realistic cap for striking strength

[gibberingmouther]

is there one? i've heard about how a tornado can drive a plastic knife through a tree, or something along those lines.

this is again for the Dragon Ball homebrew ... ki blasts are capped by power level 60, not including the "scaling sphere" attack which is uncapped and like a missile (because you can just keep packing more explosiveness into it).

i'm still in the process of balancing the numbers and costs for things ... a power level of 100 is pretty extreme since every 10 points past power level 35 costs 100 points (a bunch of time in the gravity chamber i guess). a power level of 35 is pretty respectable and is the minimum required for super saiyan (which is a bit overpowered, but it is effectively a very rare and expensive ability, assuming you even allow your players to have saiyan blood).

anyway i made it so a power level of 200 is the effective cap (Vegeta spent a lot of time in the gravity chamber and then went super saiyan) - there is little benefit to going beyond this, besides striking strength, which leads us to the issue. i still haven't thought of how to balance striking strength with ki blasts, that's next on my list. i've done some of the math, and it preliminarily seems that they accidentally are balanced, but i'll have to spend some time working this out.

[mr beer]

Per RAW, the realistic cap is Strike ST 2 for humans.

I am not highly familiar with Dragon Ball but it bears little resemblance to reality I believe, in which really you just need to worry about your personal aesthetics for the setting and balancing it against ki powers.

Strike ST is very expensive compared to Innate Attacks i.e. 5 points for +1 swing/0.5 thrust vs. 4 points for 1 dice of crushing damage. You might want to allow Super Strike ST if that's what you are going for to help balance point costs.

[gibberingmouther]

in my gameverse, the enhancement to strength (striking strength or lifting strength each cost the same amount of ki) is based on ki; the way i imagined it the "spirit body" moves faster and is able to telekinetically force the actual body to move along with it, and this process costs ki points.

i want a cap based on physics, not biology is what i'm saying. i guess as long as the velocity keeps increasing in the momentum = mass * velocity equation there is no cap besides the speed of light, right? aha, i guess i answered my own question! rubber duck effect.

[whswhs]

I would suggest that you consider speed of sound as a limit. The shock waves are likely to be disruptive, unless the ki provides a way to channel the airflow around the striking limb.

[gibberingmouther]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I would suggest that you consider speed of sound as a limit. The shock waves are likely to be disruptive, unless the ki provides a way to channel the airflow around the striking limb.

okay, that's helpful, thanks!

[mr beer]

Originally Posted by gibberingmouther

want a cap based on physics, not biology is what i'm saying. i guess as long as the velocity keeps increasing in the momentum = mass * velocity equation there is no cap besides the speed of light, right? aha, i guess i answered my own question! rubber duck effect.

Depends what you are prepared to handwave I think. Ignoring what happens to humans being moved at superhuman speeds, from my highly sketchy knowledge of physics as you progressively increase velocity you will get sonic booms, then the object being struck will literally explode *, then the air will catch on fire as the striker moves through it, then the air will explode and I guess at some point you get weird relativistic effects but I suspect things will get catastrophic before those velocities are achieved.

* not another superhuman, but rocks, trees, tank armour etc.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by gibberingmouther

is there one?

Depends what you mean by realistic. Muscles have a pretty hard limit, but given that you're talking DBZ, I think realistic muscle is not a concern. Other than that, any given weapon has an upper limit beyond which is fails, and thus more velocity is not useful, and any given target has an upper limit beyond which you're in the realm of fluid dynamics and extra velocity doesn't matter much, but those velocities are pretty much guaranteed to exceed the maximum velocity a muscle made of similar material can match (thus, there's an upper limit to useful strength punching mundane objects, but not really an upper limit to punching super targets -- or at least, the limit is high enough to not care about).

[Ashtagon]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I would suggest that you consider speed of sound as a limit. The shock waves are likely to be disruptive, unless the ki provides a way to channel the airflow around the striking limb.

The mantis shrimp would like a word with you.

Edit: It doesn't break the speed of sound, but it does cause supercavitation bubbles to form.

[Flyndaran]

Quick search says that speed of sound in sea water of room temperature is 1531 m/s, air is 343 m/s, and the mantis shrimp snaps at 12-23 m/s.

[Anthony]

In any case, any material you can make a limb out of that will be able to achieve supersonic speed via something resembling muscle action is going to be durable enough to not be very concerned with shock waves in air.