Monday, November 17, 2008

Mutants & Masterminds round-up; FFT:TWOTL

As promised, I will write about a few things I've been playing. The first is that last night we wrapped up our Mutants & Masterminds 2 week game in which we played supervillians out to get the infinity gems from the Justice League of America. I played the "Totem" archetype, pissed-off-with-the-man assassin Venoma, part human, part snake. I could spit and bite with paralysing venom, and I have super assassin skills (very good sneaking and notice checks). With our party accepting a contract from a known Columbian arms dealer (who could duplicate himself) to obtain the infinity gems, we set off to infiltrate the JLA HQ and steal the gems. With us was a sentient Simian and a fire elemental, and along the way we caused riots through New York, killed Batman, freed inmates from Arkham Asylum (though the Joker & Mr Freeze were killed in the process), then after successfully stealing the gems we took on the Fantastic Four and some other superheroes who came to try to take them from us. I had the Mind gem, which let me read minds and mind blast people, which was pretty cool. Defeating these so-called "heroes" and then escaping with the gems, we found that Thanos (sp? I'm totally not a comic book person) who had previously wielded the gems in the infinity gauntlet, had the other two gems and was out to complete the collection, and was busy trying to destroy the earth with a bunch of aliens in order to find the gems. Fortunately we found him first, and beat him, but the soul gem decided it didn't want any part of some of my comrades so disintegrated them. Faced with a sentient gem, I spoke to it with mine, and we came to an accord, but when I took it for myself it took over my soul. Then the fire elemental killed me and became a god-like being who ruled the world for a few seconds before the gods decided that wasn't to be and rended her soul and destroyed the gems.

Anyway, it was a hella fun game, and completely different from anything I'd ever played before (though it is most similar to D&D 3.5 ed, being based on the d20 system). It probably helped that the DM was a huge comic book fan because there's no way I'd be able to run a game like that since I am completely comic book ignorant. It is best played as a fast & fun game (often Matt would be like "what are you doing? 5-4-3-2-1") and 2 weeks of it was a great break from our epic campaign of original box set D&D, which will start again next week!

Mutants and Masterminds: 8/10
It loses 2 because I think I should have picked a slightly more skilled character: we hardly did anything much that required assassin-style skills, which is, in retrospect, common for party-based campaigns. Sometimes I felt like there wasn't much I could do, but my bite was surprisingly useful. I was also pretty good at grappling. But you know, you don't really want to grapple Human Torch and things like that.

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I'm also powering through FFT:TWOTL. I decided that now my BLM had Thundaja opened he should go improve his time mage skills, and that my WHM should go improve her mystic skills, so we're playing switcheroo with jobs a bit! I'm also highly dissatisfied with my Knight, because he's slow as hell. I'm not sure what to do with him :(

My usual party up til now has been: (4) monk, knight, black mage, white mage, and for (5) a thief or a chocobo depending on the situation. My thief seems to be resistant to my white mage which is really annoying, but she's really high level and I don't want to bother to level a different character up :( I'm thinking maybe I'll switch her back to archer instead because they're less likely to get hit.

4 comments:

Count Elmdor said...

That manic game description sounds like some of the things my friends and I played pretend about as kids. It sounds very stream-of-consciousness.

For FFT, why don't you try swapping your thief to a ninja or samurai? Both of them have pretty good evasion and damage. Try the samurai's skill Blade Grasp. I remember that one being awesome. And whatever that skill is that lets you pre-emptively counter, often killing the enemy before their own attack goes off. That may be a monk skill, though.

It's been like two years since I last played FFT...

Count Elmdor said...

Hamato, I think it is. And IIRC, it is a Monk skill. Expensive, but totally worth it.

Catherine said...

They're only like level 11, I haven't unlocked ninja or samurai yet :(

Count Elmdor said...

ah, I was thinking you were further in. Well, be sure to play the job system to the fullest in this game, because it's one of its best appearances.

oh, and be sure that Ramza always, always has Guts as his support skill set. Sometimes it's the only thing that can save you!