DC Heroes RPG vs. Marvel Super Heroes RPG: modeling stats

[Justice]

Chim did sayeth:

... Moreover, the DC game did a much better job of quantifying their characters than Marvel did in OHOTMU and the TSR FASERIP Marvel game. The whole 100 ton thing was silly and completely inaccurate.

And I was wondering about that. I kindly note the DC Heroes game can handle anything MSH could dish out, with 12 APs being the equivalent of a 100 ton lift in STR [MSH UNEARTHLY rank].

But how do we know that its completely inaccurate? Because they can lift much more without column shifts or spending Karma?

The OHOTMU is wrong? (Say it isn't so!)

Chim, would you fill this out with some examples? I think you have some very specific ones in mind [concerning Thor, Hulk, etc.]

I'd like to hear more.

Observation
Personally, I think the superhero genre wants to have superhumans as powerful as the machines they deal with - and our machines [the movable ones, not structures] can weigh 200 tons [747 jet] and move the same [cranes, trains, certain heavy lifters] but after that it gets to be overkill and very specialized [e.g. the Crawler that carries the space shuttle to the launch pad].

Question: Do you think that certain STR levels are overkill? Anything past 1000 tons for example?

[SD Anderson]

I don't think 1000 tons quite is enough for some feats of Superheroics.

See 3:20 or so.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR0RofAihFs

[Chimaera]

The OHOTMU wasn't generally *too* bad at the smaller scale (although Ursa Major was listed as being able to lift 2 tons, IIRC, back in the day and is currently rated at 15 tons and yet he was able to play whipsnap with a train of railroad cars in one comic) -- I think at that level, it's still *somewhat* susceptible to a rough grok/sense of proportion. But I think that the 100 ton thing grew out of some sort of kinship with a percentile scale. Even when they hedged with their "Class 100" bit, which meant that the character could routinely lift over 100 tons, they still didn't really know what they were talking about. Wonder Man was meant to be nearly a match for Thor, strength-wise and he was rated at 90 or 95 tons at the time. Likewise, even guys in the 75 ton range were shown to be more or less not totally overmatched when pitted against the Class 100 guys. 100 tons was a poor quantification for "really heavy!" and a poor estimate at that. Even prior to the current model (where they are moving away somewhat from their old scale), he's supported entire apartment buildings. Likewise, Sasquatch, who was written up at the 75 ton range, caught a 300-odd ton jumbo-jet in mid-takeoff and through it backwards, against the thrust of its jets. He was also seen to be towing an aircraft-carrier once. There are numerous feats of strength displayed by the real heavy-hitters that in no way squared with this theoretical 100 ton benchmark. And like I said, the "Class 100" hedge didn't count for much, given how closely matched they made people who weren't quite Class 100 with the Class 100 crowd.

[Carpenter]

Originally Posted by Chimaera

The OHOTMU wasn't generally *too* bad at the smaller scale (although Ursa Major was listed as being able to lift 2 tons, IIRC, back in the day and is currently rated at 15 tons and yet he was able to play whipsnap with a train of railroad cars in one comic) -- I think at that level, it's still *somewhat* susceptible to a rough grok/sense of proportion. But I think that the 100 ton thing grew out of some sort of kinship with a percentile scale. Even when they hedged with their "Class 100" bit, which meant that the character could routinely lift over 100 tons, they still didn't really know what they were talking about. Wonder Man was meant to be nearly a match for Thor, strength-wise and he was rated at 90 or 95 tons at the time. Likewise, even guys in the 75 ton range were shown to be more or less not totally overmatched when pitted against the Class 100 guys. 100 tons was a poor quantification for "really heavy!" and a poor estimate at that. Even prior to the current model (where they are moving away somewhat from their old scale), he's supported entire apartment buildings. Likewise, Sasquatch, who was written up at the 75 ton range, caught a 300-odd ton jumbo-jet in mid-takeoff and through it backwards, against the thrust of its jets. He was also seen to be towing an aircraft-carrier once. There are numerous feats of strength displayed by the real heavy-hitters that in no way squared with this theoretical 100 ton benchmark. And like I said, the "Class 100" hedge didn't count for much, given how closely matched they made people who weren't quite Class 100 with the Class 100 crowd.

Yeah, I think they just picked 100 tons as the out of the blue from Marvel Universe and then in the RPG because it was a round number. If we had an 8-based number system, it would have been 64 tons. An 11-base system, 121 tons.

As much as I love DC, have have to credit Marvel for at least taking a stab at trying to nail down approximately how strong some of their heroes were ... a couple of years before DC followed suit.

For me, it isn't really such a question of the exact weight--but the general magnitude. In comics, for example, writers and artists often pay attention to how big an object is rather than its actual weight.

A rock the size of an average person weighs about as much as a car because even though the rock is smaller than the car, the car is mostly air.