Maestro

My players like it because they think it's more realistic. And they're not just a gang of action junkies. They find that my revised rules require them to use teamwork and/or brains in order to dispatch the enemy ASAP (instead of just taking turns banging at an opponent), because I often put them under some sort of artificial time constraint (they have to beat the villain(s) they are fighting quickly, because the real issue is to preven the mastermind of the whole operation from escaping or carrying out his plan, etc.). My new rules also prevent heavyweights like Thor and Hulk from just trashing everyone in 3-4 turns.

I think you're neglecting the fact that while what we see in the comics is generally Thor facing off against opponents that to him are an easy win when in fact that's just a tiny slice of his thousands of years of experience, when most of it was battling against opponents far closer to him in power and often group-attacking him, like trolls and frost giants.

For Captain America much of his combat experience has been played out in the comics simply because he's a modern hero, like most others, we get a better feel for all his grand fights, we don't get that with Thor.

Well I've never really seen Regeneration as requiring you to have to rest to recover (unlike the once-daily recovery of an Endurance rank of health after 10 turns of rest), since I doubt the body takes a break from healing just because you're getting hurt at the time.

That's why you're better to use the UPB definition, since he could still regenerate but not so fast you'd have to be dealing Shift X damage to him in order to defeat him in a reasonable amount of time.

*nods* I can dig that.

Quote

Also, consider this. Rare is the occasion that Thor is faced with an opponent that truly requires all of skill and strength. Only a handful of mortal beings possess the power to pose a serious challenge to Thor. How much experience is Thor getting when he's usually beating on people like you or I might beat on a scrappy but overmatched kid? Meanwhile, Cap regularly faces opponents who are vastly more powerful than he is. But Cap finds a way to win almost every time.

Are his appearances in the Avengers and the like the only things you're factoring in? Thor spends a lot of time in Asgard fighting things that he does have to fight with everything he has... all in his own book that's been out just as long as the Avengers has been in print.

Let me ask you... how do you as an artist portray Unearthly Fighting coupled with Weapon Specialization and other Talents... how do you depict fighting on the level of Shift Y to Shift Z? Such a level of skill is an impossibility in real life. How would you depict it?

I think that both styles as depicted in the comics leave alot to be considered and require a good dose of suspension of belief. However, in the real world, I would consider Thor's style over Cap's as being far more practical and effective.

Cap's style of fighting is your typical over-the top martial arts drama that really doesn't get you anywhere in a real fight.

In terms of experience... there is no doubt that "experience" can be deceptive and doesn't take into account the quality of one's competion or contrasting styles or the like.

Of course, Thor has been battling the primal forces of nature themselves, ie. the Etins/Jotuns/Giants, since his earliest of days. And beyond the etins, he has faced Hercules, Ares, TyR, Jormungand, Fin Fang Foom, Hela, Odin, Zeus, the Destroyer, the Celestials, etc.

The quality of Thor's competiton cannot be denied, and is in every way comparable to Cap's. And in fact, I don't recall too many instances when Thor faced bank robbers or low powered super villains. When he did, they were mere fodder for the main villain, comparable to Hydra agents or Nazi infantry as opposed to Zemo or whomever.

There is also an inherent nature to fighting and athletics and physical problem solving... of knowing your way without ever having been shown, 'cause "it just seemed like the right thing to do" to steal a quote fro mthe movie Dune.

Ther is no question that Thor has that inborn aptitude. In contrast, if Steve Rogers had such inborn aptitude it is very difficult to see how he ever sucked so bad so as to be rejected by the army precisely due to substandard physical aptitude.

And as far as technique goes; I never heard of Cap spanning the globe to learn any new techniques a la Batman. The majority of his training came from WW II American culture, at a time when Eastern discplines were still kept "secret" from outsiders.

Undoubtedly, the US government had some masters or whatever at their disposal, and certainly had our native Western arts to draw on, but the pool of talent they had to draw from was, overall, very slim. And you really can't compare techniques develped for fun to techniques developed out of necessity, to enable an unarmed peasant class to defend itself against an armed and armoured "noble" class.

Anyway, when all is said and done, I'd say that good money places Cap's and Thor's fighting at precisely the levels they're at, Amazing and Unearthly, respectively.

Well, maybe lower Cap's by a rank or two.

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I have to agree to disagree.

I guess first I've always had problems with the Fighting stat, conceptually. Is this a measurement of someone's skill apart from their physical gifts? It would have to be, right, just a raw measure of how well-trained, experienced, effective, etc. a person was?

Thor, even in the Norse legends, often got by being stronger and more durable than his opponents, because that's the virtue he embodied and the virtue the Norse valued (which made sense, in their day). He wasn't often physically overmatched. Nor was Hercules, who if you recall has the same fighting stat in the MURPG.

Comics often show cinematic-type moves, because they look prettier (the same reason Hollywood does). Some people prefer the over-the-top wire-fu of the movies, some prefer the over-the-top physicality of professional wrestling, and some prefer the UFC. They're different games. Hard to compare.

Cap would probably have been trained in the WW2-style "combat judo" (eastern disciplines weren't secret, by the way, judo was very well-known by WW2), and have added techniques over the years to deal with different situations.

I would put Cap's abilities at Amz, that's a good one.

Thors I think are well-placed at Incr. He's never shown himself to be that skilled a fighter in the comics (which are the only real medium to judge), let alone in the old Norse legends. He rarely faces power-levels near his own, and when he does, it's a real fight. If his fighting skills were that high, he'd be like, say, a great professional fighter (boxer, mma fighter) facing a body-builder of the same weight and strength in a fight. The fighter would destroy the bodybuilder, 9/10 times, because of his greater level of skill, assuming weight, strength and general athleticism are the same. That never has happened in the comics.

If Fighting only measures how often a character can hit the other guy, not how "skilled" a character is absolutely, I would put Spider-man and Daredevil higher than Thor. Those guys hardly ever miss what they're aiming at.

Just rambling. Good discussion, though. Thanks for your thoughts.

Comments?

Oh, one hero from antiquity (the bible) who I can see having a high fighting (Monst, at least) would be Sampson. How much skill would you need to have to kills a thousand soldiers with the jawbone of an @#$%&? I mean, after the first five or six hundred, wouldn't fatigue cancel out the strength and power advantage?

Also, if I was soldier 800 or so, and saw 799 bodies at his feet (he'd be standing on a wall of bodies, probably like 15 deep), I don't think I'd make a run at Sampson. JMHO

You forget that Thor's adventures on Earth represented only 10% of the fights he's had since his appearance on Earth... and only about 1% if you account for his whole life. Most of the time he adventured in Asgard, where the threats were indeed equal or greater than him. Take that adventuring in Asgard and multiply that by thousands of years and you have a solid justification for Unearthly Fighting.





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/25/2008 10:17AM by Punstarr.

I hear what you're saying, but in the Norse legends, Thor isn't very often challenged very often, and he rarely outfought opponents. He usually was stronger and tougher, because that's the virtue he represented to the Norse. Moreover, just having experience doesn't make you skilled. A lot of experienced fighters lose to less-experienced but better skilled fighters.

Even if the sample set we have in comics accounts for 10% of his experience, moreover, look at how he fought in that 10%. The MU powerhouses like Hulk, when they fought Thor, routinely were able to hit him, and usually he fights devolved into trading punches. If he truly was that superior a fighter, he would outclass them without much effort; instead, it's always a fight.

I think Incr or even Rem is a realistic rank for his fighting skill, based on what we see in the comics. That's how we play him in my group.

civet5285 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I hear what you're saying, but in the Norse
> legends, Thor isn't very often challenged very
> often, and he rarely outfought opponents. He
> usually was stronger and tougher, because that's
> the virtue he represented to the Norse.

Except that we're talking about the Marvel Universe here, not Norse mythos. Marvel's Thor is quite different than the real life mythology Thor.

> Moreover,
> just having experience doesn't make you skilled.

What? Yes it does. That's how you get skill... experience. There's no other way to attain skill.

> A
> lot of experienced fighters lose to
> less-experienced but better skilled fighters.

Uh... when? No one's a better fighter with less experience. See above. Thor was born a god of war. That means he started out with an innate sense of fighting, natural talent if you will. I imagine he had around Incredible fighting as a child, which then only grew as he lived and fought for thousands of years.

>
> Even if the sample set we have in comics accounts
> for 10% of his experience, moreover, look at how
> he fought in that 10%. The MU powerhouses like
> Hulk, when they fought Thor, routinely were able
> to hit him, and usually he fights devolved into
> trading punches. If he truly was that superior a
> fighter, he would outclass them without much
> effort; instead, it's always a fight.

That's the way comic books work, though... no one can get around that. Fighting isn't dodging, it's hitting. Dodging is Agility based. (Incidentally, I think the evasion rules are ridiculously stupid and I don't use them. In my games, dodge is used for ranged as well as melee attacks.) Thor's Agility isn't all that. That's why he gets hit by those powerhouses. He's relatively slow. That's the advantage folks like Cap and Spidey have on Thor... speed.

Actually Thor is the God of Lightning and the Storm and NOT war, that'd be Tyr if memory serves. However he spent his time growing up fighting giants even before getting Mjolnir and many of them are a decent challenge for him, especially as he often targets the most powerful to hunt.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/25/2008 01:11PM by Nightmask.

I guess we're talking about different things.

I grant you the MU Asgardian mythos differs from Norse.

As for fighting gained in experience, I was speaking in real life. Having a lot of fights doesn't mean you're the most skilled guys. In real fighting sports (boxing, mma, whatever) the experienced guy isn't always the most skilled; sometimes he's gotten by by being tougher than the other guys he's fought. Just having a lot of fights doesn't mean good. Remember Peter McNeeley was undefeated before he fought Mike Tyson; he just fought tomato cans, so his record didn't mean much.

I've sparred and fought guys who were better fighters who had fewer fights than I.

Having experience in game terms may, per se, relate to skill, but not in real life, necessarily.

In the comics, Thor hasn't demonstrated, ever, a class of fighting as far above his opponents that the Un rank suggests. In relative terms, a person of Un strength, for example, is twice as strong as someone of Am strength. Thus, a fighter of Un rank would, in relative terms, be twice the fighter as would a fighter of Am rank. This suggests that if Thor were of normal human strength, he would beat the holy heck out of Captain America or Wolverine, which is ludicrous. Without his superhuman strength and toughness, either Cap or Wolverine would beat Thor, IMHO, without much trouble, or the Hulk, for that matter, if the physical abilities were more equal. The only thing Thor and Hulk have is their enormous physical strength and toughness, not skill.

I agree with you about the Dodging/Agility rules in MURPG. It makes Dodging almost useless, and badly underrates Agility.

The problem may be that Agility measures so many different things, including hand-eye coordination, throwing/shooting accuracy, reflexes/reaction speed, and physical agility, all of which, in real life and in comics, are very, very different, both neurologically and technically. Under Basic rules, Captain America can beat the heck out of Spider Man because of the way Agility and Dodging are handled. In a comic fight, I'm not sure he'd ever get a hand on Spiderman.

I'm not sure Fighting shouldn't encompass defense, but I see your point about it.

In the end, I guess we have to agree to disagree.

Agree with that. But, are we talking about his fighting before talents or after?

Because he gets a +2CS with his hammer, so even if he had Amazing Fighting he would be at Unearthly with Mjolnir.

The Last Duskblade
Q-Class Forever!!!

I would agree with Thor's skill with the hammer being Un, that makes sense. It's his innate Fighting stat I think is inflated.

I still don't understand the difference between TI and regeneration. How do they work in game terms?

Also, what house rules do you guys use to differentiate them? Having the character heal 1/10 regen/End rank per turn makes a lot of sense. What do you to with TI?

Oy. Don't open the TI can of worms... people have killed over it on these boards. Well not really, but it's gotten ugly. Well maybe not ugly per say, but there are definitely two distinct camps arguing about how it should work.

The best thing to do with True Invulnerability is to read through it and try to figure it out on your own and for your own game. Because around here everyone is faithful to their view points and equally sure that they are correct. Once you have your own opinion you can jump into the boards here with it and have plenty of people to both agree and disagree with. For some reason that power in particular is the source of drama. :D If you want to discuss if further I'm willing to do it via private messages.

The Regeneration thing is covered pretty well here: [www.classicmarvel.com] While I don't agree with everything posted here, it is a good place to start and many of the senior members of this community give their opinions. Very cool.

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[www.classicmarvel.com] for the thread I started as a more comprehensive and clarified write-up on Body Resistance and True Invulnerability. Don't mind the flames some people just can't help themselves when it comes to True Invulnerability and CS damage reduction.

As far as Regeneration goes some seem to get a godawfully fast interpretation of how rapidly one recovers from damage (Most evident with Wolverine, who went from healing a reasonable 6 health/hr as far as 10 health/TURN, depending on the write-up) and some really bizarre ways of interpreting the power rank. I think the Ultimate Powers Book interpretation is more accurate, generating a healing rate in a more reasonable range. Basically you divide the normal rate at which a person heals (an Endurance Rank every 24hrs) by the power rank. So with Excellent (24) rank regeneration you'd heal every hour your Endurance rank of health instead of going an entire day. With a Remarkable (30) Endurance you'd regain 1 health every 2 minutes.

The way the Player's book has it you recover your Endurance rank number every minute, or as such a flat rate (1333 times faster than a normal human would, placing you in the CL1000 rank for Regeneration in terms of the Ultimate Powers Book). The only variation between characters in that case comes solely from what the individual Endurance Ranks are. That version has no power rank number, either you have it or you don't.

Some want it even faster than that, finding even that rate too slow and make it the power rank number divided by 10 to determine how much health you get back in a single turn, which would be somewhere around 13,333 times faster than normal, or ten times faster than the Player's handbook version. I assume that they simply round up for ranks below good to 1 health/turn up to Good rank.

How fast lost or damaged organs recover is trickier, since humans can't regrow lost limbs you can't reduce the rate to grow them back by any kind of interpretation (divide by zero error, or divide by infinity depending on your viewpoint, either way the answer is irrational). Make your feat check so you can start regenerating a lost arm and the GM might decide it's like trying to regain a proportion of lost health represented by the lost limb. So a lost arm representing say 20% of your 100 Health would be totally restored after recovering 20 points of lost health to represent that. Other GM will have different ways of deciding that.

Note that increased healing, especially in the comics, goes way beyond what's possible in the Real World, including what animals that can regenerate lost body parts can do. It requires no replacement material (i.e. food) and magically recovers lost body mass in many cases (Wolverine's one of the most agregiously representative like that, at least with the Hulk's tacked on Regeneration you could argue he draws the replacement mass from the same place he gets the initial mass when he transforms from Banner to Hulk). A more realistic representation would have someone who regenerates getting hungry, even ravenously so when trying to replace a lost hand or leg.

Well I hope this has helped and do feel free to post any other questions you might have.

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Be honest, people have gone flame-postal over their dislike of the official interpretation of TI. He'll see that in any thread where he goes looking for clarification anyway (including in Starfox's thread where I initially explained it to you) but we have the benefit that almost everyone who's felt like flaming about it are burnt out or gone so it shouldn't recur amongst those left.

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