39 point me

[OddHat]

Re: 39 point me

 

Now remember' date=' Amada, to include potential skill modifiers (pg. 28 in the Skills chapter of my rulebook) when deciding your skill levels. And OddHat, how much are you pushing your strength when you press 335 pounds? Be honest now! [/quote']

 

I'm not. As a Heroic level NPC (or less) I can't push. STR is actually best figured from Deadlift anyway, which puts me at around a 16...except that I can't leap anywhere near 6 meters.

 

STR in the real world works nothing like STR in HERO.

 

I might arguably be using some sort of limited STR "Only for weight lifting". Real world stats, if they can be measured at all, are highly specialized (STR just for Pulling Motions, INT just for Pattern Recognition) with some cross over (STR for pulling motions can be re-trained into STR for striking given 4-6 weeks) but in play that just starts getting silly.

 

Seriously, this is what gives the most headaches when I try to stat NPCs myself. Kudos to people like Surbrook. Thats why I think we need a good set of guidelines.

 

For STR at least we have them, based on measurable performance. For INT and other stats it gets trickier. I look at all of them as rough approximations and don't let it worry me much.

[Gummibear]

Re: 39 point me

 

I'm not just figuring my STR based on my lifting ability, because I know how the system works... lifting STR is based on how much you can barely get off the ground. I'm going by STR minimum comparisons to various weapons I know I can handle in addition to my best "non-pushed" recent feat of strength... I upended an upright piano by myself. I regularily fight with a bastard sword 2 handed, and can do it with one hand but I'm a bit clumsy with only one. Right-o, so around a 11-12 STR. I can also swing about a greatsword or battle axe without much difficulty, and my prefered handgun is a .44 magnum, so I might knuckle under and either give myself a smidgen of Weapon Strength, or some kind of limited STR to reflect that I am good at applying leverage from my long limbs (I frequently lift and move things that seem to be to heavy for my build because I'm wirey and know how to "lift smart").

I exert a fair bit of force when I fight... I've dislocated a few jaws, busted a couple of ribs and the like, but I mostly rely on shot placement rather than brute force. OK, maybe I still do have a couple of martial manuvers left over... no extra DC's tho, and what was once probably a fast strike or martial strike is now a basic strike.

Uhoh...I'd better stop afore I ramble anymore

 

After reading this I only feel that much more correct. The average peson doesn't bench 335, know how to lift smart, and have any ability to efficiently and correctly use a firearm or muscle weapons. True there are some in the gaming community that have excelled in the use of weapons and body honing. However as they are in RL they are the exception and not the rule. And kudos to you for not inflating your strength past 12. Sounds about right- maybe even a bit too conservative. So it sounds like you have about 30 points altogether. What I love is when the aforementioned 7/11 Wiccan tries to tell you that he/she is a 50+ point character because they are able to use a sword, fire a gun, and have all kinds of skills because they read a book.

Oh well. Sounds like those of us that are rational tend to agree.

[lynnlefey]

Re: 39 point me

 

I think the stats I gave myself for my upcoming game are more than reasonable, given what can be measured. It's really hard to guess your CON or Body, with virtually nothing upon which to place it on a scale.

 

I did indeed have one of my players try to argue that he had compbat pilot skill because of the vast number of hours he'd spent on flight simulators. LOL

 

Another of my players gave himself an 18 INT, but I didn't argue it. He's a Physics professor, and one of the fore-most experts on time-space boundaries in the world. Even if I weren't absolutely convinced it was 18, it's darn close, I think.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: 39 point me

 

Its not all that hard to figure out stats if you reason from effect and compared benchmarks... essentially the same procedure I used with my STR breakdown.

The wider the range of life experiences you have, the more samples you have to work from. Those of us who have done lot of physical activities have an edge because we have a larger pool of samples and examples to work from. A good idea for this kind of excercise is to design by committee on any stat you get stuck on, because the obsevations of your friends will tend to temper the tendency seen in a lot of gamers to inflate themselves (in the quiet of our own minds, we are each the hero of our own story).

Str is easy, as you've seen above. lifting is one benchmark... as Oddhat pointed out, deadlift is more important than bench, and pushing shouldn't factor in unless you happen to be using an adrenaline driven emergency lift to save a friend or loved one as you high end marker... Back when was the delivery driver for a bookstore, one of the preloaded carts that I brought from the warehouse to the store got knocked off the liftgate and almost crushed this really cute Kiwi girl I'd been flirting with for a couple of months. I grabbed it by the nylon straps and hoisted it up long enough for her to get her head out from under it. The cart weighed around 500 pounds, and I pulled a whole lotta muscles and gave myself 2nd degree friction burns on the palms of both hands (That was the beginning of my habit of wearing gloves everywhere) That was a push, in my book, and thus I didn't consider it into my str calculations. Str mins are a good benchmark scale.

Dex is hard, but doable. How inherently agile are you, how do you perform in activities that require agility when you are tested against others? I can't think of any good benchmarks other than relative comparisons. Manual Dexterity also factors in, but not as much as most folk give credit for. Having lots of skils with manual dexterity as a base s probably a good hit of an imprved overall dex, but just a few specfic applications are probably better reflected in increased Skill rolls or perhaps Lightning Reflexes.

Con is easier than dex, but harder than STR. Pain tolerance and overall health seem to be the main elements you ponder for this one.

Body is probably mostly a function of body mass, and can be determined by previous injuries... Consider past wounds you've taken in the curse of your life, and what caused those injuries, and if you consider the damage in terms of Impirment and Disabling damage, you can reengineer Body to a certain extent. For my part, much as I hate to admit it, I'm probably around an 8. I just managed to Disable my own right arm by punching a wall a couple weeks ago.

Int has a real world benchmark in IQ, but there is also kind of "a use it or lose it" factor involved too. In our wonderful, often safe, hot medium modern society, a lot of adults dont use their full Int potential and hould probably factor downwards unless they are the sort of person who actively flexes their Int in a variety of ways.

Ego is very subjective. Willpower is the big thing here.

Pre is jut as subective as Ego, but easier to assign as the effects are more visible. How impressive are you, are you a natural leader or a born wallflower?

Are you confident or easily flustered. when you wlak down the streets in bad neigborhood, do you keep your head down and scurry while the predators watch you and smile, or do the normals cross the street to avoid you?

Com is fairly easy, but probably one of the stats better gauged by consensus among your friends rather than by yourself, assuming that your friends are honest and not jeaous jerks. For some reason we almost never seem to peg our COM accurately... it tend to either be over or under inflated, depending on ones self image

 

Just some thoughts...I'm having fun wth this thread

[OddHat]

Re: 39 point me

 

Agreed with the above, especially the "curse of your life".

 

An eye also needs to be kept on figured characteristics. I know people who can take punches from well trained martial artists without flinching, but get exhausted crossing a room and are constantly getting sick. Classic case of High(ish) PD and low CON.

 

I usually go with the 5 point doubling rule if I have no objective standard to work with. Is Kim twice as good looking as the average woman on the street? Four times as good looking?

 

Then there's the 8-13-18-23-28 rule. Steve is an average desk worker, he has an 8 Dex. Ben is an athlete but not quite able to make a living at it, he has an 11. Joe is making a living in sports, he has a 13-16. Dan is a world class Karateka and just won a competition in Tokyo, he has a 17-19. Susan is a champion and talked about as a hall of fame contender, she has a 20-23. Jet Li was one of the best ever, guaranteed fame for the next generation or more, he had a 23-26 or more at his best. The 29s and 30s show up once in a generation at most, and historians never forget them.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: 39 point me

 

Agreed with the above' date=' especially the "curse of your life". [/quote']

I caught that typo but was amused enough by it to leave it unaltered

An eye also needs to be kept on figured characteristics. I know people who can take punches from well trained martial artists without flinching, but get exhausted crossing a room and are constantly getting sick. Classic case of High(ish) PD and low CON.

 

I usually go with the 5 point doubling rule if I have no objective standard to work with. Is Kim twice as good looking as the average woman on the street? Four times as good looking?

 

Then there's the 8-13-18-23-28 rule. Steve is an average desk worker, he has an 8 Dex. Ben is an athlete but not quite able to make a living at it, he has an 11. Joe is making a living in sports, he has a 13-16. Dan is a world class Karateka and just won a competition in Tokyo, he has a 17-19. Susan is a champion and talked about as a hall of fame contender, she has a 20-23. Jet Li was one of the best ever, guaranteed fame for the next generation or more, he had a 23-26 or more at his best. The 29s and 30s show up once in a generation at most, and historians never forget them.

That is another good method of comparison

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: 39 point me

 

Lets give this a try, stats only, with notation...

 

12 STR 2 pts

as noted above. I can handle a .44 magnum, a 12 gauge, or a bastard sword comfortably, and can lift a bit more than the average couch potato

13 DEX 9pts

Almost everything have done in my life has relied to a large extent on either agility or manual dexterity. I have worked as a fight choreographer, am a feared shinty player, do lots of fiddly wee detail work accurately and am quick, dodgy and agile, but not by any means superhumanly so.

15 CON 10 pts

One of my best stats. I have a wicked high pain threshold (don't get stunned easily), seldom get sick and throw off most illnesses quickly. I also remain able to pull of a fair number of feats of stamina even tho Ive been smoking for years (but see REC)

8 BODY -4 pts

I'm Tall, skinny, and break a lot easier than I'd like

15 INT 5pts

Genius level IQ, particpated in a special study at Stanford in the 70 's for exceptinaly gifted children. I can analyze situations and make connections faster than most people I've met, and can both hyperfocus and multitask

13 EGO 6pts

Might be lower but with Resistance levels, especially related to pain resistance. I have impressed people with my abnormal willpower, from an early age was noted by my family for my sisu (finnish for guts). Recent examples incude not even flinching when my broken hand was reset

15 PRE 5pts

I'm a born leader. I don't mean to be, but I am. I have always been the center of my various circles of friends, and have a lot of experience to back thios up. I can also sell snow to an eskimo, as long as I can convince myself that they should want it.

14 COM 2 pts

I've been consider attractive my whole life, from both women and gay men (but I now have a D/F disad that can couteract this DF:Bad teeth, causes disgust, concealable with effort)

3 PD (2 base) 1 pts

Bought up a point... I'm accustomed to physical damage, but not like I was back in the day when I'd have had an extra oint or two

3 ED (3 base) 0pts

Base figured... would have been higher back when I was smithing

3 SPD (2.3 base) 7 pts

This is an experience thing... I 've spent SO much of my ife fighting for fun and profit that I have that economy of motion and lack of hesitation that comes with practice

3 REC (5 base) -4 points

This used to be higher, but I bought it down because of my smoking... I can stil go pretty hard, but get wnded and have to really actively recover

30 END (30 base) 0pts

this might be bought down too, but stock rules won't let you buy down more than one figured

28 STUN (22 base) 6pts

Bought this'un up a bit, because I've taken some pretty heavy whuppings without even fading. I've only been KO'ed once, and I did that to myself.

 

Total Cha Cost: 45 points.

 

I think this is a fairly honest portrayl of my stats, but as I've noted a couple of times above, I'm something of the exception to the rule. If I was a bit more motivated, might have made myself a carrier as a movie star...as it was, I was one of the noted and infamous lead actors on the California Ren Faire Circut because of my combonation of good showy fightng skils, good looks and presence. I'm probably a Skilled Normal built on 50 base points +50 potential Disads. More if the game setting assumes that magic is real. I've been a practicing "Wiccan" priest (edit: more specifically an Irish pagan Olamh, to be accurate) for over a decade, and the difference between buying it as a background skill versus a suite of Spells is huge.

[bigdamnhero]

Re: 39 point me

 

For the most part most folks in RL can be built for about 15-30 points. Anyone that goes over that is not being truthful.

anybody that brings you a character sheet of themselves that has a point total anything over 45 you can give an outright BS to and anything over 30 is highly suspect.

OTOH, if you are (or in my case were) in a profession that involves RPG-useful skills, it doesn’t take long for the skill points to add up. Just because you piqued my curiosity, I took a stab at writing myself up as I am today. I made a conscious effort to be conservative, rounded down when in doubt, no Characteristic higher than a 12, and any skill I haven’t used recently got downgraded to a Familiarity. No Martial Arts, as I’m way out of practice. I was pleased to see I still come in at around 60 points; at least I’m still a Skilled Normal! Granted, with 11 years of military experience and 3 years in law enforcement (among other things), I’m probably not the “average” gamer. But neither can I make any claim to be particularly remarkable. Just depends on your background and lifestyle.

 

Speaking of real-world benchmarking: in the game I mentioned earlier (where we were all in the army) we used things like rifle qualification scores to determine CSLs. I think we even worked out a way to determine our Running speeds based on our mile run times or something. A lot of it was fairly subjective, of course, but we had a lot of fun with it.

 

Edit: A 5-minute mile (which I used to be able to run) equates to 8" Running at SPD 3. Since that's a sustained running speed, not sprinting speed, I think it's fair to use that for combat speed. Working it the other way, 6" Running would equate to a 7-minute mile at SPD 3, or a 10-minute mile at SPD 2.

 

Anyway, I think probably the best way to run a game like this would be to establish some sort of point guidelines in the interest of fairness and game balance. So everyone gets, say, 50 points to create a “fictionalized” version of themselves. That way you give the 7-11 clerks the benefit of the doubt on a few areas, and they aren’t overshadowed by the one player who happens to be an ex-Ranger.

[Cancer]

Re: 39 point me

 

Part of the problem compounding the situation Gummibear writes to eloquently about is a divergence between the game and RL practice for skills. Real skill tests, for all but a handful of noncombat skills, take far longer than anything played in a game.

 

A real exercise of a Science skill can't be done in less than a week. Classrom exercises are what they are because they have been designed to be completeable in a short, perhaps intense but nonetheless short, amount of time. They are not real Science skill tests, until you're in a senior lab or seminar and you're doing a semester project. (If it's something like the "identify that bird" case mentioned above, that's a KS test, not a Science test, and if you succeed you get the result immediately; if you fail, you can't retry until you have the opportunity to consult your reference materials ... and it could be a PS test to find the right materials if the original KS test was difficult.) I'm inclined to think that each increase in difficulty should cause a two-step increase in time required, and if you fail and want to retry, there may be drastic time penalties depending upon how bad the failure was.

 

In RL, I have no combat familiarities, no combat skills, no combat-related talents. My DEX is 6 and my PRE is 7. I can't guess my INT; too many ways of assessing one's INT depend on (perhaps veiled) Skill or Knowledge tests, and I do have a lot of KS's which blurs the INT "measurement".

 

In nearly every HERO game, where what really matters is combat, I'd be worse than useless as a player character, though of occasional benefit as a Contact in some campaigns.

[OddHat]

Re: 39 point me

 

In nearly every HERO game, where what really matters is combat, I'd be worse than useless as a player character, though of occasional benefit as a Contact in some campaigns.

 

On the other hand, if you survived a single adventure with bonus rep for good RPing, you could almost double your current STR! Two or three adventures and you could feel twenty again!

 

Running from unspeakable horrors: it keeps us young.

[Cancer]

Re: 39 point me

 

Two or three adventures and you could feel twenty again!

I can see the benefit there, but I suspect the only way I'll feel twenty again is to build a Lego sculpture of the numerals and run my hands over that.

[prodigyduck]

Re: 39 point me

 

I'm 75 points with 40 points of Disads!

 

Most of that is Knowledge Skills.

[Cancer]

Re: 39 point me

 

If there was a "Garbage Can Mind" Talent (I think) universal KS cheapener that worked along the lines of Well Travelled for AK's, I could probably build myself for negative points ... without any disads.

[bigdamnhero]

Re: 39 point me

 

Part of the problem compounding the situation Gummibear writes to eloquently about is a divergence between the game and RL practice for skills. Real skill tests' date=' for all but a handful of noncombat skills, take far longer than anything played in a game. [/quote']

True `dat.

 

In nearly every HERO game' date=' where what really matters is combat, I'd be worse than useless as a player character, though of occasional benefit as a Contact in some campaigns.[/quote']

"Maybe you're the plucky comic relief. You ever think about that?"

 

Running from unspeakable horrors: it keeps us young.

:rofl:

 

If there was a "Garbage Can Mind" Talent (I think) universal KS cheapener that worked along the lines of Well Travelled for AK's' date=' I could probably build myself for negative points ... without any disads.[/quote']

I OTOH should probably have some sort of Anti-Linguist talent to reflect all the time & effort I've wasted trying to learn foreign languages that just won't stick in my head. I've studied German & Russian formally, Spanish & Korean informally, even American Sign Language -- and can't claim "Basic Conversation" in any of them.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: 39 point me

 

If there was a "Garbage Can Mind" Talent (I think) universal KS cheapener that worked along the lines of Well Travelled for AK's' date=' I could probably build myself for negative points ... without any disads.[/quote']

both Scholar and Expert might fit the bill.

I know I have at least one level of Cramming, the main skill school left me with

[bigdamnhero]

Re: 39 point me

 

If I could've counted my old rifle company as Followers, that would've been at least 45 points right there! (Based on 120 soldiers at 100 points apiece.)

 

Actually, even without Followers I could've easily scored 10+ worth of Perks "back in the day," between my rank, security clearance, weapons permit, contacts.... All gone now, of course.

[BigJackBrass]

Re: 39 point me

 

An interesting exercise, but could my fragile ego withstand the inevitably puny points total of a modeled me?

 

The solution: create myself with a psychological limitation of "Delusional," then I can believe I have as high a points total as I like.

[The Monster]

Re: 39 point me

 

When I stat myself in Hero, I end up as "incompetent" when I figure in my disads - and that's when I'm not depressed!

 

As Cancer points out, the things that cost real points are combat and action skills - of which I have very few (mostly based on decades-old memories of high-school wrestling!). And I'm even worse skills-wise than Cancer: at least he's got a PhD he can claim. My skill list just sucks; my stats aren't bad, I figure, for an average Joe - 8-11 for most things, INT 18 or more, EGO varying wildly by mood

 

 

 

 

Fortunately, I can always fall back on my one superpower:

 

I Am The GM: Transform anything to anything else, zero END Cost, no skill roll, Autofire (I run three or four campaigns!), Area Effect. Active Cost 985, Real Cost Free (cuz I'm The GM!!!!)

[Super Squirrel]

Re: 39 point me

 

I've done a play yourself campaign. It only lasted two game sessions and wasn't really that much fun.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: 39 point me

 

I've done a play yourself campaign. It only lasted two game sessions and wasn't really that much fun.

 

I played a pretty fun "play yourself" post-apoc game back in my college days, but it was using the TriTac system ratehr than HERO

[ghost-angel]

Re: 39 point me

 

I have Power Skill (Looking Stuff Up), Power Skill (EXTREME BS), KS: Telephony

 

that about covers it.

 

Because most of the time, Knowledge isn't what you remember, it's that you know where to look.

 

oh, and a COM of 14 because I'm dead sexy (Or maybe that was just Psych Lim: Narcissistic)

[bigdamnhero]

Re: 39 point me

 

oh' date=' and a COM of 14 because I'm dead sexy (Or maybe that was just Psych Lim: Narcissistic)[/quote']

Yeah, I get those confused too sometimes.

[Wolfgar]

Re: 39 point me

 

COM +6, Only to Women With A Santa Claus Fetish (-1 1/2)

 

I'm jolly.

[Super Squirrel]

Re: 39 point me

 

COM +6' date=' [i']Only to Women With A Santa Claus Fetish (-1 1/2)[/i]

 

I'm jolly.

I think you overestimate the popularity of that fetish.

[Cancer]

Re: 39 point me

 

I'm 75 points with 40 points of Disads!

 

Most of that is Knowledge Skills.

 

For some reason this morning I saw this, interpreted the KS's as Disads, and twigged on the bromide: "It's not what you don't know that hurts you. It's all them things you do know that ain't so."