Strength:Mass Ratio Restriction

[Comic]

Have you ever considered, or played, with a campaign mass requirement for strength?

 

A normal human mass (100 kg) could have, say, a STR up to 30.

 

If the character's STR exceeds 30, their mass must double per five points, either as increased density or increased volume, or both?

 

I've built characters with this sort of concept in the back of my mind, inspired by the powers Density Increase and Growth, but never considered it as a house rule.

 

Of course, if the STR is permanent, then the mass would be too, so DI and Growth wouldn't be appropriate, so much as DF: massive; physical limitation: weight can damage surroundings/limit movement; KBR, Stretching, additional PD and ED would be.

 

There are plenty of reasons _not_ to limit STR this way -- magic, gravity control, exotic materials that get lighter the stronger they are, for example -- but in a 'more realistic' setting, would this help?

 

What would be the drawbacks?

[Bloodstone]

Re: Strength:Mass Ratio Restriction

 

No, but I did toy with making STR directly proportional to SIZE, so that the amount of weight a character could lift with his STR increased as he got bigger/heavier.

 

If you wanted to increase the multiplier, you bought it as an adder/advantage for your STR. This way you could get normal weight bricks like Superman or Wonder Woman and still have truly massive lifting ability, but the Thing or Goliath pay less for it since they have the inherent disadvantages of weight and/or size working against them.

 

It also meant Shrinking effectively decreased your lifting STR, since you no longer weighed as much. This could, of course, be offset with the above advantage, linked to your Shrinking so that you could represent the fairly common Hank Pym/Ray Palmer effect.

 

Something else that I was tacking along with this was changing how relative hex size worked, so that movement powers and range worked differently relative to your size.

 

Honestly, never did much with it beyond the initial design stage...

[lemming]

Re: Strength:Mass Ratio Restriction

 

I did have a character that was limited to 50 STR without Density Increase. Other than that it didn't have any effect.

[MilkmanDan]

Re: Strength:Mass Ratio Restriction

 

Don't see any need for it, actually. It's a suspension of disbelief thing--if you can fly, you can throw a 75 STR punch.

 

My guess is this is a "every action has an equal an opposite reaction" thing, where if you're able to throw that kind of a punch, you need to be able to resist the opposite force. If that's it, the same rule should apply to ranged attacks as well--if I can throw a 12d6 TK EB, I should have the same force pressing me backwards.

 

Just stick your fingers in your ears and say "LALALALALA" whenever you start to think about real-world physics".

[Guest steamteck]

Re: Strength:Mass Ratio Restriction

 

I did for awhile limited human mass STR to 50 ( proportional STR of a rhinoceros beetle or some such, Anyway strongest mass per lift living thing) Sorta fell by the wayside. Didn't make much difference except in my own mind.

[nexus]

Re: Strength:Mass Ratio Restriction

 

For one campaign I said super strength characters generally had to look "physical powerful' so no superhumanly strong waifs or skinny dudes without some appropriate sfx. It was mostly cosmetic but it did effect the feel somewhat.

[GoldenAge]

Re: Strength:Mass Ratio Restriction

 

For one campaign I said super strength characters generally had to look "physical powerful' so no superhumanly strong waifs or skinny dudes without some appropriate sfx. It was mostly cosmetic but it did effect the feel somewhat.

 

Gotta say I'm more a fan of allowing just about anything. The above concept disallows skinny robots/androids whose strength comes from superior materials and micro servo motors (and such), magic, heavy gravity aliens and myriad other interesting concepts that add spice to a game.

[nexus]

Re: Strength:Mass Ratio Restriction

 

Gotta say I'm more a fan of allowing just about anything. The above concept disallows skinny robots/androids whose strength comes from superior materials and micro servo motors (and such)' date=' magic, heavy gravity aliens and myriad other interesting concepts that add spice to a game. [/quote']

 

Um, that's why I said "without appropriate sfx". Of course appropriate varied (there were no aliens and there was no magic nor were robots available as player characters (No AI as of yet). But I see nothing wrong with limiting what is allowable in a particular setting to better define that setting. Not every game or setting has to an anything goes stew to be interesting, some games are more defined by what they don't allow as by what they do.

 

And what's with the ?

[eternal_sage]

Re: Strength:Mass Ratio Restriction

 

well i know that, physically speaking, a human body doesn't have the leverage to lift things bigger than himself with any sort of weight. plastic palm trees, maybe, but give it more than 50 to a 100 pounds, and forget it. so the size thing totally makes sense in that context. plus the leverage issue would also play a part in normal lifting, giving them a general higher lifting capacity. i've thought about it, but since my Fantasy games tend towards low fantasy, and everything else i play sticks pretty close to reality, only supers need such a thing, and i agree with the others...why? i can fly and be stretchy and shoot lazer beams out of interesting locations of my body...so why should lifting be realistic??