M&M 3rd ed. Those pesky Afflictions!

zigguraticus · January 29th, 2014, 01:22 PM

I know, I know, there have probably been a hundred threads about afflictions but I did some searching and could not find a direct answer to my specific question. So here it goes...

I am having trouble understanding the conceptual operation of Affliction DCs and degrees. The description states that failure is one degree and then you pick your ailment to bestow, etc. This seems to me to imply that even a failure of the DC will not impose a condition unless it fails "by enough," so to speak.

For example, I run a low-level campaign, PL 8. An NPC throws an Affliction 8 at a player and hits them, the player rolls a Fort save and gets a 17. The DC for the Affliction is 18, so the player technically did not make the save. According to my understanding of the rules, however, the Affliction still doesn't do anything? The player failed their save yet gets away affliction free? What is the point of the DC in the first place then?

I feel like I must me wrong about something here, otherwise the entire thing makes no sense. Is one degree just ANY failure? I always thought a "degree" was universally 5 in M&M 3e. Am I wrong?

Any help here would be much appreciated.

fillerbunny_x1 · January 29th, 2014, 01:59 PM

fail 1-5= one degree of failure (dazed, for example) (DC 18= result of 17-13)
fail 6-10= second degree failure (stunned, for example) (DC 18= result of 12-8)
fail 11-15= third degree failure (incapacitated, for example; can attempt recovery after 1 minute, usually, though this often ends the character's participation in the current combat)
(DC 18= result of 7 or less)

Also, unless you are using rules for variable afflictions, you have to state what each degree results in.

zigguraticus · January 29th, 2014, 02:08 PM

Thank you so much fillerbunny_x1! This has been plaguing me (no pun intended) for months! I didn't see how Afflictions were at all useful the way I was misusing them.

I even instituted a new house rule that a degree was 3 instead of 5 for Afflictions to try and overcome this for this campaign (which I may still keep). The lower level campaigns do not operate quite as smoothly as the cosmic super hero level ones.