[Supers] GURPS Unofficial Handbook to the Marvel Universe, Reboot Edition

[Otaku]

Originally Posted by RedMattis

Have you done any testing for these characters against their typical antagonists?

I believe Spiderman would turn a hypothetical evil twin into a pile of broken bones (12d punch damage vs 22 hp). His double would also break free from binding webs with ease (Binding 20 vs 112 ST).

Spiderman generally doesn't take blows terribly well, but it's not like similarly strong opponents like Venom (who likely has more strength that spidey) will typically One-KO him either when they do manage to deliver a haymaker to his face.

I'm not a long-time reader of Spider-Man. I read some of his books on and off, and I think I tried following the Clone Saga through my local library (that was around the time they added comic books). So, very hit or miss exposure to the web-head in print during the entire 1990s. Plus whatever I got through other mediums, most Spider-Man: The Animated Series (1994). A lot of what I know about the character before and after this point comes from miscellaneous articles written and read about him.

At first I thought this was a pretty valid point, other than ignoring the web-head most likely pulls his punches against any foe unless he is absolutely sure he won't kill, maim, or even just seriously injure them. Which, come to think of it, probably applies to good chunk of Marvel Comics heroes, and even some of their villains and anti-heroes. Even some of the "Do what it takes" types don't go full force immediately, but escalate only that is... what it takes.

Now I am thinking most of this is a matter of misperception and missed powers. I don't read Medium articles, but this one barely passes the sniff test. What makes it so relevant to the conversation is that it not only shows Spider-Man's healing factor is not as new as I thought it was, but makes a great case for him having some kind of Damage Resistance, Injury Tolerance, or Vitality Reserve.

Re-reading Peter Parker's entry, he's got Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction /10;Limited: Crushing Attacks, -40%; Super, -10%) [75]. This means most "normal" folks who are lucky enough to tag Mr. Acrobatic Danger Sense (...Spider-Man) are just go to do one point of damage with their fists, feet, baseball bats, etc. Peter's durability is usually on display when he faces some heavy who tags him and Peter is hurting but not slowing down.

Edit: Even against someone as strong as himself, punches and kicks aren't doing much. What does concern me a bit is it doesn't do anything against non-crushing attacks, and while he doesn't shake off blades, bullets, burns, etc. like he does your typical punches and kicks, he still doesn't seem as vulnerable as your regular human to all such attacks. Or perhaps I'm remembering it incorrectly? Or just misunderstanding Injury Tolerance: Damage Reduction again? >.> /Edit

I am thinking Spider-Man should have some level of Regeneration. The article cites how certain injuries don't seem to heal as quickly. I can't tell if breaking a bone, suffering organ damage, etc. is some kind of exception to his Regeneration (a Limitation), or if those should just be seen as attacks where Peter Parker took a lot of damage, more than his Regeneration can handle with just one good night's sleep. I mean, if he's actually getting 8 hours of sleep, Regeneration (Regular) heals 8 damage, right?

TL;DR: Though he isn't known for it, heroes (and even some non-heroes) like Spider-Man probably pull their punches against foes they should easily turn into a bloody smear. However, Spider-Man should have some form of Regeneration. Then maybe some Damage Resistance and/or expanded forms of Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction).

[Otaku]

Originally Posted by Infornific

Spiderman has Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction) 10 which means he would take 4-5 points from one of his own punches. Against 22 hit points, it would take a few punches to put him down. The tolerance is Crushing only but that works for punches.

Not according to how Injury Tolerance works in GURPS Supers. I think. I've never used the Advantage in actual play, so I just learned I've been understanding it wrong this whole time.

Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction /10) Limited: Crushing Attacks, -40%; Super, -10%) [75] means that crushing attacks which do 10 or less points of damage are then reduced to doing one point of damage. When Spider-Man isn't using his Super Strength, his punches (he doesn't know Brawling) do Thrust-2, so 2d-2, or a maximum of 10 points of damage always being reduced to 1 HP worth of damage.

When Spider-Man is using his full Super-Strength, isn't it 12d-2 for a punch? So only a punch where he rolled all 1's is going to be soaked by his Damage Reduction.

As awesomenessofme1 pointed out, I completely misunderstood Injury Tolerance... thinking I'd had it wrong until just today because... I looked it up in GURPS Supers instead of GURPS Powers and then missed the citation of GURPS Powers. Which means I completely misunderstood what I read in GURPS Supers, trying to understand it without going back and reading GURPS Powers and seriously, you would think I was trying to get it wrong at that point. >_<

Oh, and since I'm double posting... yeah, I've got a big comment before this one that the page break may or may not hide.

[awesomenessofme1]

Originally Posted by Otaku

Not according to how Injury Tolerance works in GURPS Supers. I think. I've never used the Advantage in actual play, so I just learned I've been understanding it wrong this whole time.

Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction /10) Limited: Crushing Attacks, -40%; Super, -10%) [75] means that crushing attacks which do 10 or less points of damage are then reduced to doing one point of damage. When Spider-Man isn't using his Super Strength, his punches (he doesn't know Brawling) do Thrust-2, so 2d-2, or a maximum of 10 points of damage always being reduced to 1 HP worth of damage.

When Spider-Man is using his full Super-Strength, isn't it 12d-2 for a punch? So only a punch where he rolled all 1's is going to be soaked by his Damage Reduction.

Oh, and since I'm double posting... yeah, I've got a big comment before this one that the page break may or may not hide.

Either I'm misunderstanding your post, you're misunderstanding the post you're responding to, or you're misunderstanding IT:DR. Damage Reduction divides damage that gets past DR by the number associated with it. 12d-2 will result in an average of (12*3.5-2)=40, which is then divided by 10 to produce 4. He'd punch himself (or a clone of himself) about as hard as a strong normal human would.

[Otaku]

Originally Posted by awesomenessofme1

Either I'm misunderstanding your post, you're misunderstanding the post you're responding to, or you're misunderstanding IT:DR. Damage Reduction divides damage that gets past DR by the number associated with it. 12d-2 will result in an average of (12*3.5-2)=40, which is then divided by 10 to produce 4. He'd punch himself (or a clone of himself) about as hard as a strong normal human would.

I think I found my mistake. I looked it up in GURPS Supers, instead of GURPS Powers. Yeah, yeah, really bad mistake. The passage I read in GURPS Supers even cited GURPS Powers, but I somehow missed that, which means I completely misunderstood what GURPS Supers was saying as well. XP

I'll liberally use the strikethrough command and edit my posts. I mean, the one post is worthless, other than reminding me to triple check what I'm reading. XP

[RedMattis]

I didn't spot the Damage Reduction actually, that makes more sense.

It really reminds you that Comic-book-universe runs super heavy on "Stunning/Bashing" and "Lethal" damage. Pretty much half of the character on the list has gotten hit by super-strong villains without turning into paste. Feels like Vanilla GURPS handles this kind of thing rather poorly without houserules or a generous use of the "flesh wounds" rules (which I think goes way too far).

[Infornific]

Originally Posted by RedMattis

I didn't spot the Damage Reduction actually, that makes more sense.

It really reminds you that Comic-book-universe runs super heavy on "Stunning/Bashing" and "Lethal" damage. Pretty much half of the character on the list has gotten hit by super-strong villains without turning into paste. Feels like Vanilla GURPS handles this kind of thing rather poorly without houserules or a generous use of the "flesh wounds" rules (which I think goes way too far).

It's the nature of the beast. The superhero genre has a power scale that gets fuzzy as you rise up the scale and often has normal humans fighting around people who can tear tanks apart with their bare hands. Systems designed around this (Hero System, MEGS etc) can handle this but GURPS strains to. You can build the high powered characters but it's hard to mix the likes of Hawkeye & Thor. The original version of GURPS Supers noted the problem. You can build high powered superheroes in GURPS but it's kind of hard to run a Batman/Superman team up in GURPS.

One possible way to mitigate the problem is to allow skilled normals to cheat a bit & take trained powers. E.g., take Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction) with the limitation Must be Aware of the attack and possibly Crushing Only limitations. That fits how super normals behave in comics.

[AlexanderHowl]

There are more than a few ways to deal with massive amounts of damage. One way would be to give a character ST 20 [100], Damage Reduction 10 (Flexible, -20%; Force Field, +20%) [50], and Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction /10) [150], and Regeneration (Very Fast) [100]. Another way would be to give a character ST 20 [100], Damage Reduction 50 (Ablative, -80%; Flexible, -20%; Force Field, +20%) [50], Regeneration (Extreme) [150], and Unkillable 2 [100]. We will also give both of them HT 12 [20], High Pain Threshold [10], and Recovery [10].

In the former case, the character can take a maximum of 1200 points of cumulative damage before they croak. While they are tough and durable, they are incapable of healing quickly, so they will not survive for long under concentrated fire. At 50 points of damage per turn, they will take 3 HP of damage per turn, meaning that they are capable of operating for a minimum of 11 turns and a maximum of 44 turns before they croak (an average of 33 turns).

In the latter case, the character can absorb/recover up to 40 points of damage per turn without any issues, but they will croak if they take more than 270 HP worth of damage in one turn. At 50 points of damage per turn, they will last 22 turns before they croak, but they will come back after 11 turns, so it does not really matter than much.

[Otaku]

Originally Posted by Infornific

It's the nature of the beast. The superhero genre has a power scale that gets fuzzy as you rise up the scale and often has normal humans fighting around people who can tear tanks apart with their bare hands.

Which, I think, is sometimes a flaw and sometimes an intentional feature. I've read great stories that ignored the problem, explained the problem, or "dealt" with it by suddenly having real-world constraints suddenly apply. Thanks for the link to that article, though. I hadn't read it before!

[RedMattis]

The easiest way to handle it is probably just to rescale everything like Naloth did: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=161407

Alternatively, use some variation of the flesh-wound rules, but let characters be flung around like ragdolls, be "stunned" or in "Pain" of a varying amount depending on how much damage they took.

Perhaps some new "Flesh Wound" advantage, f.ex.? Just brainstorming here, but maybe something like this? (based on "Luck")

Flesh Wound [10/level]
Once per hour (real-time) you can reduce the damage of an attack to 1 HP or 1 FP. In order to do this you must be aware of the attack and be in a situation where you could take a defense action (the actual attack does not need to be dodgeable however, this works fine vs. Maledictions). You may wish to increase this cost for very high-powered campaigns.

Enhancements:
Graced: You don't need to be aware of the attack or able to dodge in order to use the Flesh Wound rules, +50%
Time-out: When Flesh Wound triggers it's damage reduction applies to all valid attacks that turn, +50%

Limitations:
Physical: You can only use this ability against attacks which are traditionally able to be dodged. This renders it ineffective against f.ex. maledictions. -20%
Painful: When you use the Flesh Wound you suffer some troubling condition it is up to the GM's decision what is an appropriate depending on situation and what struck you. This can stack however the GM deems it appropriate.
‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎Something inconvenient, f.ex. stunned for a turn, moderate pain for 1d6 turns, -20%.
‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎Something crippling, f.ex. severe pain for a minute, retching, etc. -50%.
‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎Something incapacitating or nearly so, f.ex. unconscious until rescued, blinded and dazed, etc. -80%


--------------------------------

Example: Spiderman
Flesh Wound 3 (Physical, -20%) [37]
Flesh Wound 2 (Graced, +50%; Physical, -20%; Painful, inconvenient, -20%) [22]
Flesh Wound 1 (Graced, +50%; Time-out, +50%; Painful, inconvenient, -20%) [18]
Flesh Wound 1 (Graced, +50%; Time-out, +50%; Painful, Crippling, -50%) [15]

Example 2: Norman Osborn
Flesh Wound 3 (Physical, -20%; Painful, inconvenient, -20%; Gadget (costume/armor), Can be Stolen, -10%) [15]
Flesh Wound 1 (Graced, +50%; Time-out, +50%; Painful, Incapacitating, -80%; Gadget (costume/armor), Can be Stolen, -10%) [11]

(Note that Spiderman doesn't really need a bunch of "Graced" since he typically is aware of attacks aimed at him, but it helps him not get a concussion in the rare instances when Venom shows up and slaps him on the back of his head)

[AlexanderHowl]

Heck, most of the 'durability' of supers is probably better represented with DR 50 (Ablative, -80%) [50], Regeneration (Very Fast) [100], Unkillable 2 [100], and No Visible Damage [1] rather than DR 50 [250] and Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction /10) [150]. The former represents supers who are capable of recovering from 'unconsciousness' (actually death) in a few minutes while the latter represents supers with bullet bouncing pecs.