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Old 09-09-2016, 02:34 AM   #1
Tallor
 
Join Date: May 2016
Default Highest strength of TL10 human?

I'm building a human in my sci-fi campaign that's similar to a Juicer from Rifts. He has a serious addiction to becoming a sort of "superhuman" through surgery and biotech.

Assuming TL10 biotech, how strong could a born-human human become? Do TL10 Muscle Enhancements stack with TL9 Muscle Grafts? Can skin DR be improved?

(Solutions can be superscience or "weird space junk", since part of the campaign's theme is how space makes crazy things possible.)
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Old 09-09-2016, 03:20 AM   #2
McAllister
 
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Default Re: Highest strength of TL10 human?

Since superscience is on the table, the sky's pretty nearly the limit. Normally I'd raise concerns about how muscles are attached to bones by ligaments and joints are fully of squishy/grindy bits and you can only improve the system to the point where the weakest element is functioning at maximum capacity, but when you have near-complete freedom to rebuild the organism, which is the weakest element, and how strong can it be?

Basically, I guess my question is, what's not on the table?

As for whether muscle enhancements stack with muscle grafts, isn't that a question for the GM? Or are you the GM? I can't quite tell from the question.
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Old 09-09-2016, 03:55 AM   #3
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Default Re: Highest strength of TL10 human?

It depends on many things. Specially as the weird stuff can be anything.

Using TL 10 and just basic set and biotech you would get quite high numbers for lifting and striking:
Base max for normal humans: 20
Muscle Reinforcement +4 lift/strike
Muscle Graft: +3 lift/strike
That is lift/strike of 27, or 1166 lb 2 handed lift.

Quite many of the genre books allow buying 1 lifting ST as upgrade(Special training perk), so we add that.
That is lift ST of 28, or 1254 lb 2 handed lift.

Then we start modifying the definition of human: Genengineering can add up to +6 lifting and striking ST at tl 10:
That is lift ST of 34, or 1850 lb 2 handed lift.

Then we start adding weird stuff:
Chinese elemental powers has Stone Frame for +10 lifting ST
That is lift ST of 44, or 3098 lb 2 handed lift.

And then we can really high will and lifting skill so that will based lifting skill is really high for extra effort. Up to attribute +10 is workable to maintain if you use maintenance rules, so at will 21 (20 base +1 genengineered) the skill is 31, allowing a 62.5% probability to lift three times the above values and 98% to lift 2.5 times.

Getting more than those requires then stacking the weird stuff. In the end it comes down to how much of the weird stuff you allow, there is potentially no limit. "I got bitten by a space bug that allows me to buy super lifting strength 300 and thus lift more than 10^50 tons" (That is about the order of the magnitude of the estimated mass of the entire universe)
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Old 09-09-2016, 09:04 AM   #4
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: Highest strength of TL10 human?

Quote:
Originally Posted by weby View Post
It depends on many things. Specially as the weird stuff can be anything.

Using TL 10 and just basic set and biotech you would get quite high numbers for lifting and striking:
Base max for normal humans: 20
Muscle Reinforcement +4 lift/strike
Muscle Graft: +3 lift/strike
That is lift/strike of 27, or 1166 lb 2 handed lift.
Alas, you have overlooked something. Specifically the note in Bone stimulation where that treatment allows the two technologies above to go 2 pts higher.

Also, when you get into germline genegineering the above technologies are modified by Racial ST i.e. a Eugenic Human with +2 ST can go 20% higher and thus get a maximum of +7 Lift/Strike rather than +6 from Muscle Reinforcement.
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Old 09-09-2016, 09:54 AM   #5
chandley
 
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Default Re: Highest strength of TL10 human?

Well, at TL 10, you can get as much as SM +2 for +10 ST _base_.

You can then genegineer in +6x2=+12 more ST, or leave HP at 20 base and push Lifting and Striking ST to +18.

Add an Explosive Strength +5 option (triggering a dependency or costing FP). That should also scale with base ST, so really, +10 ST with Costs FP.

You then start with a giant with ST 38, boostable to 48. But now that your human has been decanted, its time to go to work with after-market add ons.

Super Steroids are worth ST+2, FP+2, HT -1, Bad Temper, and Sterile. Fits a Juicer to be sure. You can use TL 10 genetic engineering to boost HT by +3 through immune system and self-repair modifications. Probably worth adding to keep your juicer going through the drug abuse.
Add in Bone Stimulation for +1 HP and the ability to handle more muscle.
Muscle Graft +5 (+3 base and +2 for Bone Stim) for that muscle beach look, doubled for Base ST 20 is another +10.
Muscle Reinforcement +6 (+4 base and +2 for BOne Stim) doubled for base ST 20 to another +12.

Total ST is now 62, boostable to 72.

SM +1 would be ST 47 boostable to ST 54.

SM +0 would be ST 29 boostable to 34.

Im not sure if the germline mod really affects max Graft and Reinforcement or not. I know the boost to ST from SM certainly does. If the germline mod boosts Graft/Reinforcement, you are looking at 84/94 for SM +2, 69/76 for SM +1, and 51/56 for SM+0
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Old 09-09-2016, 03:48 PM   #6
Flyndaran
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Default Re: Highest strength of TL10 human?

Has no one here seen all the threads about highest strength of modern humans? We have people arguing for 15 being absolute maximum, and others saying way over 20 is realistic. That's a factor of 2 for raw lifting power.
Even without super science, the distant future no holds barred bio-engineering hypotheticals have margins of error swamp any guesses, in my opinion.
It turns into a "whatever the GM wants".
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Old 09-09-2016, 08:15 PM   #7
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: Highest strength of TL10 human?

Quote:
Originally Posted by chandley View Post
Super Steroids are worth ST+2, FP+2, HT -1, Bad Temper, and Sterile.
That's just a suggestion and not a rule. If you keep making your HT roll there won't be any side effects. With HT+3 and Very Fit you'll probably make lots of rolls before you miss even one.

Then there's the possibility of Pharmacogenomic Super-steroids that produce no side-effects......for the one specific person they were tailored for.
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Old 09-09-2016, 08:53 PM   #8
Flyndaran
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Default Re: Highest strength of TL10 human?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
That's just a suggestion and not a rule. If you keep making your HT roll there won't be any side effects. With HT+3 and Very Fit you'll probably make lots of rolls before you miss even one.

Then there's the possibility of Pharmacogenomic Super-steroids that produce no side-effects......for the one specific person they were tailored for.
I don't think once you get to that level of specification you're really dealing with gross hormone manipulation. You've probably reached retroviral GMO alteration. But it'll probably still get called super steroids in the way everything extreme is called "... on steroids" now.

Heck, long before you get anywhere near the maximum alteration you can do to an adult human, you're probably surpassing what most would call human.

It might be easier to just strip everything and build back up with properly optimized tissues like a bioroid but keeping the original brain.
Bioroid, for those lacking THS or Biotech, is a biologically grown robot but as an adult.
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Old 09-09-2016, 09:52 PM   #9
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Default Re: Highest strength of TL10 human?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
Has no one here seen all the threads about highest strength of modern humans? We have people arguing for 15 being absolute maximum, and others saying way over 20 is realistic. That's a factor of 2 for raw lifting power.
Even without super science, the distant future no holds barred bio-engineering hypotheticals have margins of error swamp any guesses, in my opinion.
It turns into a "whatever the GM wants".
It's not quite as variable as that. You can make a pretty good case that maximum human ST efforts are 5 to 6 times normal - e.g., the maximum raw bench press is over 700 lbs, so if you assume a ST 10 character without special skill benches between 120 or 150, it would take ST 23-25 to hit peak human. Where the arguments really kick in is over how much of peak human effort is due to specialized skill vs specialized ST vs overall ST. Realistically, there's also a physiological trade off between "I can lift really heavy stuff" vs "I can carry heavy weights for an extended period" vs "I can hit things hard." The peak boost for one of those tasks is likely to be higher than the peak for base ST, with or without Biotech.
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Old 09-09-2016, 10:38 PM   #10
Anthony
 
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Default Re: Highest strength of TL10 human?

Incidentally, a lot of the effect of strength modification is probably to bring up the average by cutting off the bottom of the curve, rather than affecting the top that much, so just adding all the mods is unlikely to be valid.
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