[MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

Greetings, all!

Martial Arts (p. 57) lists Hobby Skill (Feats of Strength) as a way to show off - not just in terms of raw strength, but stuff like fire walking, nail-bedding etc. My question is, what other sorts of examples are there that would fit under the skill's umbrella. I'm particularly interested in which ones would go with which attributes.

Thanks in advance!

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

I'm not sure if fire-walking requires any rolls at all. It's a trick based on the low thermal conductivity of ash. Anybody can do it without any training or practice whatsoever.

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

Will to actually dare to try it? With a generous bonus from the massive spectacle and ritualism performed by the people surrounding the character?

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

Yes, maybe Will+4 roll or something. I've done it several times, once you know it's a trick it really isn't very difficult. It certainly doesn't require any rolls to perform the feat itself (which is walking moderately quickly). There's normally no roll to walk in GURPS (which is good).

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

Arm wrestling
Muscle flexing
"Realistic" Breaking Blow

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

That's Breaking Blow with the Unusual Training perk, canonically I think.

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

Ripping a Phone Book in half...presuming you could find one.

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

The latter is probably Scrounging, still.

Bill Stoddard

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

Although there are ways to mess it up, like failing to police all the rocks out of your bed of ashes or catching a coal in the hem of your pants and setting them on fire. And you could always trip and fall. A skill roll to see if you suffer a critical failure doesn't seem that unreasonable.

Actually though I think once you have practiced them enough not to suffer a familiarity penalty (a couple hours at most, usually just performing them a couple times will do) most Feats of Strength rolls are effectively Performance rolls. It's not that a (non-critical) failure means the trick didn't work at all, but that you didn't do it well enough for your audience to be *impressed*.

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

You have to be strong enough to do some of them. I'm not going to be pulling any train engines or anything.

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

Agreed, the top-of-the-line boardbreakers should have this instead.

On the other hand I've seen people with no 'special skill' training (i.e. those just practising normal karate skills) break their first boards on the first attempt, and assumed the boards were no tougher than a normal reasonably trained punch. I think the overall Feats of Strength skill might be useful here because it includes being Will-based not to flinch as you perform a feat (after all, punching a board half-strength and failing to break it is reportedly more painful than breaking it).

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

The skill would also cover knowing about all these tricks. Even if anyone can manage them once they've been shown once, having a repertoire of party tricks that you know in advance will work is something in itself.

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

One of the prospective co-players offered the idea of staying for long in ice-cold water as one of the possible feats. That actually looks scary for an average person, perhaps even for an average adventurer. But I look at the planned attribute levels and the effects of thermal shock. Well, let's just say that staying in such a barrel for 8 hours is within the realm of possibility for the character, without significant risks; I have no idea what is the 'trick' to it that would allow doing it for someone with a less robust body, though - it seems borderline impossible with lower stats.

Still looking for even more such tricks that qualify for this skill and not for sleight of hand (not very successfully).

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

Regular exposure to extreme temperatures can train the body to better withstand to them.
One women swam the Bering straight after all.

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

Dipping your hands in molten lead (Will)
Getting hit by a 104 lbs. cannonball (HT)

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

It does make sense that the Human body adapts to what's asked of it, altering blood flow, perhaps even on a long-term basis (by increasing or decreasing the amount of skin capilaries), to suit the cooling needs or lack thereoff. I think much of climatic adaption, ignoring items such as nose shape and (of course) skin pigmentation, is acquired rather than genetic.

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

Along with ripping a phone book in half, there are other feats of grip strength that would fit: bending a coin or a nail, folding a cast-iron pan. Similar things done with bite strength, like gripping a horseshoe in your teeth while you bend it with your hands. Blowing up a soft plastic waterbottle like a balloon until it pops. Breaking a baseball bat over your knee.

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

Yup. A relatively thin pine or softwood board that's well braced is actually pretty easy to break, as long as you don't flinch or anything. The Feats of Strength skill would be a good excuse for knowing that sort of thing, and not to try that stunt with, say, a 2 cm thick piece of oak, because that's a good way to break your knuckles. People with the actual Unusual Training perk and Breaking Blow skill might be able to do that, but I wouldn't want to try it myself.
Similarly, taking a swig of molten lead, swishing in your mouth, then spitting it out.

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

Before the introduction of rubber, I think the usual approach to being able to work longer in cold water was smear yourself with a thick layer of grease.

The total thickness of *good* insulation you need to survive even incredibly cold temperatures is not that great, and you might well be able to amaze people with your "endurance" using something that looks so ordinary they don't notice it is actually a sophisticated cold survival tool.

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

It doesn't actually matter what the trick is if you assume there is one. It probably doesn't cost much, whatever it is (and animal grease is a good bet), maybe $10, and game-mechanically you can substitute HT-Based Hobby (Feats of Strength) for all HT rolls to avoid hypothermia.

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

Chewing on dwarf bread.

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

This is mainly the kind of stuff I had in mind. Fits of raw ST that also depend on knowledge and technique, but don't rise to the level of an adventuring skill. Pretty much anything guys like John Brookfield might do, or other strongmen do to show that they are strong in a visually impressive way.

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

Stripping/breaking open a coconut with your teeth is pretty impressive. Seeing that one Hawaiian woman do it almost as fast as a trained dog is really "interesting".
Imagine her as a zombie. She really might "realistically" be able to bite through a skull.

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

Hmm. The description in Martial Arts made me think the opposite - that the skill's repertoire is maybe 25% related to raw ST used 'smartly', with the other 75% falling onto other attributes, but too few examples given (yet nonetheless examples including stuff totally unrelated to ST, which made the skill name somewhat misleading).

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

There are four examples, one for Will (coals), one DX (candle), and two ST (phone book, not flinching from a punch). All of which show off your "physical grit." That's 50% feats of strength that depend on knowledge and technique. If you get really picky, it lists 2 Will (coal, nails), one DX (candle), and four ST (phone book, lift with teeth, lift with body piecing, not flinch from punch). Possibly "not flinch" is Will. Even so, that's a lot less than 75% falling under non-ST attributes.

In general, though, it's a hobby skill. It represents knowledge and explicitly says it doesn't improve capabilities. You might know the trick to rolling up a frying pan or how to hold a nail to bend it without hurting your hands, but you still need to attributes to do it.

What else it covers is almost purely a GM call. Keep the above in mind - it's a hobby skill, it doesn't improve what you can do, and it's all about stunts that involve some physical grit and knowledge.

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

And make sure that's White pine, not Yellow pine. My sister teaches kids martial arts and dad accidentally got the wrong kind once.

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

I would've thought not flinching would be HT-based, same as Knockdown & Stunning rolls.

Anyway, if HS:FoS is not quite what I'm looking for, what is the proper skill for a mostly HT- and Will-based assembly of tricks of grit, fortitude and toughness?

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

Could be. Or Will. I figured ST is as valid as the others - learning to take a punch has a lot to do with muscles, not just not wincing.

Make something up if this doesn't fit. Or just float the skill's attribute, like it says to.

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

Ah. I was starting to get vibes that you didn't approve of non-ST-oriented interpretations of the skill.

Either way, any more examples of what can be done with it, particularly HT-/Will-based and not ST- nor DX-?

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

I'll let you decide which attribute to float these to, but off the top of my head-

Shaolin Monk demonstrations:
- two-finger handstand
- dragging a log with the scrotum
- breaking bricks on the head
- beating with canes
- inverted human pyramid
- stiff-finger thrusting into sand or pebbles

Circus strong man:
- tossing a cannon ball up to catch on the back of the neck
- shooting a cannon ball into the stomach
- smashing a cinder block on the chest with a sledgehammer
- driving over the chest with a car
- hauling a truck with various parts of the body, e.g. teeth or the little finger

Others:
- catching a bullet with a small target held in the teeth
- catching a knife or arrow aimed at the performer

Googling "strong man acts" found these 2 cool websites-
http://listverse.com/2008/11/04/10-a...s-of-the-past/
http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-histor...f-strength.php

Re: [MA] Hobby Skill: Feats of Strength
 

On the TV last week I saw a fellow juggle three car tires for 32 seconds.