Mental Attack and Defense and Book Characters

[horned god]

Notice in the books that the mental defense and attack is not listed and for some characters this is misleading for example Eldritch has +11 attack mentally and 31 (yes 31) mental defense. He is superbad in other words and if he uses Mental Blast stunt since apparently the guy who made him thought he should not have mental blast he'd actually hit better.

Omega has 33 mental defense. Many others like Dr. Sin, Baron Samedi, and Kalak all have high mental defense. When can this possibly matter. Oh I don't know say someone is a mental based character or an npc like say Professor X then knowning mental defense and in case mental combat happens, then mental attack is important and I think simply adding a third defense number (mental) to the listed book characters and if the mental attack is more than the range or melee then list mental attack.

How do you figure out these numbers right now. Look at the base defense, then add any super-wisdom bonus and wisdom bonus to the flat-footed defense. This is due to the fact your mental is based on wisdom and the nonflat foot listed is based on dex so that someone with 17 (16 flatfoot) has a 12 or 13 dex and if that same character had 16 wisdom his mental defense would be 19. If that same character then also had +10 super-wisdom he'd have a 29 mental defense which is nothing to laugh at, in fact it would or could save that character vs someone throwing auto-fire power attacking mental blasts at them as their defense is so good the attacker might need 20's to hit.

So this is important enough to mention that I think future official supplements and anything created via the super-link should include mental defenses and attack, its only two numbers and the length added to a document is inconsequential. It says me time calculating it for each npc, yet another step to waste time and make the printed book stats that much less useful and trustworthy. (I say this last bit as there are mistakes if you count up or try and see how those stats are arrived at).


SIDE NOTE ON BOOK WRITE UP'S: For example Kalak had 3 pp left over he could have spent and that would be enough for another base attack point or defense point as he only had +10 and +9 respectively so yes it does matter. Also he in particular wasted 52 points on skills 4 more than he spent on stats, for 20 PL he is rather weak in many ways and yet due to his sorcery +20 he is tuff so I won't say he is not but come on a player character or npc made by almost any real gamer would tear this guy a new anal cavity if you let them play with 300 pp. So he is fine for challenging Pl 16 eldritch type characters just fine but the Centurion can single handedly take him on and defeat him, don't believe me take both their stats and fight them out. If centurion loses his will saves vs mind control yes he's hating it but otherwise he has a large chance to beat down kalak. Ofcourse both are rather simple PL 20 characters with one high rank power basically, yet like I said vs many PL 15 real characters who won't be nice nor play around and will take much variety and perky extras and feats trust me don't think centurion is all that 'kick butt', but again they aren't weak either.

[DarkTouch]

Let me just say this... I whole heartedly agree with you that some things should be listed. But I will also point out that it is HARD to do so. I've been working off and on at a one page character sheet that holds all the information that I think I'll need during a game session.. getting it all to fit and having it be in a meaningful possition is not a simple proposition.

For a developer, I don't blame them for dropping a number of the derived stats in order to make room for other things. It helps keep the write-up from becoming a cluttered mess.

Things that I've been trying to break out:
Mental Attack and Defense
Notes on avalable 'attack actions'.
Lifting capacity (My test character is cyclone and this made my jaw drop)
Movement Rates (Cyclones flight sprint was also pretty amazing)
Feat descriptions so I don't have to keep checking the book

[slaughterj]

Here's a link to my MnM page, which the first link on it contains my Hero-esque (4th ed): http://www.yandros.com/MnM/MnM.htm

It takes into account a lot of what is desirable to include, including the combat summary section in the lower right hand corner from which 95% of combat can be run from (other than occasional reference to feats list), as well as including point totaling (a big missing necessity) and mental combat stuff, which as noted, should be spelled out for print characters.

[DarkTouch]

You wouldn't happen to have the source for the PDF would you? I like it a whole lot but I think for my players I'd want to take out the extra effort and hero points section and put them on a seperate paper along with a listing of which skills can be used untrained.

Also, your Lifting/Load section is off.. but otherwise I totally plan to steal it

[slaughterj]

You wouldn't happen to have the source for the PDF would you? I like it a whole lot but I think for my players I'd want to take out the extra effort and hero points section and put them on a seperate paper along with a listing of which skills can be used untrained.

Also, your Lifting/Load section is off.. but otherwise I totally plan to steal it

Actually my Lifting/Load section is correct, the MnM sheet is wrong - not too long ago, I brought this up on here and SK confirmed it. See the book, compare to D&D, a few terms are slightly adjusted from 3e D&D to MnM...

Of all the book material, it's nice to have the HP/EE stuff on the sheet for quick reference (I know from personal experience ), but I have several other versions as well as my original Word files - I'll post 'em when I get a chance (remind me next week, trying to get out of here!).

[Strand0]

As one of my players was mental blast, MentalDefense is always (and Mental Attack if needed) listed on NPC sheets. Saves time.