grappling a flier

[Kromm]

With due respect, you are not reading what I am writing. Please re-read. To summarize in response to two points:

Originally Posted by Ack

How does someone without Clinging or Flight of their own bring any force to bear to prevent something from lifting off?

By being very heavy. As I have said twice so far, ST is a proxy for mass. It has an active role – that of breaking free, twisting limbs, hitting people, chucking things, etc. – but also a completely passive role: being a lump. As written, a ST 200 person weighs 500 tons unless specifically assigned another weight. This is a result of:

ST = HP = 2 × Cube Root (Weight in lbs.)

You can invert that to get:

Weight in lbs. = (ST/2)^3

Thus, when a ST roll is a completely passive way of representing bulk, ST 200 approximates the effects of gravity pulling on the person, which is a counterforce acting against Flight, as surely as Clinging or opposing Flight would be.

Originally Posted by Ack

Wait ... so our one-ton 200-ST character should only count as ST 25 for grapples?

No, I said that by the math above, HP for a one-ton person should be 2 × Cube Root (2,000), which is 25. This is the effective "passive ST" for the specific purpose of "resisting airlifts," not "grapples." In grapples, a ST 200 fighter uses his full ST 200 for all active purposes, regardless of his weight. He can use it for all passive purposes, too, if his ST comes from strange powers or if he's using his own movement abilities, which come with his full ST automatically. The weight approximation is only valid if his ST is massless, and not the result of an attractive force such as zero-range telekinesis or chi, and he lacks movement powers, and he's being picked up. Then and only then, it makes sense to use the ST calculated from weight as the passive score resisting being airlifted.

In short, if someone has ST 200 and weighs one ton:

Any Active Use of ST: ST 200
Any Use of ST Justified by Movement Abilities: ST 200
Any Passive Use of ST Justified by Weird Powers: ST 200
Any Passive Use of ST Representing Mass Alone: ST 25

In a supers game, it's generally very useful to calculate these scores for each character:

ST + Lifting ST: Used actively in grapples. Used passively when movement advantages or powers that grant ST are switched on.

HP: Used actively when making slams while movement advantages or powers that grant ST are switched on. Used passively to absorb damage, and to resist slams when movement advantages or powers that grant ST are switched on.

2 × Cube Root (Weight in lbs.): Used passively, in place of ST and HP, when movement advantages or powers that grant ST are not switched on.

Supers may choose weight freely. If weight isn't commensurate with ST and HP, though, the GM has to bear this in mind. Very low weight-based ST/HP relative to actual ST will mean being picked up more easily, but also taking less damage in collisions, jumping much farther, and being less affected by high gravity. Very high weight-based ST/HP relative to actual ST will mean being harder to pick up, but also taking more damage in collisions and being easily crushed by high gravity.

Above, "movement advantages" means things like Clinging, Flight, Super Jump, and Tunneling. "Powers that grant ST" is more abstract; it means the character has ST out of whack with his very low mass, usually thanks to an invisible force such as chi, elemental earth powers, psychokinesis, or being the god of war.