Post originally by SarimRune at 2005-06-19 20:59:21
Converted from Phorums BB System

This is exactly what Mutants & Masterminds did. They have a damage save (a new saving throw) that is rolled against the power level of the attack +15 (fail by 5 and get stunned, fail by 10 and get knocked out). Each time you get hit you gain a penalty to the next damage save making it more possible to get knocked out. I love it!"

I've played M&M. Maybe some groups out there like entirely wild randomness, but my groups certainly don't.
Using the d20 as a basis for the Saving Throw is pretty terrible actually. It gives such a random potential that your stat (in this case your Damage Save bonus) can be largely irrelivant. We found this damage system to be nearly pointless and it was one of the big reasons to abandon M&M. As an example, I had two bad guys with the same stats. One of them was KOed in the first hit (simply because I rolled low). The second took 7 hits before getting KOed (simply because I rolled very high over and over). Now my problem with this is I want some consistency with my games. The same thug with the same stats should, in a good system, take about the same amount of damage (a small variable is fine). But combat went on and on as they tried to defeat this one bad guy.
Another problem with the system is that as your characters increase, both their damage bonus (to cause damage) and their damage save generally go up at a consistant and parallel rate. Therefore what you need to roll, against equal level characters, doesn't really change. If you're level 5 and fight level 5 guys, you need to roll about the same that two level 20's who fight each other. The end result is that the game becomes somewhat redunant as your target numbers are generally the same, throughout the game.
Finally there are some serious problems with min-maxing protection values. You can easily have two characters of the same level and one can be invulnerable to the other, just because they spent their points 'better'.
All in all, M&M LOOKS like the greatest super hero game. That is until you actually play it for a while and see the horrible flaws.