Statting Comic Book Characters: Benchmarks

[Chimaera]

Since the advent of the OHOTMU (Official Handbook Of The Marvel Universe), figuring out Marvel characters at least has benefitted by a clear description of powers (which other companies/creators followed suit) and a solid, stated (if often wildly at odds with presented examples) CC/Strength Level. But how do you rank or estimate the less concrete stats and powers? What is Reed Richards INT score? How about Thor's AGI? Without necessarily going into full stat breakdowns, what characters do you use as benchmarks and what stat do they hit for you? As an example, for me, Spider-Man always had a 40 agility. Beast was in the 30's, The Flash was down around 12 or 14 (I never understood why he has such a high Dex rating in MEGS). What say you all?

[DSumner]

To be honest, it all depends on the system. I tend to look at what the system's established benchmarks are, and work form there. I look at things like material published for the game (namely source books), DC's Who's Who, The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, comic book appearances, and finally my best guess. Sometimes other people's arguments cause me to go back and rework a particular write-up, or they come up with a much better solution, and I go with theirs. A lot of times, I end up using bits and pieces from several people before I settle on a final set of stats and powers.

[Strongman]

Not sure on this. To stat things in V&V terms for the Marvel or DC universes would be easy to do but would result in a HIGH power level for some. It's not at all uncommon for high-strength Marvel characters to be able to press 100 tons and DC characters can go way beyond that. In V&V terms, that's a hell of a carrying capacity and lots of HTH damage. I'd probably find a reasonable factor to divide by and do so across the board to do this. Other stats? Unless otherwise noted, I think I'd give almost every hero above-average stats (12-14, anyway, in V&V). If they were listed as having "above average" so and so, then I'd probably make it 15-17 or 18-20 for "highly-trained". Olympic-level might hit 21-23 and that would be about it for "normal" heroes (those without specifically-noted heightened stats).

My read on Spidey's and Beast's agility scores is about the same as Chim's.

Reed Richards' INT score? Not sure. Maybe just max out Heightened Intelligence A in addition to a natural 18 and then some training for more points? I'm pretty sure he's used more inventing points than that would give him but you might add in a Willpower variant with an Inventing Point multiplier.

Level would be hardest. Just pick the highest-level folks and then judge others from there. Someone like Thor or the membership of the Fantastic Four would be the highest-level heroes but where would you stat them? Not sure...maybe, to keep a relatively low power level, put Thor at 16th or so and the membership of the FF at 12th or so? Most of the older X-Men (Cyclops, Storm, etc.) at about 9th or 10th? That way you can challenge them with higher-level people but don't have to be TOO ridiculous. One nice thing about V&V, to my mind, is the level-vs-level combat modifiers. It makes sense to give an experienced hero, even one not known for lots of combat skills, an edge over less-experienced heroes without differentiating by powers.

[Justice]

In my mind, Marvel was d20 simplified - I thought the stats as they were given were close enough to the 3-18 scale to be usable as-is, but now I think I'd multiply them by .8 or so.

I gave Spidey a 46 Agi though and Beast in the 30's - Spidey can dodge bullets, and Beast can't.

Thor and Wonder Man - 100 STR in Marvel but I'd make it quite a bit lower in my homebrew. I have Superman top at 100 and double every 4-5 points.

But to answer your question, I looked at the biggest well-known heroes and their stats. Cap is perfect human, Namor and Thing have Monstrous Strengths, etc. for the lesser known abilities, I guessed and tried to find someone close in reference from published stats. I also looked at how many times they attacked or what made them effective in combat - so Thor would never high a really high agility and Reed would never be very strong. If a Normal human could do what they did in that area, I limited it to Normal.

MEGs gave the Flash a hi DEX because of the speeds he was running - he had to have this reaction time or get killed. Still, I see what you mean - he doesn't do flips or cartwheels or anything like Bats does.

Currently, I have set up two charts - trying to figure out which one I favor more. STR doubling every 5 points or STR doubling every 4. I think I'll do the M&M every 5 points as does Champions, 'cause I still have a way to give superman his 25 AP Strength even if I limit PCs to 100 max score.

V&V BTW tended to treat 30 as the max bonus one shot power and 3 times that as max. So 3 doses of HSB maxes at 100 STR or 1000x Wt/2 = 100,000 lbs or 50 tons. Clearly, Thor, Thing and Hulk need their weight to get even close to this.

But pity poor Namor - he only weighed 320 lbs. and lifted only 85 tons. :o

[Chimaera]

The maximum basic score for a stat in V&V is 18, yes? And you can add up to a maximum of 3 points to any and all stats via training, right? Without any other additions, this gives us another benchmark at 21. Now, Heightened Stats B give you up to 30 extra points, and are only available on the Powers Table. Heightened Stats A, however, gives you up to 20 extra points and is available on the Training Table. How does this figure into your reasoning? Does this make 41 (18+3+20) the theoretical maximum "normal" human score? By normal here, I mean unaugmented by supernatural effects or powers -- that is to say, attainable to any and all with sufficient time, training, will and potential (without any sort of monkeying with DNA and such). That strikes me as too high, especially given how characters are statted in published V&V material. I always put 18 as normal max human (Batman), 21 as fully optimized (Captain America -- I always figured he had more of an edge in raw physicality than Batman, while lacking his breadth and depth of training), ultimate max human. 21 is my arbitrary, line-drawn-in-the-sand max human stat.

[baldingfatman]

And you can add up to a maximum of 3 points to any and all stats via training, right?
I don't think that's correct. I don't see anything in the rules under Training that limits characters to adding only 3 points through training.

The Reduced attribute weaknesses limit the maximum number of points a character with that weakness can regain thru training to 3, but I don't think that's supposed to apply to all characters across the board.

[Chimaera]

I'll have to double-check when I get home, but I'm pretty sure you could only raise any given stat by a maximum of 3 point through training.

[hidufel]

I'll have to double-check when I get home, but I'm pretty sure you could only raise any given stat by a maximum of 3 point through training.

That limitation only ever was in place for those with any of the lowered stats for weakness..

Example:
Reduced Strength:
A subtraction of 2d6 points from the character's Strength rating. Final results of less than zero are treated as zero. The character may regain up to three Strength points through training, but not more.
Lowered Intelligence:
A subtraction of 3d6 points from the character's Intelligence rating. Assuming that he ends up with a positive Intelligence score he may regain up to 3 points by training, but, if his altered I.Q. score is zero or less (scores less than zero are counted as zero) he has become an animal and will behave accordingly, so long as this weakness is in effect.

[Stephane]

Yeah, the 3 point training limitation was due to a weakness of the "reduced [stat]" type. Otherwise you could train 20 times in Strenght (or however many times you wanted).

[Chimaera]

Huh.

You guys may in fact be right. It's funny what we end up fixating on. It still then begs the question of cut-off benchmarks...

[hidufel]

as a cut off you could still argue the 18 being natural human max...

[Chimaera]

as a cut off you could still argue the 18 being natural human max...

Riiiiight... Like I did earlier, right? However, I do see a trend where stats above 18 are assigned to characters who ostensibly don't have actual super powers. There're also some grey-area characters and different conceptions of what a person without powers can do. Batman strikes me as the best example of a natural apex human -- I would peg all of his stats between 16 and 18, mostly either 17 or 18 (Nightwing is often stated to be more agile even than Batman and I would put him at the very top of DC's pile of unaugmented agility types). Captain America strikes me as somewhat artificial, in that he is a physically optimum human in all areas, without suffering any apparent trade-offs -- he's as strong, durable and fast a human being can be, period; straight 18's across the board for STR, END and AGI (by contrast, I find Batman is stronger than he is agile, although he is clearly ridiculously accomplished at both). In any event, I would peg Captain America is having a slight physical edge over Cap. Then we've got Ozymandias (the source character, Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt ends up with some explicitly supernatural powers) -- frankly, I get the sense that he's technically bereft of superhuman powers, but he's probably stronger, smarter, faster and all of that than either Cap or Bats. Megalith was supposedly not superhuman, but I don't find him to be too relevant of a character. There is a bit of a gray area between maxed or nearly maxed-out human and superhuman (I call it the savant range in my game). This was what those mythical three points represented, the 19 to 21 range. Still technically human, but not generally accessible without a background even more esoteric than Batman's.

[Chimaera]

Double-checked my rule-book -- you guys are absolutely correct, the 3 point limitation is only in terms of the Reduce Stats weaknesses. Hm.

[silverwhisper]

getting back to the original point of the thread: i think it's hugely system-dependent.

in V&V specifically, the power level in general is lower of course than in the T$R marvel game, never mind the mayfair games DC game. the differences from the one to the other are respectively exponential.

i think that so long as the larger concept, that thor is considerably stronger than namor (for example), and both can cheerfully toss cap across the room is respected, the actual numbers themselves are largely irrelevant: it's about maintaining proportionality on the scale, at least to me.

JMHO.

[Chimaera]

It's not hard to make characters of a (stated) Marvel power scale in V&V. Heck, it's possible to reasonably well by the DC Universe too... and I find V&V to be quite resilient in that regard, at least in terms of damage. Using the post-Byrne Superman bench-mark of being able to lift one of the Great Pyramids, I made the character -- he did 13d10 Basic HTH. That's a lot, but not game-breaking.

[silverwhisper]

out of curiosity, o morphic one, what did he weigh? b/c i did something similar, got to something like 12d10 basic HTH dmg--but he had a body power that made him weigh half a ton.

i don't mean to suggest that it's hard to do: naturally, it just takes a bit of doing. but at least for me, i find the process kind of annoying, you know?

as to game breaking: remember the damage a nuclear bomb does? :>

[Chimaera]

Nope, normal weight (that is to say in the 200lb. range). If you are going to use a Body Power anyway, you might as well just go with a stat multiplier or even just a CC multiplier. And the nuke damage was just stupidly low...

[Strongman]

It's not hard to make characters of a (stated) Marvel power scale in V&V. Heck, it's possible to reasonably well by the DC Universe too... and I find V&V to be quite resilient in that regard, at least in terms of damage. Using the post-Byrne Superman bench-mark of being able to lift one of the Great Pyramids, I made the character -- he did 13d10 Basic HTH. That's a lot, but not game-breaking.

Perhaps not game-breaking in a game where DC heroes are all statted accordingly but 13d10 is quite the game-breaker as far as I'm concerned. Hell, I had a little trouble with Behemoth's 6d10 but he's a soft-bodied (no Invulnerability, reasonable Basic Hits so hit points aren't really off the scale, etc.) brick without a huge chance to hit so it was ok but someone like Superman, with 13d10 damage and super-agility for hit chances to hit? WOW and OWW! Figure a hit from him does an average of somewhere around 80+ when figuring AGI and INT mods in? Too much for my games and it really seems to be too much even for a DC-themed game. Of course, I guess that a punch from Superman should be knocking out almost anyone even in the DC universe... :shrug:

[silverwhisper]

...and 1 punch from batman should KO guy gardner... :>

[Baelfyre]

The benchmarks I use, in general, in my games.

Max stat for species within current genetics. IE, a human has a lower max strength than a great ape.

Max stat within reality. Things like robots and superpowers, work within the natural laws of reality. Even if we don't necessarily understand all of them. Example: Spider mans agility.

Supernatural attributes that defy/overwrite natural law.
Example: Godlike specialty attribute; Strength of Hercules, Thunderbolt of Zeus

[AnotherSKip]

one of the huge complaints from converters of MArvels Mighty Minions was the HP explosion, hundreds of hits for most characters just to balance everything else.

the Simple solution could be to have body powers that increased the needed stats but not the unbalancing issues, thus for 33 Str for Spidey (as an example)in stead of Spider Bite highteded Str B +25, the character could have Body power: Spider strength +25, does not affect hit points.

[AnotherSKip]

...and 1 punch from batman should KO guy gardner... :>

Natural Weaponry (x4) every martiaL art known to man +12/+24, hit the face (x4 ko%) and viola one shot punch for old GG.

[Magnus Bergqvist]

Of course, I guess that a punch from Superman should be knocking out almost anyone even in the DC universe... :shrug:

Knocking out the tough-guys. He would kill those that didn't have anything to raise their toughness. But then there are those that kan knock him out as well.

For example in Legion of Superheroes; Mon-El is stronger and tougher than Superboy. And that was from the era when Superboy were tougher than superman.

/Magnus