Super Strength Alternative?

[Decadence]

So I have given a little thought to an alternate way of handling super strength. Other than Super Effort, would a enhanced Strength advantage suit supers well? Basically modifying the enhanced move advantage and basing it around your st, so 25 CP/level? So double the ST attribute for each level you buy into it. What do you all think? Keep in mind I am relatively new to GURPS.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Decadence

So I have given a little thought to an alternate way of handling super strength. Other than Super Effort, would a enhanced Strength advantage suit supers well? Basically modifying the enhanced move advantage and basing it around your st, so 25 CP/level? So double the ST attribute for each level you buy into it. What do you all think? Keep in mind I am relatively new to GURPS.

Enhanced Move doubles your Basic Move. I would be tempted to have Enhanced ST double your Basic Lift, which would multiply your ST x 1.4, approximately (two levels of Enhanced ST would double your ST).

I'd recommend not increasing your HP as part of this. Moving fast boosts your collision damage, but doesn't give you more HP to help survive it.

[tbone]

If you'd like to play with a fully worked-out scheme of the sort you mention, try this:
http://www.gamesdiner.com/rules-nugg...er-cost-for-st

In short, it uses a clever pricing scheme (credit as noted; not my invention!) that keeps normal GURPS ST scores and effects unchanged, but reduces costs at higher levels so that every 50 points multiplies BL by about 2. Every 300 points multiplies ST by exactly 10, and BL by exactly 100.

Benefits:

• With this sort of logarithmic effect, costs down in the human range are unaffected, but the cost of Superman-level strength is vastly reduced.
  
• It works for both supers and just plain big creatures - and actually makes pricing the latter simple. Spending 50 points on ST per +1 SM yields realistic ST (to be further adjusted if you like, of course).
  
• With this scheme, there should be no need for GURPS' SM-based cost adjustment to ST, meaning that small complication can be dropped.

Drawbacks:

• Unavoidably, a varying cost for ST means figuring final cost will take a few more seconds than a nice, simple 10 pts/+1!

Anyway. I don't claim it's what you're looking for, but you might find it interesting.

[Lord Azagthoth]

The benefit of using Enhanced ST as an advantage is that you can add modifiers to it.

[naloth]

I'd recommend KYOS though you really need to adjust a few other things if you're dropping in higher ST damage and logarithmic lifting capacity, and there is a working thread here with some example characters.

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=161407

[Culture20]

Originally Posted by Lord Azagthoth

The benefit of using Enhanced ST as an advantage is that you can add modifiers to it.

I always allow players to add modifiers to any attribute increase or decrease. They rarely do.

[AlexanderHowl]

I find that a combination of Lifting ST, Striking ST, Energy Reserve, and Optional Rule (Godlike Extra Effort) works out well. For example, if you had Lifting ST+10 (Reliable+10, +50%) [45], Striking ST+10 (Reliable+10, +50%) [75], ER 20 [60], and Optional Rule (Godlike Extra Effort) [1], you could increase Lifting ST or Striking ST by +100 with a 90% chance of success (a character with Will 20 could increase by +200 for the same FP cost). In total, the cost 181 CP, which is less than the comparable Super-ST cost of 300 CP (the ER can also be used for other powers). Of course, Super-ST costs less FP per use, so there is a balance that exists.

[Infornific]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Enhanced Move doubles your Basic Move. I would be tempted to have Enhanced ST double your Basic Lift, which would multiply your ST x 1.4, approximately (two levels of Enhanced ST would double your ST).

I'd recommend not increasing your HP as part of this. Moving fast boosts your collision damage, but doesn't give you more HP to help survive it.

For what it's worth, Enhanced Move merely doubles sprint, not all of Move. A strong argument has been made that a +150% Enhancement is necessary to make it an Advantage that simply doubles Basic Move. That's a cost of 50 points. That suggests a cost of 200 for a comparable Advantage to double ST (for all purposes) or 100/level if you want to go with a GURPS scale where every six levels is a multiple of ten (like the Speed/Size/Range table.)

(Brief digression on how I got 200. Default Move is 5 and Move costs 5 per level so doubling the default Move (5 to 10) would cost 25 points. For ST, default is 10 and double that is 20 which would cost 100 points or four times default Move. That suggests if an advantage that flatly doubles base Move costs 50 points, one for Strength would cost 200 points.)

The drawback is that the Advantage would only become cost effective for base ST 20+. I'm the person who came up with the pricing scheme TBone mentioned (essentially half that or 50 points/level) but that was intended to meld smoothly with the cost of buying ST. It may be a little too cheap.

Note that the existing Super Effort enhancement and Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction) from GURPS Supers are essentially another way to buy external ST and HP that increase at an exponential rate for a linear price. IT(DR) effectively roughly doubles HP for 50/level. Likewise, the Super Effort enhancement on ST effectively lets you double External ST for very 80 points spent, after a large initial buy in. So if you want to create a ST multiplying Advantage based on that pricing scheme:

+1 Striking ST (+400% Super Effort, +50% Cosmic no fatigue cost) [27.5]
+1 Striking ST (+400% Super Effort, +50% Cosmic no fatigue cost) [16.5]
1 level IT (DR) (using implied cost scheme from GURPS Supers) [25]

That adds up to 69 points. Round it to 70/level and you've got a pricing scheme similar to GURPS Supers. Remember that it takes 2 levels to double ST.

To keep Innate Attack competitive you'll probably want a similar Advantage. I would price it to be the same as the cost for multiplying Striking ST.