Fantasy Mutants and Masterminds

[Xeviat]

After nearly a year of playing 4th Edition D&D, I'm finding myself more and more curious about running a Mutants and Masterminds game. Luckily for me,  Warriors and Warlocks, a Mutants and Masterminds supplement about using the system to run Sword & Sorcery style games just came out. I downloaded it today, and I'm considering using M&M for my next game (mainly because I'm a bit dissatisfied with the power system in D&D4, though I do find the system to be very enjoyable).

I would like to hammer out a few things with some people that are familiar with the system. I'd like to discuss how I can adapt my setting for the system. One thing I would like to do is make the elemental aspects of the magic system far more important. For instance, I'm considering making a rule that each power has to be a single element; you can't have a fireball and a cold ray spell as alternate powers of the same thing. I'd also like to leave "martial" separate as well. This means that people will be more encouraged to go with a single one, or use one for attacks and the other for use-activated buffs (which would otherwise turn off when you switch to a different AP).

So, for that aspect, I need some heads to bounce ideas off of. I need to take the list of M&M effects taken from the Ultimate Power book and decide which effects will belong to which elements.

Lastly, I'm considering a few crunch changes, mostly stemming around the ability scores. I would like to take a moment to balance the ability scores a bit better (as of right now, Constitution is the most potent ability score, which I discovered when I made an invulnerable superhero and found that boosting Con was cheaper than boosting the component parts, while Charisma was cheaper to boost the component parts).

I would also like to look into combining the Defense stat with Reflex, since I find it hard to imagine dodging sword swings and dodging explosions to be that different (AC and Reflex in D&D are different because armor stops some things and not others, but armor in M&M is Toughness). This, though, is a huge change and I'd need to explore all of the ramifications.

I look forward to your replies.

[Nomadic]

Dang it man you got me all excited that you were gonna start a new M and M game. Anyhow why do you want only one element? I of course don't know the exact mechanics here but I would think it would be cool to combine earth and fire and get magma or wind and water to get mist, or any other crazy combo.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

I know nothing about M&M, but this sure sounds cool!

[Xeviat]

I could start an online game once I get the ball rolling.

The reason I want each array to only be one element is that it is more thematic to my world. Once I've seen a couple of characters made for it, I'll figure out how to allow for multi-elemental casters.

[Nomadic]

Oh and as an aside I think you SHOULD combine defense and reflex. It seems like it should work just fine (that is pretty much what we did with QPRPG).

[Xeviat]

The only concern is that Defense and Toughness are built together for trade offs. Would that mean Toughness and Reflex could now be traded off? Plus, Defense is normally capped at PL, but Reflex is capped at PL+5. These are the little things that I'm concerned with.

[Poseptune]

I'm extremely tired right now, when I have a chance to have a clear head I'll look over it and give some feedback.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

I could help.  Feel free to PM me.  I'll think about Def/Ref in the meantime.

UPDATE: My first proposal: If you're implying that things that previously dealt with forcing a Ref save now would need to use the Attack stat then I'd just let all the Ref save stuff go and simply rule that Attack vs. Defense takes it over.