New WR deadlift – DFRPG style

[tbone]

So Hafthor "The Mountain" Bjornsson set a new world record for the deadlift: 501 kg (1,104 lbs).
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52512211

Shamefully, the BBC article didn't include GURPS/DFRPG stats for the feat. Let's see whether we can. (Yeah, I know the "calculate ST from feats" topic is discussed many times elsewhere, probably often invoking the same guy. But hey, a news-worthy feat is worth a new shot at the topic.)

This is a record-setting lift, so I'll assume a healthy +25% bonus from Lifting skill. (Unfortunately, this is the completely unmeasurable, completely arbitrary part of the exercise that makes the rest all a big guess. Should that bonus be +10%? +50%? I dunno.)

Factoring out that +25%, our Mountain hefted 883 lbs. through Basic Lift alone. If this were a max two-handed lift (8xBL), that'd suggest BL 110, about ST 23.

But I don't think that's right; that arm lift is an over-the-head lift, while a deadlift simply gets a barbell off the ground, knee high. The closest action among the game's options is likely Maximum Press (15xBL). That gives us just over BL 58, or ST 17.

Conclusion: Pressing two big uncertainties into service—the size of that Lifting bonus, and the use of 15xBL for the feat—we get results suggesting that a DFRPG barbarian just might look something like The Mountain. (Who on TV is literally a knight—but ST all the way to 20 is part of that profession's template, too!)

The point to this? None, other than (yet again) a simple exercise in mapping a feat to game stats. Just for the fun of picturing what certain stats would "look like" in real life.

Little exercises like this are also good GM training, though. Better to know stuff in advance than to look it up at the table! Here, I realize I'd forgotten how Lifting works. I thought the PC got a bonus to any lift, mundane or difficult, from Lifting, plus a bonus to difficult lifts for Will-based Extra Effort. But that's not the case; from Adventurers p. 80 and Exploits p. 20, the weight bonus from Lifting is the bonus from Extra Effort. Lifting is essentially a die roll bonus to the Extra Effort roll, with the added benefit of letting you choose HT or Will as the base. That's something I've just now (re)learned.

[Raekai]

I've seen arguments to make a deadlift equal to BL×10 or BL×12, which would put him right about ST 19–21, which is how I've always imagined him—if anyone is qualified for ST 20, he is. That +25% bonus from the Lifting skill is probably fair, but I've seen lots of arguments on both sides of how much of a bonus the Lifting skill would provide. I'd personally argue for ST 19 or 20 just to have a nice mental representation of what peak human ST looks like.

With that out of the way, thank you for making this post in the first place. My players and I have chatted about converting Hafthor's strength to GURPS/DFRPG ST, so this is always a fun topic.

And that's a good peak at the Lifting skill in DFRPG. It's a nice small change from the way it works in GURPS to wrap it up in Extra Effort like that. I hadn't noticed that.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by Raekai

I've seen arguments to make a deadlift equal to BL×10 or BL×12, which would put him right about ST 19–21, which is how I've always imagined him.

That works fine for me, too. It's interesting that one can work out the numbers as I did so that Mr. Mountain ends up with the same ST 17 as the DF barbarian template, but I'm not too thrilled by that. Those barbarians are crazy strong, sure, but Mountain is huge. I prefer handing him ST 20 or thereabouts; with that, standard DF barbarians still have an ideal to look up to!

[Raekai]

Originally Posted by tbone

That works fine for me, too. It's interesting that one can work out the numbers as I did so that Mr. Mountain ends up with the same ST 17 as the DF barbarian template, but I'm not too thrilled by that. Those barbarians are crazy strong, sure, but Mountain is huge. I prefer handing him ST 20 or thereabouts; with that, standard DF barbarians still have an ideal to look up to!

With that, standard DF barbarians still I have an ideal to look up to!

Now, we just need a Cleric or a Wizard to cast the Might spell on him.