Fastball

[megaplayboy]

well, 1400 MPH is about as fast as the average bullet, but a baseball is a lot larger than a bullet. I think that 12d6 normal works pretty well--this will flat out kill norms, seriously injure agents, and flatten low level supers. 4d6 Ka, if the ball is solid and inelastic.

PS: at 1% of light speed the ball will do about 36d6

[DoctorItron]

Originally posted by BNakagawa
PD: Certainly baseball isn't as contact intensive as football or boxing, but it should be pointed out that a significant number of baseball players played football in either high school or college. Point 2: Catchers. Point 3. Sliding. You won't last long in this game with a 2 PD. They tend to run faster than average normals and sliding will do more damage the faster you go. Point 4: you can't be afraid of the ball. Everyone in the major leagues will have been hit with countless pitched and batted balls by the time they make the show. If you're going on the DL with broken bones every other game, your career is over before it begins. The minor leagues would be a death sentence if they all had 2 pds.

Death sentence??? Catchers wear protective gear to augment their PD. Players slide onto a smooth infield that isn't supposed to have rocks, not broken glass.

In the Hero System, STUN damage completely heals in minutes (unless you're knocked into GM's discretion la-la land). BODY takes days to heal. To me, this means that BODY damage isn't just broken bones. Sprains, strains, scrapes, cuts, bruises can all mean BODY damage.

If a batter gets hit by a pitch, it's not unreasonable that they'll be hurt the next day. Not in a coma, no broken bones, still able to play baseball ... but they have a bruise and ache where they were hit. Taking 1 or 2 BODY doesn't mean they'd be on the disabled list. Professional athletes often play with minor injuries.

If batters had enough PD to take pitches without getting injured, they wouldn't need helmets, and they wouldn't charge the mound when the pitcher threw at them.

BODY: Hero says 30 Body is human maximum, I say 20 is about the tops you're going to find in the general population. Either way, Baseball players are going to be a lot closer to 20 than 10.

You can interpret BODY in a number of ways. Is it sheer body mass? Baseball players tend to be larger than average people. Certainly not to the extent that football players are, but still quite largish. I remember when middle infielders used to be smaller than the average man, but that was quite some time ago.

Is BODY a measurement of overall health? Ballplayers tend to be a lot healthier than the general population. Certainly, there are exceptions, but the average MLB player is a cut above the average man. An average man probably couldn't make it through a full 162 game season, especially if they play in the midwest or south in an outdoor field. (thankfully rare these days)

Is BODY related to willpower? Surely, even some small people have an immense will to live, completely out of proportion to their size and/or health. Again, your average MLB player has an above average will, just about any way you want to measure it. Chances are, they wouldn't have gotten to the big leagues without it.

These are the only measurements we can reliably use. We don't have a good way of quantifying how many bullets you can pump into a person before they die. (not with any amount of clinical precision, anyway)

I look at things in this way: What percentage of the general population would you categorize as having a higher BODY rating than the average MLB ballplayer? Of all the people I've personally met, I've met maybe five that I might put in that category. So, the way I look at it, the average MLB ballplayer is going to have a BODY rating in the 75-90 percentile range. If you're using the human max of 30, then ballplayers should be seeing body stats up to 25. If you're using 20, then maybe topping out at 18 would do.

$0.02 and a handfull of sunflower seeds.

By the Hero System rules, isn't BODY used primarily for the amount of physical damage that can be done before someone dies? Overall health is primarily CON and maybe REC. Willpower is EGO.

25 BODY Remember, the context of the original question is within the realm of a superhero game. That's not a typical baseball player, that's a character from an action movie. With 25 BODY:

1) Doctor Destroyer would have to roll exceptionally well to kill a baseball player in one shot.

2) I think a tank gun does something like 6d6 RKA. Average of 21 damage, maximum of 36. The baseball player can get shot by the main gun of a tank and still have positive BODY most of the time. Might not even need medical attention. Even on a perfect roll of 36 BODY, the baseball player would be at -11 BODY. A good doctor could save him.

3) Grond would have to punch the baseball player ~ 3 times before the baseball player was dead. Grond is suddenly a lot less impressive...

[Zed-F]

Bnaka: No way to all of that. Simply put, every ball-payer would pretty much be a hero-class character if you followed those suggestions.

Joe Professional Ball-player is at best a Noteworthy Normal, built on 0 points. He will not have significantly better stats than normal, so 10 BODY, a PS: Ballplayer, a KS: Ballplayer, a hobby, and a familiarity or two. You might give him PD 3 or at most 4.

Joe Major-leaguer will probably be a skilled normal, built on 25 points. Stats for skilled normals have 13 STR, 11 DEX, 13 CON, 3 SPD, and 4 PD, which seems reasonable as a starting point. You might give him another PD and maybe another DEX or so, but not much more than that.

Joe World-series Champ (Competent Normal) starts with 13 STR, 14 DEX, 13 CON, 10 BODY, 5 PD. Again, maybe 6 PD and 15 STR, but since normal max is 8 and 20 respectively, probably not more than that -- need to leave room for more physical sports like football/wrestling after all.

A generic gun is about 1 1/2 to 2d6 RKA. Ball players are not any more immune to bullets than anyone else, World-series Champs or no. Two bullet holes should be enough to put just about anyone down, unless you get some pretty bad rolls. If a player wants more BODY than that, fine, but some random NPC? Probably not more than 11 BODY even on the World-series Champ without good (i.e. plot-related) reason.