Stat Benchmarks

[Christopher R Taylor]

I think we need to decide if 8 is average human or 10.  I've always assumed 10 was average hero, adventurer, PC type: slightly better than normal people but not exceptional.  That makes 8 the average human: untrained, not worked out at all, puts no effort into honing or learning.  I think that gives us a good baseline for people.  For example, 8 INT would be joe average who never learned to think critically but can function perfectly well.

[massey]

Low average or high average?

 

I figure that an 8 includes people who have let themselves go.  A 10 is somebody in reasonably good shape and active.

[Duke Bushido]

6 hours ago, dsatow said:

From my understanding, is that the IQ tests were problematic in that it assumed a certain level of education,  a certain culture and upbringing.  This makes using them on a person from New York, New York when compared to someone from Ghana, Africa vastly different.

 

To the best of my knowledge, we are the last nation on earth that still uses the stupid thing.  It seems most other countries have figured out that it does not measure intelligence in any way, shape, or form: it measures exposure and retention, and compares them to a predicted norm for your age group.  For the reason, incredibly intelligent people with bad memories tend to get shafted, and people who are better-travelled or better-educated tend to score higher.  And of course, as you age and enter the workforce, you are no longer exposed to new things they way you were in childhood and in school.  However, there are newer and newer concepts, sciences, etc out there, and you're not being exposed.  By default, this means your IQ is getting lower.

 

I can't find it on the net, but I remember back in the 80s reading an interesting study on the whole IQ test thing, and one thing that could really skew results was not having cable television.  Children without cable television tended to watch the news with their parents.  They were exposed to all kinds of things-- even if they didn't understand them.  And of course children have remarkable long-term memories.  These children always scored higher on IQ tests, even if they were complete idiots otherwise.

 

The whole thing was preposterous-- much like standardized testing lead _away_ from a rounded education and teaching towards the tests, this obsessive need to compare everyone and everything that lead to IQ testing also lead to throwing all kinds of things at people, and finding them somehow deficient if they failed to be interested in certain things.

 

It's asinine, and it needs to die.

 

 

But I digress:   INT does not equal IQ, not in HERO and not in the real world.  In HERO, INT seems to be more about quick-wittedness and making connections between disparate things, and even just the ability to quickly analyze and understand what you know and what your senses tell you.   I strongly suggest keeping it that way.

 

 

[dsatow]

5 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Sure but in game terms it has no tangible or useful meaning.  Its just changing one numerical stat for another.  We need specific benchmarks not just another scale.

 

I considered putting example names in the DEX chart but decided against it; I've been playing Champions since about 1982 and what was broadly known and appreciated then is largely obscure today.  I mean, Buster Keaton as an example of 20 dexterity is kind of eternal, but most examples are fading and its more useful to have a universal template.

 

The usefulness is in the bell curve itself.  It denotes the % of the population with a score of this value which is similar to the 3d6 range of DnD of which the 0-20 values of HERO is based.  

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

 

The usefulness is in the bell curve itself.

 

 

You misunderstand.  I don't mean the data is useless, I mean that it doesn't accomplish what we're trying to do here.  Replacing a point range with another point range doesn't expand on the info and help people understand the meanings of stats better, its just an alternate number set.   I'll try to get CON done today if I can get time.

 

CON    BENCHMARK                                                       EXAMPLE 

  1       Extremely sickly, unable to stand any              Boy in the bubble, someone with severe immune deficiency, extremely malnourished and ill

           hardship or adverse conditions

  3       Very poor health, easily ill, strong                     Someone who is very ill or has a strongly compromised immune system

           and multiple dietary restrictions

  5       Poor health, several diet restrictions                Someone of poor health, elderly and weak, Aunt May in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films

  8       Little exercise and bad diet                                Comic Book Guy on the Simpsons, Elderly people in good health

 10      Healthy, active human                                         Someone who gets regular exercise and eats well

 15      Sturdy health, rarely ill and for short times      A professional athlete, soldier, or outdoorsman; The guy who can get by with 5 hours of sleep a night

 18      Almost never sick, extremely fit and toned      Survivorman, elite soldiers, Olympic long distance runners, someone who can drink you under the table and be fresh the next day

 20     Catch thrown objects while juggling, use          Marathon Runners and decathletes, people who can get by on 4 hours or less of sleep a night, drink without seeming harm

 25     can survive deadly poisons and diseases         Rasputin, the peak of human health and vitality, can go a day or more without sleep without bother

           with almost full recovery of health, shrug

          off extremes of cold and heat

 30    Ignores most sicknesses, comfortable in          Superheroes, aliens, beyond potential human capacity. 

          lethal conditions, seems to never tire or

         need sleep  

[dsatow]

On 5/14/2019 at 7:48 AM, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

You misunderstand.  I don't mean the data is useless, I mean that it doesn't accomplish what we're trying to do here.  Replacing a point range with another point range doesn't expand on the info and help people understand the meanings of stats better, its just an alternate number set.   I'll try to get CON done today if I can get time.

 

CON    BENCHMARK                                                       EXAMPLE 

  1       Extremely sickly, unable to stand any              Boy in the bubble, someone with severe immune deficiency, extremely malnourished and ill

           hardship or adverse conditions

  3       Very poor health, easily ill, strong                     Someone who is very ill or has a strongly compromised immune system

           and multiple dietary restrictions

  5       Poor health, several diet restrictions                Someone of poor health, elderly and weak, Aunt May in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films

  8       Little exercise and bad diet                                Comic Book Guy on the Simpsons, Elderly people in good health

 10      Healthy, active human                                         Someone who gets regular exercise and eats well

 15      Sturdy health, rarely ill and for short times      A professional athlete, soldier, or outdoorsman; The guy who can get by with 5 hours of sleep a night

 18      Almost never sick, extremely fit and toned      Survivorman, elite soldiers, Olympic long distance runners, someone who can drink you under the table and be fresh the next day

 20     Catch thrown objects while juggling, use          Marathon Runners and decathletes, people who can get by on 4 hours or less of sleep a night, drink without seeming harm

 25     can survive deadly poisons and diseases         Rasputin, the peak of human health and vitality, can go a day or more without sleep without bother

           with almost full recovery of health, shrug

          off extremes of cold and heat

 30    Ignores most sicknesses, comfortable in          Superheroes, aliens, beyond potential human capacity. 

          lethal conditions, seems to never tire or

         need sleep  

 

I have an issue with this scale.  Assume there is someone with a compromised immune system or even an alien with little to no immunity to Earth germs.  By this chart then, I could go up and slap them (1d6 NND) and stun them.  Currently the main property of CON is the prevention of being stunned.  So it might be better to say how much pain they might be able to endure.  Someone with a 5 CON could be one punched by an average person.  Someone with a CON of 3 might be a child who starts to cry over a skinned knee.  A CON of 1 might be a baby who will cry at the drop of a hat.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I like your examples, too much of what I posted bumps up against life support.  I think CON does play into environmental endurance and basic toughness (make a CON roll...) but its mostly about being stunned and enduring pain in 6th since its been decoupled from END and recovery (and ED but that one was more difficult to justify).

[megaplayboy]

I think the scale for the 6 stats, should there ever be a 7th edition of Hero, be tweaked so that the peak legendary human stats for physical and mental stats be identical(e.g., 50).  You can tweak STR lifting capacity for the first 50 points to progress at half the rate, and DEX and CV are no longer linked.  Action heroes could be more impressive, and there'd be much greater granularity for "human" characters.  

[Hugh Neilson]

 

8 hours ago, megaplayboy said:

I think the scale for the 6 stats, should there ever be a 7th edition of Hero, be tweaked so that the peak legendary human stats for physical and mental stats be identical(e.g., 50).  You can tweak STR lifting capacity for the first 50 points to progress at half the rate, and DEX and CV are no longer linked.  Action heroes could be more impressive, and there'd be much greater granularity for "human" characters.  

 

While I think the bernchmarks should be standardized, I think 30mworks fine as the "top of human possibility", so I would drop the mental stat cap to that level, rather than boost the physical stat level.  A Legendary stat of 23 provides a 14- skill roll for "basic training", which is just over a 90% success rate.  That's enough to be "legendary", IMO.

 

I  note the CON range suggested above places 25 at " the peak of human health", and 30 at "superhuman".  This is not consistent with the 6e standard that the peak of human ability is a 30.

[Toxxus]

1 minute ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

 

While I think the bernchmarks should be standardized, I think 30mworks fine as the "top of human possibility", so I would drop the mental stat cap to that level, rather than boost the physical stat level.  A Legendary stat of 23 provides a 14- skill roll for "basic training", which is just over a 90% success rate.  That's enough to be "legendary", IMO.

 

I  note the CON range suggested above places 25 at " the peak of human health", and 30 at "superhuman".  This is not consistent with the 6e standard that the peak of human ability is a 30.

 

I've always liked 20 as the cap for the vast majority with 21-25 being the range of athletes and intellectuals who border on superhuman in heroic campaigns.

 

Non-supers getting up to 30 feels more like a Champions setting.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah I view 30 as outside unassisted human capability, and 25 the peak of humanity, just based on STR.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I honestly would like to see a blend between 5th and 6th on characteristics where some are still figured and some are not.  Endurance and recovery, for example, seem impossible to separate from constitution, conceptually.

[massey]

I think there's a difference between routine everyday life, the real world, realistic action, unrealistic action, and comic book.  And probably several gradations between those.

 

The highest stat you're likely to encounter in your everyday life is a 13 to 15.  These are normal people.  Normal normal people.  Even if the pharmacist at the local drug store has a higher Int than a 15, she's probably not actively using it everyday.

Example characters:  The Office

 

Then you've got the real world.  Here the normal stats begin to go up to 20, and in extreme cases can go above it.  Generally these people are in challenging careers that require them to maintain their high stat with constant work.  The athlete with a 20 Str only keeps it as long as he's working out two hours a day.  The process of using a high stat actually requires effort and discipline (yes, even Intelligence -- there are lots of examples of smart people doing really dumb things when they don't use their brain).

Example characters:  Big Bang Theory, live sports

 

Next we get realistic action.  This is what people with decent stats can achieve when they've got stunt coordinators, fight choreographers, and the ability to try something 50 different times and use the best take.  The ability to cut and splice different takes together will convincingly add +5 or +10 to a stat (when Arnold flipped over a car in Commando, they'd stripped the engine and transmission out of it).  25s are easily achievable here, maybe a little higher.

Example characters:  Die Hard, Predator, Bruce Lee movies

 

Unrealistic action is completely unconvincing.  It may look good, it may be entertaining, but we know there's zero way that a human could actually do that stuff.  Everything is ridiculous and over the top.  Stats up to 30, and maybe even higher can happen here.

Example characters:  Anything starring The Rock or Jason Statham, The Fast and the Furious sequels

 

Comic book action has no upper limits.  The justification is the person has super powers, and isn't at all limited to what a person could do.  Sometimes it can look good, and sometimes it can look fake, but there's no attempt to even pretend that it's realistic.

Example characters:  Winter Soldier, Superman

 

[Toxxus]

5 minutes ago, massey said:

Comic book action has no upper limits.  The justification is the person has super powers, and isn't at all limited to what a person could do.  Sometimes it can look good, and sometimes it can look fake, but there's no attempt to even pretend that it's realistic.

Example characters:  Winter Soldier, Superman

 

Even the Avenger's series, which I enjoyed immensely, had ludicrous illogical shifts in power levels.

 

How does Thanos - beat the hulk unconscious with a series of lethal hits - end up hitting Captain America a couple dozen times without killing him?  Given their power level differences the first solid blow should have gone in Cap's chest and out his spine.

 

How does the Black Widow successfully fight one of Thanos' lieutenants who hits hard enough to send the Vision careening 50 feet away and not get her arms and legs ripped off due to the strength difference?

[massey]

1 minute ago, Toxxus said:

 

Even the Avenger's series, which I enjoyed immensely, had ludicrous illogical shifts in power levels.

 

How does Thanos - beat the hulk unconscious with a series of lethal hits - end up hitting Captain America a couple dozen times without killing him?  Given their power level differences the first solid blow should have gone in Cap's chest and out his spine.

 

How does the Black Widow successfully fight one of Thanos' lieutenants who hits hard enough to send the Vision careening 50 feet away and not get her arms and legs ripped off due to the strength difference?

 

Every member of the Avengers has at least a 20 PD.  Forget real world benchmarks, these guys survive long falls and horrible impacts that would splatter a normal person.  Within the MCU, apparently you can do that and still be a "normal" human.

[dsatow]

I think one thing we need to remember in these benchmarks is that while we are assigning real world equivalents to these numbers as an intellectual exercise, HERO wasn't designed to represent real life.  It was originally designed to mimic comic book life and then mutated into any action style fiction life (aka movies, tv, and novels).  With HERO, you can be Indiana Jones.  In real life, you'd be in the hospital or worse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZNx5YgvQVI

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

Every member of the Avengers has at least a 20 PD.  Forget real world benchmarks, these guys survive long falls and horrible impacts that would splatter a normal person.  Within the MCU, apparently you can do that and still be a "normal" human.

 

Yeah that's the standard for action movies now; consider Brendan Frasier in the Mummy being punched 30 feet crashing against a stone statue and flopping to the ground.  Its like people are cartoons now and they bear no relation or comparison to real life.

[Toxxus]

5 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

Yeah that's the standard for action movies now; consider Brendan Frasier in the Mummy being punched 30 feet crashing against a stone statue and flopping to the ground.  Its like people are cartoons now and they bear no relation or comparison to real life.

 

This is the part in the movie where I usually annoy my wife.  If you got hit that f*cking hard you'd die before you even reached the wall.

 

If it's Thor and Hulk - fine.  If it's funny guy in the Mummy he should burst open like a ripe melon and expire.

[Greywind]

Cap isn't "normal" for one thing. Jumping out of the Triskelion and landing on his shield, he'd still be paste if he were. Same for landing on a car during the Chitauri invasion. Same for the fall, which didn't include his shield, in the Civil War.

[Christopher R Taylor]

When I stat Captain America out for golden age games I put him at max human in all stats, absolute pinnacle of what a man can be.  In the Marvel Movies, he's beyond that, nearly Spider-Man level strength, etc.  Which again makes examples for these lists challenging: which version do you mean?

[massey]

I think we have to recognize that each "universe" has its own benchmarks.

 

This Captain America:

 

is not the same as this Captain America:

 

[massey]

Once upon a time, there was some discussion about building characters from the Marvel "Puny-verse" -- that collection of 1970s and early 80s TV shows and movies.  Lou Ferrigno, that guy who played Thor, the TV show Daredevil, Spider-Man from the Electric Company show, etc.  They'd have an hour long adventure where they stop a guy from stealing a little girl's horse before the big show, so she could save the family farm.

 

Personally I think you could do all those characters on 250, easily.  Almost everyone they face will be in that "extremely normal" category, with no stats higher than a 15.  Bad fight choreography and zero budget means it's pretty easy to do on the cheap.

 

But where do you set the standards in your games?  The published CU seems to have one set of standards, the MCU has another.  Some characters in the Marvel comics seem more powerful, others less so.  I think standard Marvel Comics Cap is more agile, and less strong than his cinematic counterpart.

[Greywind]

Also, what, exactly, are "max human stats"? Even in older additions with things like Normal Characteristic Maxima it was only the break-point where stats cost more.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah here's my perspective:

 

8 is ordinary, average, untrained human

10 is somewhat trained, base hero level

20 is maximum normal humans will tend to be in a given population, although some extremely gifted and superb individuals can be higher (normal characteristic max)

25 is maximum normal human, you just can't get any better: one person on earth has this level of one stat.

 

That's what I'm basing my assessments and characteristic benchmarks around.

[Hugh Neilson]

14 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Yeah here's my perspective:

 

8 is ordinary, average, untrained human

10 is somewhat trained, base hero level

20 is maximum normal humans will tend to be in a given population, although some extremely gifted and superb individuals can be higher (normal characteristic max)

25 is maximum normal human, you just can't get any better: one person on earth has this level of one stat.

 

That's what I'm basing my assessments and characteristic benchmarks around.

 

I'm with you up to 20.  With 25, you depart from the RAW benchmarks that 30 is the pinnacle of human achievement, so I would insert a benchmark at 25, and reclassify your 25 as 30.