tradeoff, the battlesuit a +2, and said Battlesuit having Impervious higher than PL.

2e's impervious severely limited character types; which is why there's been so many house rules posted about it during 2e's run. Whether you limit impervious to pl or use some other house rule you still end up with a lot of archetypes who quickly become obsolete because an extremely large percentage of characters have impervious: virtually every super powered archetype had it.

As I said above, I don't know that half pl is better then the 2e version but it, at least, doesn't make it possible for some archetypes to be useless in encounters. Every player has a chance to accomplish something, even if it is just a small chance. That's better then no chance at all.

And to be honest I'm not even sure the game needs impervious. It felt hacky in 2e, and in 3e it just feels like a holdover ability that has no real purpose. It seems to me highly resistant characters can be dealt with just by giving them more toughness or even a combination of toughness and half immunity. Impervious just feels like an unnecessary holdover.

[Batgirl III]

I'm not much for House Rules, but I am considering experimenting with a means to exceed PL Caps for Toughness. Basically doubling the cost per rank that would push you past the cap, so an invulnerable character would just have a check so far above and beyond that it wouldn't be necessary to check with Mooks and heroic types would need to put some effort in....

But I haven't put any real effort into it, as I like the rules well enough as they are.