Maintaining ST

[VonKatzen]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Eh, I'd do something much simpler: you lose 2% of your total character point value per year, which can come from any skills or advantages you possess; you may use the 'improvement through study' rules to negate this, even if the advantages are ones that would not normally be learnable. Thus, a 250 point PC loses 5 character points per year, which can be offset by spending 1,000 hours per year in study (say, a full-time job of 2,000 hours per year granting 500 hours of study, and another 1,000 hours per year of free time in self-study). Yes, this means PCs will typically not do much better than break even when using the improvement through study rules, but I don't have a problem with that.

While this may be a decent approximation, the Maintaining Skills rule already exists as do rules of Study. This would seem to cover both maintaining and improving physical strength as-written, with a bit of monkeying regarding ST being a different cost than Skills. It even takes into account that very high levels of skill are harder to attain and maintain, which is also true of ST.

Some of this isn't 'Study' per se, though. These workout routines are at most two hours or so. It's the eating and sleeping that cuts additional time out of the day.

[tanksoldier]

Is that level of training time actually realistic?

Absolute top strength athletes spend hours per day in the gym, eat six to eight meals and thousands of calories per day... and they sleep a LOT.

Also, many top strength athletes are so optimized for their particular lift that they really can't do anything else.

Jim Wendler writes in his 531 book that when he could squat 1000lbs he couldn't do much else but waddle up the the bar, squat once and waddle away.

There's also a lot more than raw strength to strength athletes. The Lifting skill is critical... so comparing a modern strength athlete to Conan kind of misses the point. A warrior is doing a LOT more with his strength than specializing in lifting... and a powerlifter is using a LOT of specialized skill to make their lift.

[JazzJedi]

For realistic characters, I set conditions for extreme level attributes and skills. For ST, I limit it so Basic Lift does not exceed 1/6th of their body weight unless they want to buy Increased Consumption, and spend 20 hours per week at the gym maintaining their physique, and possibly have the Obsession disadvantage. It is a significant commitment to develop skills and abilities to world-class levels, and maintenance is a huge part of that. It's not fun to game, and I only enforce this for realistic characters in gritty campaigns - not Dungeon Fantasy, or Supers, or most other genres.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by tanksoldier

Absolute top strength athletes spend hours per day in the gym, eat six to eight meals and thousands of calories per day... and they sleep a LOT.

Also, many top strength athletes are so optimized for their particular lift that they really can't do anything else.

Jim Wendler writes in his 531 book that when he could squat 1000lbs he couldn't do much else but waddle up the the bar, squat once and waddle away.

There's also a lot more than raw strength to strength athletes. The Lifting skill is critical... so comparing a modern strength athlete to Conan kind of misses the point. A warrior is doing a LOT more with his strength than specializing in lifting... and a powerlifter is using a LOT of specialized skill to make their lift.

This +1

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Ultimately genre is critical here, fictional characters are well fictional. Conan doesn't really need to go to the Gym and carry tubs of whey protein and huge bags of frozen turkey breast about to maintain being Conan, His daily life does that for him because he seldom has time to loose his edge! i.e for Conan everyday is leg day!
Even when he gets old and it's stated that he's not at his physical peak his intrinsic stubbornness and determination get him through. IMO those are his defining traits rather than raw ability to bench huge weights.*


I can think of a few other strong characters in fiction who seem to work out holistically as part of their everyday life even when non adventuring, their "peace time" occupation being something suitably outdoors and rugged. e.g Druss

And well to be fair I can think of a couple where they actually maintained a kind of regime even when on the road e.g Sparhawk and Co would occasionally get roused out of bed early by Kurik if he thought they were getting a bit soft in the middle

Ultimately I'd pay as much attention to it as I thought it was fun to do, but yeah that's a rule 0 answer!



*leaving aside the point that in the books while obviously big and powerful, Conan is not often described with a body builder's or power lifter's physique, since if nothing else he was created before that really came in in its modern form. I'd build Conan as high ST, but really high HT and Will!

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Anthony

I recommend something like 1 hour per week per 10 character points of whatever.

That does have a problem. A big but flabby guy has to work hard to maintain his ST, which is not really impressive for a guy his size. The gymnast doesn't have to do anything to keep her ST on par with guys who outweigh her by 50%.

Realistically, each character would need a native ST, which they would revert toward with a normal diet and normal activity level. Perhaps buy any ST above that level with Temporary Disadvantage: Maintenance.

[Flyndaran]

Makes sense.
Anecdote time:
I've never lifted weights, but am much stronger than my brothers that went into the military and worked hard.
Our mom only last year has lost enough strength that she can't lift furniture as easily as she used to. We realized this when she helped us move to a second story condo.
She also never lifted regularly.

But I'm sure there are some people that aren't super strong as a base, but with effort and a strict regime could far surpass whatever my theoretical maximum would have been.

[AlexanderHowl]

There is a baseline ST for each person, though it varies with age and health. I have always been significantly stronger than my fiancée, which is not a surprise considering that I outweigh her 3:1, though she is proportionally stronger than I am because she lifts five times a week. But I am also significantly stronger than anyone my weight in my family, which is just a quirk of genetics because I never really lifted. Of course, it helped that I had adequate nutrition and regular exercise growing up, as I ate a lot of meat and cheese as a youth and spent my youth taking care of horses.

[Tomsdad]

I think people are variable and there are lot of factors other just basic mass, so yeah a wide range of ability will be displayed and it will be driven by a wide range of contributory variables.

But ultimately, a concerted effort to train and support developing your ability towards a goal is all most always going to help. The corollary of that is the more your ability comes from that, the more you're likely to see a decline in ability if you don't keep it up.



I'd probably just use the rules for maintaining high skills (in this case lifting).

Or maybe if I really wanted to focus on this I might have a limitation and thus a cost reduction on levels of Lifting ST and ST "requires X hours of training per week to maintain, or lose at some reasonable rate until a reasonable amount of time is spent to get back on track"*.



*I actually thought there was a maintenance limitation for advantages? (can only find the disadvantage of that name)

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

*I actually thought there was a maintenance limitation for advantages? (can only find the disadvantage of that name)

The alternate implementation of Temporary Disadvantage covers this. Instead of the Disadvantage appearing when you use the ability, the ability disappears when you fall victim to the Disadvantage. See Powers 106.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by RyanW

The alternate implementation of Temporary Disadvantage covers this. Instead of the Disadvantage appearing when you use the ability, the ability disappears when you fall victim to the Disadvantage. See Powers 106.

Aha, cool

cheers

TD