Class 100 strength?

Hello All,

How are you? I hope you are all doing well. An interesting thread lately about the strength levels between Marvel and DC was recently posted. The discussion and input was well debated. I think the confusion comes from the fact that that the OFFICIAL MARVEL UNIVERSE HANDBOOK OR GUIDE stated back in the 80's that any characther that can lift more than 100 TONS was classified as CLASS 100. Now this was a broad category with broad parameters. It onlt stated that the low end of this classification was 100 tons and an upper limit was not given. For example, Wonder Man and Galactus are both classified as Class 100 strength characters. When it is clearly obvious that Wonder Man is not even in the same league as Galactus. Thus, the Marvel Roleplaying system defined as those with Class 100 as Unearthly and above. Yet, it nowhere defined as the limits of those with CLASS 100 strength. For example, whose to say Thor cannot lift 1000 tons, 5000 tons, 16000 tons or even 60,000 tons. Likewise, whose to say that when the Hulk is sufficiently angry he can not press millions of tons. Yes, the DC universe seems to have stronger characters but that may de due to the fact that their strengths have been defined more appropiately. Likewise, not all Class 100 characters are created the same. One cannot make the numerical value given to She-Hulk should equal that of THOR or Hercules or even Superman. For this reason I tens to give different numerical ranks to different characters. Let me know what you think.

This is one of the many reasons why many GM's and Players designed modified 'House Rules' for their staged game scenarios........


Marvel's RPG mechanics were sort of like a Raw Steak..... You could add ingredients and cooking methods to spice things up.


Marvel authors probably made the game mechanics that way on purpose; So Players can further define perimeters, and 'House Rules' could be designed along a general guide line...

Besides, the game is meant to be fun and ensure critical discussion and thought.......


In terms of Physical Athletic 'Strength' ; Class 100 pretty much capped off at the limits of Human understanding in 'Normal' physics as we know it..............

These guys are Athletically so Strong their strength would be perceived as 'Unlimited'

As an Example: A real M1-A1 Abrams Tank can indeed Tow and Haul in excess of 200 Tons of weight... So players can document an M1-A1 Combat Tank as having UN:100 Automotive 'Strength' or 'Torque'......... However, to tow and haul this amount of mass the Working Tank requires a very complex towing apparatus......... And Big Rig trucks, such as a Kenworth or Peterbilt, can haul about 70 to 80 Tons.


If Super-Man, or any other Class 100 strength Character, tried to push the Earth in a direction he (or She) would simply burrow into the ground..... And basically swim through solid rock, magma, and gravitational forces all the way through to China.......... Example: The Juggernaut.

It would be like pushing a 10 pound block of Jello or Tofu........ And all you can use is a sewing needle......



So, the Guys who I used to play made a 'House Rule'.......

UN:100 Athletic Strength was defined as being able to apply over 100 Tons of force, or torque, or pressure to a given target by means of muscular strength alone.......


We added a rank to fill in the gap between UN:100 and SX:150....... GL:125 (God Like) which had a point value of 101 to 149............. Any thing higher was considered Shift Levels with Automatic 'God-Like'

If your Character had 'God-Like' Strength, he could move 100 tons or more without the object falling apart or simply burrowing through a huge slab of solid material......... He can manipulate gravitational forces with his 'Strength' alone........ Sort of like the Silver Surfer............ His Athletic 'Strength' is probably normal human levels.......... But if he needed to use some Muscle he simply used his Cosmic (Quantum Energy) endowment as simple Brute 'Strength'......



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A character with Unearthly strength still needs a Yellow FEAT roll to lift 100 tons, and has a 40% chance of failing.

Sometimes it's important to know if a character is strong enough to toss something / someone with enough force to exceed the escape velocity of the gravitational field and fling them off into outer space.

:)

I agree Marvel used to be very open about thier characters strengths i think maybe they want to keep stronger characters more of a mystery too keep from limiting them. In the original OHOTMU Thor used was able to lift mearly 95 tons, same as Wonderman. Now on the marvel power grid they both rank as 7's which is disrcibed as "Incalculable: In excess of 100 tons"
Hyperion is still rated as a "6 (75 to 100 tons)and is exactly 95 tons also.

The fact is that this game doesnt even cover the strongest Marvel characters appropriatly, not to mention very few DC heavyweights. Gladiator was shown lifting the baxter building when he first fought the FF, which is easily over 100,000 tons.
Count Nefaria was far stronger than Thor and supposedly stronger than the Hulk. Even Thanos is a mere unearthly rank. But doesnt the SAGA handbook state that shift x equals 250lbs lifting strength, shift y is 500, and z is 1000 tons. very few characters ever get strength ratings above unearthly, why is that? the only character i saw was Zeuz, and he was rated at 90 tons.

i use DC Heroes as a standard for strength levels above unearthly.

I believe when Gladiator did that though Reed Richards theorized that Gladiator had to be using some kind of technology or support system to get away with that as it is physically impossible to lift a structure in such a fashion without it collapsing, so that's not a particularly good example of strength in excess of 100 tons lifting capacity. I do agree though that Nefaria was described as being more in the Shift X range, but it could be that the period of helplessness before he regained his more powerful form resulted in his strength dropping down to the Unearthly range.

Another character that seems to endure depowering because of the phobia about Shift range strengths is Kurse, who was augmented to be far more powerful than Thor while he was wearing his Belt of Strength, which should put Kurse in the Shift Y range of strength, yet he was listed as only Unearthly in his write-up. At a minimum he should be listed at Shift X and not Unearthly, even if that does make him a more powerful elf/demi-god than Thor in physical matters.

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I've always considered Kurse to have Shift-X rank Strength as well. He's a really cool character. One of my favorite.

TLD

While were at it....are the enhancements that the Beyonder granted to Kurse still in effect?

TLD



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/11/2007 07:44PM by The Last Duskblade.

There's no reason why they shouldn't be, other than some writer not liking him being so much stronger than Thor or up there with the raging Hulk. The Beyonder amped Kurse up and never showed any sign of lowering his power levels and no one's been shown to even have the power to weaken him since then.

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He does provide something of a Tragic Hero/Reformed Villain dynamic, after being betrayed by his boss/leader and only surviving by a fluke and a bored God's deciding he'd make a nice pawn for his games in studying life. He just gets very poor playtime in the comics because he started out as just a fairly simple 2-Dimensional villain and they haven't given him any real character growth since then. With the destruction and rebirth of Asgard we don't even know what happened to him, whether he was somehow killed/destroyed (which I consider impossible without someone at the level of Galactus doing it), survived, or never was involved for some reason and still wandering around wondering what happened to his friends.

He would make for a good character in a limited series wandering around Earth-616 confused and alone much like Frankenstein's monster in a role similar to it or to the Hulk, confused and just trying to find friends and being misunderstood by the local idiots and ending up in a destructive fight. Oooooo, would be nice to see him trashing some SRA Enforcers trying to capture him with that Shift-Y Strength of his and nigh-Invulnerability.

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Sorry, I just had to fix the typo. I'm anal that way.

TAG

Maybe it wasn't a typo. *The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe* comics used the "Class 100" designation for anyone that could lift (press) 100 tons or more, with no higher category leaving the actual upper limits rather vague.

Even the Shi'ar Imperial Guard's Gladiator has some sort of technology-based tactile telekinesis field / gravity control whatchamadoodle physics-denial gadgetry on his person to enhance his strength and allow him to pick up the FF's Baxter Building without causing structural collapse from the shift in the center of gravity (I don't recall if the contents of the Baxter Building itself like furniture or people shifted to one side when he picked it up).

So, what is the benchmarks for strength FEAT check intensities over Shift Z?

Can a character with Shift Z strength really lift ANY AMOUNT OF WEIGHT OVER 1000 tons on a Red FEAT roll?

What if the Hulk, maxed out on "I told you you wouldn't like me when I'm angry" decided to do one of his crazy axhandle smash strikes on the ground (for the earthquake effect) looking to shatter the planet he's on?

Red FEAT?

At the peak of WWH he was doing just that from stomping on the ground, one stomp shook enough of the continent the president was advised a couple more of those and they'd lose the entire Eastern seaboard. Definitely somewhere in the Shift-Z to CL1000 range.

Gladiator has been shown at times due to what I'd consider VERY poor writing getting his head handed to him by people as weak as Deathbird and Gambit at one time during a two-on-one battle, and that WITHOUT bringing in that 'unknown red radiation/Green Kryptonite analog' that popped up as a weakness of his. If you went by that battle he's not even Spider-man class strength and ALL of his strength comes from outside enhancement of some sort, which would be difficult to comprehend because if it was that way the Shi'ar would have a Gladiator Corps of Gladiator-class warriors to do its world-conquering instead of just the one.

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Maybe Gladiator's strength-enhancing / gravity-negating / physics-denying McGuffin-ator gadget is powered by the only available sample of the rare but eternally efficient fuel source known as Theraintnomorium.

But back on topic... what's the ballpark assessment on Strength benchmarks above Shift Z?

We can break out the slide rules to calculate the volume of a cube filled solid of a certain material (by its atomic density, naturally) to rough out the size of the cube later.

I just wanna know what Class 1000 through 5000 level weightlighting is!!!!

Likely fairly irrelevant considering I haven't heard of many if any GM operating with players or villains in that range or having it end up being a concern to worry about. Heck from what I've seen most GM seem to dislike anyone more powerful than Spider-man in a group and prefer them weaker.

"A shared universe, like any fictional construct, hinges on suspension of disbelief. When continuity is tossed away, it tatters the construct. Undermines it."

-- Peter David

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[www.classicmarvel.com] - There is no such thing as too powerful Forum Thread

Well now you have (nice to meet ya).

I've run campaigns with significantly and ridiculously strengthed player characters against the same level of villainry (usually in cosmic settings or at least on somebody else's planet (Shi'ar Throneworld, Beyonder's Battleworld. etc.) where such levels of world-wrecking strength come into play.

It's applicable elsewhere. How much weight can Class 1000 telekinesis lift? Can someone with Incredible strength unwrap a sandwich wrapped in adamantium foil?

Well, maybe not the last question, but you get the idea.

This has come up in several games I've played with different judges. One of them told me that Class 1000 strength could lift 1000+ tons. Let me make it clear that I disagree with that.

Another judge told me that characters don't have strength ranks of more than Unearthly and that the Shift X, Y, and Z ranks were strictly for shifting into by the use of talents and such. This is obviously not a standard because of all the characters in the various resource books that have Shift or Class ranks in their primary abilities. A good working rule for his campaign otherwise.

My take on the Shift and Class ranks is that, in comic books, what a character can do will often vary and these ranks allow for a bit of stretching room. With that in mind, Hulk holding up a mountain is probably in the Class 1000 - Class 5000 range in intensity. But he does not operate there all of the time. I'd like to think that Galactus could have easily held up that mountain and he is a Class 1000 strength entity. Also there are easier ways to deal with that mountain, but that's all the green scar has going for him in a situation like that. Something tells me that the Silver Surfer would have handled that differently.

When gaming I define it against what the character is trying to lift. If it was Thor trying to hold that mountain up, he had better have his belt of strength, make a red feat, summon the Odin force, spend half his karma, etc. Not something I can usually see him doing. Common sense win out in these situations. If Spiderman tries to hold up the mountain....

To determine the strength of Telekinesis in the Shift and Class ranks, I multiply the characters Psyche rank by the rank of the power. The result is the amount of weight in tons that the character can move. This allows the person of greater psyche to move more that someone else with the same rank of Telekinesis.

You can also use the same multiplying method for regular strength to decide the limit of a characters lifting and how much strain they can handle. Just use Psyche or Endurance for the rank number to multiply against in the equation.

TLD

Gladiator held the building together with tactile telekenesis, although its never said outright. Gladiator at that time basically was AS powerful as Superman, though hes been severly, and almost irreparably, pussified in recent years. in those 2 issues hes described as flying 1000 times lightspeed, having the strength to move planets, and fly through stars.

which brings up another point. why does gladiator and hyperion only get unearthly invulnerability. hyperion can survive nuclear attacks, and gladiator can survive human torches nova blast without harm, and that does shiftZ damage.

shouldnt they both have at least shiftZ invulnerability? how strong is a nuke in saga anyway???

No, but they have Class 1000 Invulnerability to Radiation and Fire/Heat.