Mutants and Masterminds 3rd Edition / DC Adventures

[Shadowchaser]

I'm sure I asked this someplace else, but I can't for the life of me find the thread I posted this question in, so I'll add it here.

Will it be possible, if we have both the 2E and 3E licenses, to have some kind of feature where we can load portfolios from 2E and convert them to 3E with a minimum of fuss? I don't know if the software makes that easy or not, but if it were possible, it'd be really awesome. I'd even be willing to pay a few bucks for just that feature alone... I have hundreds of characters under the 2E that I'd love to easily port over to use with 3E...

[Kesendeja]

If I update my current group to 3e and then find that I have another group that still uses 2e will I be able to switch between editions in Hero Lab, or will the update over write the 2e core files?

[Colen]

Shadowchaser: We generally don't do pre-orders - pre-orders are useful when physical product is being printed and shipped, because you need to know how much of it to create. Since a new M&M package would be electronic-only, everyone who wants it can just buy it the day of release, and keep their money until then.

I'm not sure about converting M&M2 characters to M&M3; it would be a decent amount of work for us to do, and that's beside any concerns about how a character from M&M2 would work in M&M3.

Kesendeja: The two game systems will be totally separate. The M&M3 data files will not overwrite M&M2 - they will co-exist on your computer.

[Shadowchaser]

Thanks for the responses, Colen.

I don't know if anyone else would be willing, but a 'click to convert' function for 2E to 3E (and maybe back the other way) would be worth some extra money to me. Might be something you'd want to investigate once you get the 3E stuff rolling along.

Of course, like you need me to tell you your job.

[Colen]

In an ideal world, what I'd like to do (no guarantee that we'll actually be able to accomplish this) is simply let you load the M&M3 game system, then just open an M&M2 hero. The hero would then load into the M&M3 data files, although information might be lost - for example, if a certain power was removed from M&M3, that power would not be loaded, and you'd have to reassign the points yourself.

[Duggan]

^_^ This kind of falls under how it would be nice, in some cases, for users to be able to create little macros for things like this. Theoretically, we already can for any dataset we understand, since it's all XML, but there are enough fiddly bits in the XML that it would be nice to be able to handle it from one step higher.

The other big macro-ish thing I'd like to be able to do is a rough PL scaler. Nothing sophisticated, just something that, for NPCs, let's me take every bonus and every penalty and apply a scaling factor, always rounding down. TO give an example:
Hit-Man PL 10
STR 26 (+8) DEX 18 (+4) CON 20 (+5) etc [34 pp]
Base Defense 6, Dodge Bonus 4 [16 pp] Total 10 Defense
Strike 10 (Accurate 2) [12 pp]
Protection 5 [5 pp]

Toughness save of 5+5=10

Hit-Man roughly scaled to PL 12
STR 10+(16*(12/10)=18)=28 (+9) DEX 10+(8*12/10=9)=19 (+4) CON 10+(10*12/10=12)=22 (+6) [39 pp]
Base Defense (6*12/10 = 7) Dodge Bonus (4*12/10=4) [18 pp] Total 11 Defense
Strike 10*12/10=12 (Accurate 2) [14 pp]
Protection 5*12/10=6 [6 pp]

Toughness save of 6+6=12

It's a rough value and they'll usually come out slightly under-points, but it allows you to grab the Battlesuit archive and quickly stick him in as a PL12 boss, or correspondingly lower him to a PL 7 minion, without having to do a lot of math. ^_^ Any merit?

[Colen]

That's a really good idea, Duggan - it'd be awesome if you could easily scale up or down any NPC, to make it fit your campaign. I'll investigate this and see how easy it would be.

[Kesendeja]

Thanks for the response.

[Shadowchaser]

Originally Posted by Colen

In an ideal world, what I'd like to do (no guarantee that we'll actually be able to accomplish this) is simply let you load the M&M3 game system, then just open an M&M2 hero. The hero would then load into the M&M3 data files, although information might be lost - for example, if a certain power was removed from M&M3, that power would not be loaded, and you'd have to reassign the points yourself.

Instead of just dropping the power, what if it loaded it as a "Custom" power, with a description alerting the user that the power was no longer in the system and would need to be adjusted if it was supposed to interact with other stats/powers?

Just a thought.

I also LOVE love LOVE the 'Scaling' option concept! Being able to take any NPC and just click up or down on a Scale Power Level (perhaps as an Optional Tab, like the Mecha tab) would be amazingly useful. You could turn a soldier into a space marine with a few clicks.

If you make it an Optional Tab, you could fine-tune the settings of what gets scaled, too, bringing up a whole page of settings you can tweak.

[flyingcircus]

Well I wish M&M 3E would just drop the old boring levels system and just go straight points system, far simpler, I have always felt the dumb d20 levels system just never fit a supers style campaign. I mean, hell what level can you put on Superman or Darkseid? Just never made sense anyhow, just use straight points like the old DC Heroes system and leave it at that, maybe even drop the d20 system altogether and go with 2d10 (still gives a range of 2-20).