Emulate D&D with M&M?

[spacemonkey]

Hi,

I'm one of the few(?) people who know Mutants and Masterminds but not D&D.

Now my group and i want to play some fantasy scenarios, and they asked my to use a more "classic" system like D&D.

Because now one of use has a copy of D&D i took a look at http://www.d20srd.org/ and saw that the rules are very similiar.

My Question is now:

Beside of Hitpoints, what are the big differences between the rules of M&M and D&D, and how much of these differences can i remove with the help of "Masterminds Manual" and "Warriors and Warlocks"?

Thanks.

[FuzzyBoots]

Och... it's a lot different, to be honest. There are rules for hitpoints, and you could probably borrow rules for things like having the ability scores contribute to dodge defense and ranged attacks, but ultimately, character-building in M&M is based off of a point-buy system where everyone comes out at about the same level (the PL) while D&D is a combination of dice and limited choices based on class and race where the emphasis is on maximizing your abilities relative to everyone else. You'll also run into issues with the lack of gear and how it's generally bought up rather than built up by murder and looting.

That said, it's possible. I'd recommend going ahead and writing up character archetypes for them and brushing up enough on PL so that you can explain just why the limits are there and where customization is possible without breaking PL. Personally, I think it will be best to keep the Toughness save mechanic rather than add hitpoints. The mechanic is simple enough, and it avoids some of the oddities of the patching on of hit points into the system.

[kenseido]

3E D&D has more in comon with 1st edition M&M, than 2nd or 3rd edition. If you are familiar with 1st edition, you will probably adapt okay. But anything else will involve a bit of a learning curve.

[peregrine]

What is it that you want out of M&M for your D&D? It might simply be easier to take that and put it in the D&D system than vice versa.

[ScourgeXLVII]

Basically, D&D was meant to play with D&D rules, and M&M was supposed to play with M&M rules. Using one to simulate another is not a good Idea. M&M can emulate D&D settings and rp style (taking cues from Wariors and Warlocks) but it was not meant to emulate the ruleset.

[J'sinOwl]

If you simply want to play high-powered heroes in a fantasy setting, M&M can do that. If your players are looking for the full D&D experience, M&M will fall flat. The things that are really core to D&D do not port over gracefully. Levels, experience points, hit points, loot, equipment, spells, etc.

[BreederofPuppets]

On the other hand, M&M works great on general balance issues. Okay, let me explain that. D&D 3.x had a huge issue between classes, based on class abilities, feats, skills, and races, especially when combined with those skillful minds trying to make the most effective characters they could. But the M&M system is pretty good at keeping things balanced (between players) without referencing 12 different books.

[BladeSingerXIV]

M&M will allow your players to put together the characters they want to play much, much more easily than D&D would. In D&D, if you want to make a fighter-mage, you would have to track down a copy of the Player's Handbook 2 to play a Duskblade, if you want that to be your base class. Or you multiclass fighter with wizard, so you have two base classes. But that option loses a lot of power, so you take a prestige class that advances both classes' primary abilities. And then you mess with spell selection and so on.

M&M you just buy a sword, give it magic descriptors, put on a couple of effects that do fighter-magey things, and you're done.

The thing M&M will do very poorly, more than anything else, is allow the players to acquire loot. That sort of thing is very important to the D&D experience, so if that experience is what you're going for you'll lose quite a lot. Combat will run fairly similarly, D&D 3.X is more or less the same other than the hit points thing. Levels are a decent analog to PL, and PPs are a decent analog to experience points. It's the loot that's the really big issue there. M&M just wasn't designed for you to be giving the heroes a new sword every couple of dungeons.

[Inviktus]

I'm running an old school D&D campaign set in the Wilderlands of High Fantasy using M&M 2nd ed rules.

I don't find looting to be an issue. The players all started with an "intrinsic" PL of 4 then were allowed to be completely uncapped in what sort of equipment and devices they acquire.

After over a year of twice a month adventures they are around PL 10ish due to found magic items.

The part I had to do the most customization for was spells.

The way I did that was each spell using player choose a magical power from Warriors and Warlocks, but this only gives them an Array container.

The actual spells are lifted from True20 supernatural powers, which is what they use to populate the arrays instead of building their own M&M effects.

[Firkraag]

I am running my own fantasy campaign setting with M&M 2nd ed.

Magic gear is never an issue, because it is used very sparingly, and 90% of the time it is one-shot items (oils, potions, grenadelike weapons, special arrows). If/when the PCs find a magic sword, it just factors into PL.

This isn't quite "emulate D&D" but I've always been a supporter of "It's you, not your items" anyway.

[JoshuaDunlow]

D&D is very doable in M&M. It was one of the first things I went about accomplishing when I got into M&M. Not only do I have a thread dedicated to some fantasy builds. But I made a fantasy document that was nothing more than optional rules to use in a fantasy themed campaign. This was mostly before the advent of the W&W booklet, could probably use some updates.

[poodle]

I don't really see a problem. DnD has rules for point buy. Loot doesn't seem like an issue. Wealth rules are optional but workable. PP seem like a reasonable trade-off vs xp and probably a little more flexible about what you do with them. if you want combat to be more DND like then have the condition chart but don't apply the modifiers until dead or dying e.g. the character takes a stun, mark it but don't alter the character's dice rolls in any way. If they take another stun you know they would be on unconscious etc etc. Eventually they will fall down but like DND would suffer no penalties until that happens.
As for magic items it depends on your game. You could either just ignore power caps and they hang onto their +5 sword of slay everything. Alternatively they are limited by their power evel e.g. the +5 sword rejects you because you aren't powerful enough to use it or just don't make them available until the party has a high enough level. From a game mechanics point of view it doesn't really matter if the player has 14 +5 swords or 1. The other way to do it would be to treat everything as equipment, maybe enhanced equipment, but still equipment and implement ammo usage rules.
If everything is equipment then you can give the characters pp for equipment as part of their build without unbalancing the game. Alternatively if you want to echo DnD, create classes. A rogue would get 1pp for equipment but 4pp for skills, whereas a fighter would get 4pp for equipment but 1pp for skills just as an example. I think that will eventually make more problems than it is worth and you might be better off just downloading the pathfinder PDF.
I think I would go with a low PL level and limit how much the players can spend on powers although I guess the low PL level does that anyway. If yoou wanted to emulate DnD more closely make some racial templates. I am sure many people already have. I think it is probably quite easy to do. One step of shrinking makes the stereotypical halfling.
It might be quite fun and easy to do to create new races for your characters in M+M, far easier than in DnD. You already have a great range of archetypes and monsters that would be easy to convert into players.

[rstehwien]

Beside of Hit Points, what are the big differences between the rules of M&M and D&D, and how much of these differences can i remove with the help of "Masterminds Manual" and "Warriors and Warlocks"?

Echoing what others have said. M&M and D&D have similarities due to M&M1e being based on the d20 SRD but they are more different than just the toughness save. D&D has:

• Levels - While similar in concept to PL (being a rough measure of power), levels in D&D are the mechanism by which characters improve, gain access to ever increasing abilities, and increase their hit points and saves. You can almost think of each level as a prepurchased bundle of M&M traits with a couple points for discretionary spending.
• Classes - The class you choose defines the abilities you have access to and gain when you level. Imagine a Paragon that can never buy anything that isn't listed on the template. There is multiclassing and a few other exceptions that let you branch out.
• Description and Exception based powers - There are a ton of spells, class abilities, and feats in D&D. Each one is its own self contained set of rules; often they are just packages of standard effects but sometimes they are whole new things unto themselves. Since I began playing D&D back in the 80s I would notice patterns in the spells and other abilities and mentally break them down into similar effects and wonder "if there is a Fireball spell, why can't I make an Acidball spell that is the same but acid?". Then I found effect based games like Champions/Hero and eventually M&M (not to say that effect based doesn't have its own problems).
• Balance secondary - D&D4e's unrelenting mantra of balance aside, not all classes, races, spells, etc are created equal. There are plenty of loopholes and other exploits.
• Everything Premade - While you can always house rule and make stuff up to your heart's content, all the races, classes, feats, spells, and other abilities in D&D are made for you... unbalance and limiting as it may be some people like that. Think of M&M as a cookbook and D&D as a restaurant menu. A cookbook shows you how to make meals and may even show you the principles of making up your own meals. A restaurant menu gives you a set of choices; they may be your favorite foods and maybe you could persuade the cook to put curry on your steak but don't try and order authentic New Mexican food at an Indian restaurant.
• Damage and HP doen't scale together - M&M has a nicely scaling Damage/Effect system that keeps combats taking about the same time no matter the PL of the campaign as long as the opponents are in the same range as one another. D&D characters start out where they can barely take a hit or two from a sword and eventually can jump of 100ft towers, be turned into pincushions by arrows, be stabbed by an army, etc. Some of this can be explained by HP being abstract and representing luck, fatigue, wounds, skill, etc. But then you can get strange behavior as a player realizes that they can't die if they swim across the lava because it will only do X amount of damage and they have more HP than that. In essence, all D&D characters start out as minions and eventually become superheroes.

Now my group and i want to play some fantasy scenarios, and they asked my to use a more "classic" system like D&D.

Now it really depends on what your players meant when they said that. Do they just want to play a fantasy game with some of the tropes of D&D (dungeons, loot, etc.) or is what they want exactly D&D and if so which version?

I like playing D&D on occasion and it has been the staple of my gaming career. I find it harder to run than M&M; I can run M&M on the fly and often use mini statblocks like "Dragon PL 10 Flight, Fire Breath, Fear Aura [Burst 30, Will, dazed/stunned]". D&D 3+ make me feel like I need bigger stat blocks than that and there is often a great deal of looking up to see what the powers do... 4e does have statblocks that are a dream to use but doesn't feel like D&D to me (your mileage may vary). Some will say (and I'd could agree depending on GM/players) that D&D has more flavor for the genre of D&D.

All that said you can run a very nice fantasy game with D&D. You just need to ensure that the characters feel like D&D games rather than superheroes... that means limiting some powers, requiring some complications, and making a few tweaks. Here are a bunch of forum posts for fantasy D&D, including some conversions of the D&D bestiaries. I'm working on a document myself as I've become interested in running some fantasy M&M (after reading Pathfinder).
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=37318
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=24080
viewtopic.php?p=612812#p612812
http://atomicthinktank.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=36542
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=40779
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=40735
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=33246
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=34253
http://atomicthinktank.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=37318
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=34739&start=405
http://atomicthinktank.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=40779
viewtopic.php?p=367524#p367524

If they want D&D and you are willing to run it, then I'd recommend getting the Pathfinder core rules, a module or adventure path, and maybe some supplements. Pathfinder made some nice (IMHO) changes to make classes a little more interesting and balanced some rules (so they say). Plus it is actually in print and they make some awesome adventures. Their SRD his here http://www.d20pfsrd.com/

Recently after reading some D&D fantasy novels, I was thinking that M&M (with a few tweaks) would simulate the novels better than D&D. The rules of D&D play out very differently than most of the novels... rarely to I see healing in novels, people cast a truly bizarre collection of spells (some super high level and the low level ones do a bunch of damage) and there are so many times that a high level monster/character is taken out in one hit (and the action isn't described as being more than a round so I can't buy HP as luck/stamina ablation).

I've actually been torn on running Pathfinder, Fantasy M&M, or continuing the Superhero M&M game that I was running before our baby was born. Pathfinder is appealing because modules to most of the work for me and I just need to do a little prep... plus I'm hankering for some fantasy. Sometime soon we will actually get to play again.

[JoshuaDunlow]

Thanks for the link to the pathfinder SRD. Awesome stuff.

[rstehwien]

Thanks for the link to the pathfinder SRD. Awesome stuff.

Pathfinder has excellent production quality. The books are so beautiful and some of the stuff they have done so compelling my wife was sure we were going to be playing Pathfinder instead of M&M. They haven't fixed many of my problems with D&D 3.X but they made some improvements I rather like... so I started collecting the PDFs of some their books and might even use their setting and adventures if the M&M game goes pure fantasy (right now it is close to Planescape/Nexus + Tech + Supers). I will definitely mine it for power ideas.

If my group demanded the D&D feel then I'd run Pathfinder and pick one of their adventure paths. I think I can nice fantasy game with M&M - certainly will have simpler rules despite being able to make whatever we want and I can run it on the fly.

D&D is very appealing for fantasy if you want to pick from a set list of options and really want the game to be about gathering loot. I think you can do the loot thing to a degree in M&M but the feel of the game will be totally different and you need to bring your own flavor to the powers to make it feel like fantasy.

For loot there are 3 aspects I'd handle differently

• Gold - for the most part just let people collect gold. Maybe take some of the wealth rules from Warriors and Warlocks or some other d20 game (I've seen some really good wealth rules).
• Equipment - I'd either just let people get whatever mundane equipment they want or they can use mundane equipment they come across for a scene, session, or adventure but only have the equipment they have paid points for at the start (allow them to shuffle around the equipment points for purchases).
• Devices - Use as per the M&M rules; ie can pay a hero point to use it for a scene (either found or kept in your armory) but otherwise must pay points for it. In fantasy games there is an acceptable explanation for this - most devices are magical; just have it part of the game that magic draws power for the soul and the points represent that link... no link the magic isn't active and it is just mundane equipment. That is reasonable to me, but I've had people argue up and down that magic items requiring some investiture of power/points is "unrealistic because anyone can use a magic item".

Having gold, equipment, and devices slip through your fingers unless you pay the points fits many fantasy stories. Watch the excesses Conan and his crew go through after an adventure (they pretty much drank, smoked, and whored through enough gold someone could have lived a very nice life on) and then add in people stealing your stuff or it just breaking through use.