3.X for Modern Urban Fantasy, Espionage, Superheroes, etc

[Username17]

Frank, there´s still this little issue:

While one can argue that Batman is a high-Tier hero, there´s Robin, who is a scaled-down Batman: Still a top combatant in the junior leagues, still a great detective for junior-league cases, still drives a souped up vehicle and share the same gadgets (sans combat armor).

Actually not much of an issue. As long as power levels stay even vaguely sane, Batman style heroes have no problem contributing in a group environment. They are able to compete for exactly the same reason as Flasked Avengers contribute in 3.5: there's no particular reason why "scouting," "sneaking," and "throwing bombs" can't scale to whatever power level you happen to be at. If enemies scale to your power level, then ambushing them or thwarting their ambushes is always a level appropriate ability. Thrown flash bombs can temporarily blind Doom Lord or Eradicatrix as easily as easily as it can temporarily blind Loan Shark or Littleface. Fire and acid bombs thrown with precision can plausibly damage giant robots out to pretty intense power levels.

Yes, there's an upper limit to the power levels that Batman types can play in, but if you're designing a multiplayer game you don't actually have to take the power levels that far. Robin has no problem at all being a contributing member of the team in Teen Titans or even Young Justice. As long as you simply don't go to Silver Age power levels, a sneaky detective who throws bombs can be a plausible team member for the whole game.

Robin is on the same team as Impulse, The Flash fights Captain Boomerang. It's not a problem. The Speedster and the Gadgeteer conceptually occupy much of the same potential power space. And if you simply declare that overlap of potential to be the limits of what your game covers, you're all good.

That sounds almost exactly like Mutants and Masterminds.

Really? To me it sounds almost nothing like Mutants and Masterminds. M&M is a point buy system with some clumsy kludges to make it look kind of like a level system. What I was talking about would be an actual class and level system.

Speedsters clearly benefit more from boosts to their attacks than they do from more super speed. Blasters clearly benefit more from boosts to their speed than they do from a bigger blast. Point buy systems are always going to choke on synergy issues. A super punch is simply worth more if you can fly or teleport than if you have to walk everywhere. With a Class system, you can ameliorate that somewhat. A Brick can simply get their super punch cheaper than a Cape can, because the Cape has an easier time getting into position to use it.

Class systems of course have the problem that there are character archetypes that fall through the cracks of their supported archetypes that they don't model well (what if you want to be a stealthy psychic who shoots people with guns? Who knows?). But it's a different set of problems than point buy has. But especially for a somewhat light hearted game, I'd much rather that a game just straight up said that something was unsupported than to have it pretend to support something but turn out that it's a trap option.

For a hard example: there are source material versions of the classic Cape superhero where they have super reflexes and can dodge things in bullet time, and ones where they don't. In a Class system, you straight up can't play one, because Bullet Time Defenses are a Speedster ability and you can't have it as a Cape. In a Point Buy system, you will be laughed at for being a newb if you build a Cape who doesn't have Bullet Time Defenses, because they are awesome and clearly the best upgrade to get on the powers that you already have to get as a Cape. This isn't a completely hypothetical example, that's how it actually works in Scion and Aberrant.

-Username17

[hogarth]

That's true, but it's true across every genre. The number of stories of any genre that would map well onto a D&D level system is vanishingly small. Probably because many small improvements from wimp to god is hard to portray in an noticeable manner compared to a few discrete jumps in power.

?

You start off with a plucky young teenager, who joins up with some more experienced adventurers, and goes on an adventure. They start out fighting goblins, and then they fight orcs, and then they fight ogres, and then they fight trolls, and then they fight giants, and then they fight dragons, and then they fight a god. With each new foe get a few new powers that don't seem too big on their own, and get more skilled in ways that are hard to quantify.

And then they go back and stomp some giants and dragons so you know it's not just that the setting has flat power levels.

Which novel/movie/comic book series is that?

There's some discussion on the topic in one of the zillions of threads on fighters, starting here.

[tussock]

Getting back to reflavouring 3.X as a modern game ... there's just guns which do 1d6 or 1d8 per attack, and everyone is a first level expert so that still kills them quite often.

That 3rd level thing? No. Everyone is 1st level. Everyone. Soldiers are War1. Elite soldiers are Ranger or Fighter 1. If you want an elephant gun that kills 100 hp elephants in one hit, you're playing the wrong game. These are "animal attacks" elephants that rampage through New York as the detectives blast them repeatedly with shotgun and pistol fire while keeping away in their motor vehicles. Police dogs had 2HD and are the greatest weapon police can muster.

Die Hard is 3rd level. The big guy he fights is maybe 2nd level.

You know who's 5th level? Jason is, from Friday the 13th. You stab him, shoot him, electrocute him, he falls out a window, and then he wanders back up the stairs and keeps on fighting you. Run him down with a car and he wanders off because he's finally low on hit points. Marvel heroes fit about here too.

You want to play 10th level Heroes in the modern world? Well, that's nice, but they're superheroes of the high-end DC type. Your Barbarian can just punch out tanks and casually ignore gunfire, while outperforming Olympic athletes at every contest, and calling up his ancestral spirit weapons to defeat supernatural horrors coming through the Buffy portal or whatever.

16th level? No, that doesn't even work in D&D worlds.

Rogue: the PCs.
Expert: the NPCs.
Commoner: works service.
Warrior: military/swat.
Ranger: rangers.
Paladin: friends of Jesus, no multiclassing.
Monk: alien clones, no multiclassing.
Barbarian: drugs, man.
Fighter: survivalist (NB: lack of actual survival skills, but +1 to shoot).

No full casters, but you should be able to do Bard, Psiwar, and similar from level 4. Everyone takes point blank and rapid shot. Go kill some fools.

[Cyberzombie]

Speedsters clearly benefit more from boosts to their attacks than they do from more super speed. Blasters clearly benefit more from boosts to their speed than they do from a bigger blast. Point buy systems are always going to choke on synergy issues. A super punch is simply worth more if you can fly or teleport than if you have to walk everywhere. With a Class system, you can ameliorate that somewhat. A Brick can simply get their super punch cheaper than a Cape can, because the Cape has an easier time getting into position to use it.

I'm don't think that's a big issue with M&M. Basically they balance super speed + melee as being the same as ranged attacks. Which is more or less okay. Since ranged has less tactical movement, but can hit flying targets. If you want flight + melee, you pay even more, the equivalent of having super speed + a ranged attack. The idea is that you eventually run out of points so you have to make some sacrifices. Having a higher Fort/Will save has good synergy with any attack power too, as it keeps you standing long enough to deliver your attack.

The super speed problem has bigger issues than just making melee better.
The biggest problem is that anytime you get a chase happening, it's hard for The Thing or Batman to keep up with anyone with any kind of super speed or flight. That's really why it tends to be a must take for people, because nobody wants to get totally eliminated from a scene.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Would a class-and-level based system for superhero/urban fantasy work if...

A.) Improvement to combat schticks and non-combat schticks worked on two different advancement tracks. So you could have characters like Goku or Doomsday who were pretty useless outside of blowing shit up, characters like Tony Stark or Naruto who were both powerful and skilled, and characters like Batman who had l33t skills but couldn't exactly take a shot to the gut with a laser.

B.) As a caveat to A., character advancement was strictly controlled. For example, the GM determines when advancement along each track occurs and how much. The players do not have a choice which, when, or how to advance at all. If the GM decides that you advance 10 points along the skill track and get 50% to the next level on the class-and-level track, then by God that's what happens.

Obviously there will have to be a frank discussion before the game organizes about how the players want their characters to advance and take shape and whether they want to look like Goku, Mr. Fantastic, or Batman at the end of their journey.

C.) The game was made with the expectation that players can't diverge that much in class v. skills. You can have Static (high power, low skill), Hermione Granger (medium skill and power), James Bond Jr (low power, high skill) in the same party but you couldn't have Johnny Storm, Usuke Yurameshi, and Riddick in the same party. This means that the game has a low-level cap or the GM will have to advance both tracks carefully once some kind of limit is reached.

[radthemad4]

How are the vehicle rules in D20 Modern? What about the ones in Pathfinder?

[A Man In Black]

Actually not much of an issue. As long as power levels stay even vaguely sane, Batman style heroes have no problem contributing in a group environment. They are able to compete for exactly the same reason as Flasked Avengers contribute in 3.5: there's no particular reason why "scouting," "sneaking," and "throwing bombs" can't scale to whatever power level you happen to be at. If enemies scale to your power level, then ambushing them or thwarting their ambushes is always a level appropriate ability. Thrown flash bombs can temporarily blind Doom Lord or Eradicatrix as easily as easily as it can temporarily blind Loan Shark or Littleface. Fire and acid bombs thrown with precision can plausibly damage giant robots out to pretty intense power levels.

The bigger problem is that Batman is supposed to somehow treat both Littleface and Doom Lord as possible threats, while Superman does struggle fighting Doom Lord but deals with Littleface in one panel as a comedy beat. People actively expect this of characters like Batman or Hawkeye or whatnot, that they're actively able to play in the Cosmic Threats To The Galaxy tier while also still meaningfully threatened at the Street level. This isn't even a mundane-power-source issue; Spider-Man's archnemesis's superpowers are a jetpack and grenades.

[radthemad4]

The most basic modern encounter is "goons enter the room with guns" and that just doesn't function properly in d20.

If guns did a lot of damage and threatened all squares in range (and perhaps gave you additional AoOs), would that make them more representative of how they work in modern times? Then if you're low level and unarmed, you might have to try something like hiding behind cover and stealthing past, blindly trying to throw improvised weapons, picking up a table (improvised tower shield) and charging, etc. If you have lots of tumble tanks, you could try getting close head on, but there could be a lot of squares to wade through. Perhaps there should be additional maneuvers for forcing armed goons to waste AoOs, e.g. hat on a stick

[Username17]

The core conceit of gaining character resilience in d20 is gaining hit points. If guns do a lot of damage for 2nd level characters, it won't be a lot of damage for 8th level characters. And if guns do a lot of damage for 8th level, your last seven levels of hit point gains are meaningless and you aren't really playing d20 at all.

-Username17

[radthemad4]

Good point. The gun stats in the 3.5 DMG and Pathfinder are lethal enough against 1st level commoners (which the majority of the world will be). I guess I'm okay with being shot not being a big deal to characters with levels (I'll try to fluff it as hitting non vital regions).

Still, would letting guns threaten all squares in range be a good idea? My aim is to make it difficult to charge a machine gunner head on if you don't have invisibility, DR, a smoke bomb or something and didn't bother to make them flat footed somehow either.

[erik]

The most basic modern encounter is "goons enter the room with guns" and that just doesn't function properly in d20.

If guns did a lot of damage and threatened all squares in range (and perhaps gave you additional AoOs), would that make them more representative of how they work in modern times?

I don't see why they would threaten any more than other ranged weapons. And extra AoO is already done via combat reflexes. Pistols are just one handed ranged weapons- Hand crossbows with auto loading ammo and better stats (Dmg, range). Done.

[radthemad4]

Yeah, I can see gun mooks taking combat reflexes at level 1. Thanks erik.

I just realized I had totally forgotten about readied actions.

Cover based combat could be done via readied actions (gun wielder readies action to shoot as soon as victim comes out of hiding from behind a wall or something).

If you're hiding behind a low wall you could use a move action to get up, fire with a standard action and use a free action to fall down again (you'd have partial concealment against readied actions). What's a good way to handle corner based pot shots though?

Named ranged characters (e.g. Deadshot) could get something like this I guess: http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Ranged_Threat_%283.5e_Feat%29 (though I'd probably ease up on the requirements or make those part of a Tome feat)