So what does it take to build an encounter for a game like this one? In short, what makes running an encounter for a game setting like Mass Effect significantly different from a D&D setting, or a superheroic milieu?
I’m glad you asked. Unless you didn’t, in which case I wish you had so that I could answer properly. I’ll wait. It’ll give me time to finish being impressed with myself for using the word “milieu” successfully.
Hm? Oh, good, you’ve asked now. Okay, then. As my DM is fond of telling me, the most important thing to think about is terrain.
Specifically, cover.
True story: the proper use of cover was the first thing I noticed when playing Mass Effect that separated it instantly in my mind from any other game with guns I’d encountered, and it’s important to notice because if your game table is anything like mine then you’re not used to using cover either. I don’t think I’ve ever been playing D&D, even as an archer type, and thought, “hey, I should get behind cover so those arrows don’t kill me.” You need to use cover in Mass Effect, or you’ll wind up dead. Fast. Partly because nearly everyone is using automatic weapons.
Now, thinking about cover is relatively easy once you’ve learned the one rule of Mutants & Masterminds 3e: namely, that pretty much every modifier in the game system that isn’t “power rank” or similar is boiled down to +/- 2/5. If something is somewhat beneficial, take a +2. If it’s very beneficial, take a +5.
Now, D&D has something similar (though in 4e it’s a 4, rather than 5) called the “DM’s best friend.” The difference is that M&M actually uses it for everything from concealment to invisibility to cover to fringe benefits provided by Advantages or Features to… well, you get the point. The point is that it’s everywhere. Very transparent.
The reason this is important is because it makes it a lot easier to focus on the rulings rather than on the rules, and I think that’s something that a lot of us can get behind in the interest of speed.
Encounters in the video game are largely about cover. Using it creatively; holding it against enemies who attempt to flank. Pulling a flanking maneuver and taking the enemy down from behind while your squadmates keep their attention. Using powers or biotics to pull enemies out from behind cover and into the line of fire. And so on.
Automatic weapon rules are built right into Mutants & Masterminds 3e, though since 2e the name was changed from Autofire to Multiattack to make it a bit more broadly applicable. They allow for covering fire, sweeping the weapon to attack multiple targets (for a minor penalty to accuracy) and grant bonus damage ranks for high attack rolls. Lovely.
This means it’s important that you, as the GM, are ready to think tactically. Have the bad guys provide covering fire for each other as they move to keep the player’s on their toes. Use readied actions. Use the Aim action. Deploy snipers. Make sure that there’s cover available, and that the bad guys use it. And (assuming that you haven’t told them ahead of time) pray that your players catch on to how the fights are going to work. Use those automatic weapons to their fullest potential to make it very very clear that there are dangers to the old run-and-gun.
Gun-fu will get you killed. Almost invariably.
Another important thing to remember about Mutants & Masterminds, and one of the reasons I’ve chosen it as the vehicle for this setting, is the Toughness save. Health is not a resource in this game; there are no “hit points”. Every hit brings with it the risk of incapacitation – though it is mitigated somewhat if the players have Hero points available. Every failed toughness save accumulates a penalty to the next save (your shields are weakened, your armor is damaged, you’re getting tired…), making it increasingly likely that a worse failure will leave you out of the fight entirely. This is good (in the dramatic sense) because it makes it entirely possible for even a powerful PC to drop after one shot with a particularly bad die-roll.
Even at the high power levels, combat is dangerous.
On the flip side of this, I should note that the default rules don’t let you die easily unless someone is really trying to kill you. This is useful from a story perspective (protagonists shouldn’t die all that often, because they’re more important to the story) and it’s also useful because it’s kind of how things work in Mass Effect anyway. So, there’s that.
Jonathan Baldwin
Jonathan is a firm believer that the best way to make friends is to game with them, and that nearly any problem can be surmounted with a well rolled d20 and a sense of humor. Regrettably, his professors do not agree with him, which leaves him with the challenge of balancing his gaming habits with his studies. Profile Page / Article Portfolio
Is there anything you would need to do with the system’s mechanic to mirror the deadly-ness of autofire / gunfire in Mass Effect? Or should we just leave it alone as per the normal rules?
As it stands, attacks using autofire/multiattack do increased damage based on higher attack rolls; at the power levels used for a game like this one, that should be deadly enough. If you want to make things deadlier, there are ways to do it using the existing ruleset – let your bad guys use the Aim action, then Power Attack. Stagger their firing and have them use smart tactics instead of just shooting like a mob, and you should be able to keep things interesting.
Alternatively, if the bad guys aren’t challenging enough, raise their Power Level. That should do the trick. 😉
All this depends on how much you want to make your players work. But if they’re creative and smart, that should be rewarded. And the “toughness” of a fight should be balanced out somewhat by giving the players Hero Points to work with; they should be spending them pretty quickly most of the time, so you can afford to hand them out liberally. Without Hero Points, M&M tends to be … well, realistically brutal. And we don’t like our protagonists to drop quite that fast.
But you shouldn’t need to “cheat” and make the rule more deadly than it is – especially since the players are likely to be using automatic weapons, too.