Club 400 Mirth

[GhostDancer]

There is a "400" club in pro football, for the elite who can bench press that many pounds. Of course STR 15 is 110% of that. Most real life martial artists can't bench press 400 pounds, let alone 440.

 

I don't consider martial arts being cited in your Background as sufficient to explain world class strength per se, though an internal style is a good start...

 

It would be funny to have a Power Build like this-

 

+15 STR only vs. those with inadequate written explanation of their world class (15+) STR.

 

What would that Limitation be worth in your Hero System game?

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Club 400 Mirth

 

It's not a bench press figure. It's dead lift, IIRC.

[GhostDancer]

Re: Club 400 Mirth

 

I think you are right, and I did not remember that Club 400 was a bench press reference, not a dead lift reference, til I found sources yesterday. My bad.

 

I have an aversion to super strength characters without good reason noted for the super strength, as I've mentioned. Arguable, the reason may be secret, ie Guardian characters from Palladium's Beyond the Supernatural. A notable offender, in my view, is Seeker, the Aussie with 25 STR. The closest we get to an explanation for the high STR is simply that he learned martial arts. Wasn't it Comic Book Martial Arts at that?

[bigbywolfe]

Re: Club 400 Mirth

 

I think you are right, and I did not remember that Club 400 was a bench press reference, not a dead lift reference, til I found sources yesterday. My bad.

 

I have an aversion to super strength characters without good reason noted for the super strength, as I've mentioned. Arguable, the reason may be secret, ie Guardian characters from Palladium's Beyond the Supernatural. A notable offender, in my view, is Seeker, the Aussie with 25 STR. The closest we get to an explanation for the high STR is simply that he learned martial arts. Wasn't it Comic Book Martial Arts at that?

Yes, but 25 isn't considered "super strength" in the Champions Universe, 30+ is. Now, any human having a strength of 30 may be completely unrealistic in the real world, but then Champions isn't the real world. If we kept STR limited to what was purely "realistic" we'd have to either drop the human max of all the other physical Characteristics to match, or re-work the STR chart entirely...

[Ninja-Bear]

Re: Club 400 Mirth

 

I posted Steve Long about this once. And according to him, a limitation on str that doesn't affect lifting is worth -0 points. As bibbywolfe said (and I've tried) is change all the offending Str scores. I was using -5 less, so Seeker became a 20, Crusader became 15, but came to trouble because one martial artist was already a 10 (I want to say Green Dragon in the BBB, not sure). Another thing I worked on was a physical limitation: martial strength -5 points STR for lifting purposes-3 pts (?). Fwiw, in 5thedr, it states that unless its in genre, then a martial artists can't break certain things, like brick walls, no matter what the dice say. I asked Steve how much that is worth, and I got also -0 limiation. So the easist thing would just declare that "normal" human can't do certain things no matter what the dice says. Maybe even Physical limitation: Martial Artist 0-5 pts. As for changing the str chart, I've heard some use the Marvel formula for how much a character can lift. (I don't know what the formula is offhand though. : ( )

 

Hope this helps. At least I know that I'm not the only one that this has bugged.

[Ninja-Bear]

Re: Club 400 Mirth

 

Ps. I'm not sure where I heard this. I'm thinking its reference in the Ultimate Brick, but the strength score is what a character can lift an inch or two max, but press benching is -5 Str. Wonder if -10 or even -8 would put things in order?

[bigbywolfe]

Re: Club 400 Mirth

 

I believe 5ER said it was the max you could lift and stagger a few steps before dropping or something to that effect.

[GhostDancer]

Re: Club 400 Mirth

 

Yes' date=' but 25 [i']isn't[/i] considered "super strength" in the Champions Universe, 30+ is. Now, any human having a strength of 30 may be completely unrealistic in the real world, but then Champions isn't the real world. If we kept STR limited to what was purely "realistic" we'd have to either drop the human max of all the other physical Characteristics to match, or re-work the STR chart entirely...

 

I haven't seen that 30+ reference, though I'm sure you can cite it. That said, I run low-end games, and not all of them are Champions. The only Champs campaign I've GM'd in 16+ years is a recent 250pt. Golden Age WWII game. I will admit to GMing a few 350pt. tournament games.

 

All said, I still believe if your character has remarkable (as defined by your GM, 21+?) STR, it merits pertinent written remarks in your Background. It is impertinent to suggest or imply that all martial artists have Club 400 or more remarkable STR unless otherwise noted, even in some of our superhero games.

[IndianaJoe3]

Re: Club 400 Mirth

 

If we kept STR limited to what was purely "realistic" we'd have to either drop the human max of all the other physical Characteristics to match' date=' or re-work the STR chart entirely...[/quote']

 

There's an alternate STR Chart in the APG. A 10 STR can lift 50kg, and everything scales from there. Damage is unchanged, however.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Club 400 Mirth

 

There is no mystery to this. The definition of Strength in the core rulebook specifically states:

 

HERO 6e Volume 1, page 42

A character’s lifting capacity is indicated on

the Strength Table. It represents the maximum

amount of weight he can just manage to lift off

the ground, stagger with for a step or two, then

drop. He can easily carry or lift the weight which

he can pick up with his Casual STR. Regardless

of his carrying capacity, carrying more than a

certain amount of weight may encumber him

(see 6E2 45). In some cases, a character can Push

his STR and lift even more for brief periods (see

6E2 133). If a character lifts with one hand (or half

or less of his manipulatory limbs), he’s at -5 STR

for lifting purposes.

 

I don't have my 5e and 4e copies handy as they are in storage, but I know 5e stipulated the same, and I'm fairly sure 4e did too.

 

Personally, I would rule that it takes around 23 STR to bench a balanced 400 lbs in controlled situations (i.e. weight room conditions, with a sturdy bench and a balanced load on the bar), and 25 to do it in less than ideal situations (unbalanced load, on the ground, etc).

[McCoy]

Re: Club 400 Mirth

 

It's not a bench press figure. It's dead lift' date=' IIRC.[/quote']

It's both, and more!

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[Kraven Kor]

Re: Club 400 Mirth

 

The human maximum of 20, and the associated stats of it, have been bested by real humans. Some Olympic / weightlifting champions, thus, have "greater than maximum" strength.

 

Generally speaking, HERO tries to simulate heroic people; people who are larger than life. The Champions characters, much like most comic book characters, are all superhuman - even if their background doesn't say they took some super soldier serum or come from a heavy gravity world, or whatever, it isn't that big of a deal to have a martial artist at 25 strength - he is a super martial artist. In the real world, just doing martial arts might raise your strength from a 10 to a 12, or even 12 to 15 if you include a lot of strength training, but 20 is all but unreachable to even the most dedicated weightlifter. In HERO, unless you are running a particularly "realistic" campaign, it isn't so hard to conceive of a super martial artist having 25 Strength.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Club 400 Mirth

 

Maxima is not maximum. It's simply a threshold of diminishing returns, beyond which things cost more.

 

By default the HERO System defines a "super-human" statistic as 31+ for physical primaries and 51+ for non-physical primaries. There's a pretty chart somewhere in the 40's of the 6e core rulebook, and it should look familiar because it has appeared in one form or another over the years in various books.

 

All that aside, it's all just a massive suggestion anyway. An individual GM can set up whatever breakpoints or lack there of they care to on a campaign by campaign basis. Underlying characteristics are characteristic rolls, which are on the bell curve. As characteristics inflate non-resisted things become trivial, and resisted things are all relative. The game doesn't scale great with inflation, but it's robust enough to remain playable even with extremely inflated stats...as the long stretch of 4e era champions shows.

 

If you just want to appreciate absurdities of HEROisms vs reality, look at the way movement powers work, and the fact that even epic city-wrecking HERO combats are usually resolved in "30 seconds" or less of in-game time. Compared to that, strength inflation is simply genre-ish.