V&V Conversions

[whswhs]

I've looked at your post, and I have one comment on it: I've lately played with V&V character creation, and in the course of doing so, I worked out that taking Heightened Strength B gets you to D-scale, taking it three times gets you to C-scale, and taking it seven times gets you to M-scale.

For example, Heightened Strength B adds 3d10 to your S, which is an average of 16.5, raising S from 10 to 26.5. Using the equation for lift, [(26.5/10)^3 + (10/10)]/2 = 19.61/2 = 9.8 times your body weight, contrasted to 1 times your body weight for an average unpowered human.

The original Superman of 1938 just about fits as a C-scale character, which could happen with just the right rolls on the character creation tables. I don't think either the Superman of 1960 or the post-Byrne Superman of today could be duplicated in V&V, either in terms of raw power or in terms of diversity of powers.

To get 10x Basic Lift in GURPS takes ST 32; to get 100x takes ST 100. The latter is manageable for 900 character points. Of course you'll also need a few other abilities.

[Infornific]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I've looked at your post, and I have one comment on it: I've lately played with V&V character creation, and in the course of doing so, I worked out that taking Heightened Strength B gets you to D-scale, taking it three times gets you to C-scale, and taking it seven times gets you to M-scale.

For example, Heightened Strength B adds 3d10 to your S, which is an average of 16.5, raising S from 10 to 26.5. Using the equation for lift, [(26.5/10)^3 + (10/10)]/2 = 19.61/2 = 9.8 times your body weight, contrasted to 1 times your body weight for an average unpowered human.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm not sure that's correct. The formula in V&V for calculating Carrying Capacity is closer to BL than GURPS ST. To be 9.8 times as strong as an ordinary man would require a GURPS ST of 31. Which is well within I level. According to your own book, top of I level is 15d damage or ST with Super Effort of +10/100. Roughly net ST of 120 or so.

Even someone with 7 levels of Heightened Strength B would have a Strength on average (assuming a base of 10) of about 126. With Endurance 10 and a weight of 150, that would be a carrying capacity of roughly 150,000 lbs or a GURPS ST equivalent of 316 - in the D range but well short of C or M.

To closely match the Heightened Strength B you'd need about 200 points in ST. I chose to limit to a 100 point trait partly because I wanted the powers to cost 100 each and partly because that's about enough to bring a normal person up to Captain America/peak human levels. I included the lowest level of practical Super Effort ST for 400 points.

Originally Posted by whswhs

The original Superman of 1938 just about fits as a C-scale character, which could happen with just the right rolls on the character creation tables. I don't think either the Superman of 1960 or the post-Byrne Superman of today could be duplicated in V&V, either in terms of raw power or in terms of diversity of powers.

To get 10x Basic Lift in GURPS takes ST 32; to get 100x takes ST 100. The latter is manageable for 900 character points. Of course you'll also need a few other abilities.

Not an expert but I thought 1938 Superman was about the top of I level bottom of D levels, though he rose pretty quickly. In Supers it's suggested he could be built on a 1,000 point, scaled down version of the Archtype template.

V&V is a little weird but the ceiling is usually fairly low by Super standards. That seems a good fit for GURPS Supers.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Infornific

Thanks for the feedback. I'm not sure that's correct. The formula in V&V for calculating Carrying Capacity is closer to BL than GURPS ST. To be 9.8 times as strong as an ordinary man would require a GURPS ST of 31.

It depends what "9.8 times as strong" actually means: Based on the point total ST can be broken up as follows:
*Lifting ST: (+3 per +1 ST)
*Striking ST: (+5 per +1 ST)
*Hit Points [HP]: (±2 points per ±1 HP);

Originally Posted by Infornific

Not an expert but I thought 1938 Superman was about the top of I level bottom of D levels, though he rose pretty quickly. In Supers it's suggested he could be built on a 1,000 point, scaled down version of the Archtype template.

I actually wrote him up under Classic rules and AIR that is about right.

[whswhs]

If an average Kryptonian, on Earth, has Heightened Strength B x3, that's +9d10 to S, which averages +49.5. Rounding that up to +50 gives total S 60. Their lifting ability then is 6^3+1 x (weight/2). An average human's lifting ability is 2 x (weight/2), so they're 108.5 times as strong as a human, in terms of lifting abiiity. That's equivalent to GURPS ST 104, or Lifting ST +94.

In V&V, damage inflicted scales approximately as the logarithm of carrying capacity. Assuming a male Kryptonian with body weight 175 pounds (I don't recall the original Kal-L having a "denser molecular structure"), I get 18,987.5 pounds, which gives 3d10 damage, or 6.6x a normal human's ability to injure with a blow; taking ST 10 as giving thrust damage of 1d-2, I get 6.6d - 13.2 = 23.1-13.2 = 9.9, which is roughly 3d, or Striking ST +20.

However, in GURPS, damage inflicted scales approximately as the square root of carrying capacity. The square root of 108.5 is about 10.4. Taking 10.4d - 20.8 gives 36.4 - 20.8 = 15.8, which is roughly 4d+1, which equates to Striking ST +30.

Or we could just equate it to ST+90, for Basic Life 2000 lbs. and thrust damage 11d.

I kind of think that the second of those options is probably best. Basic Lift 2170 lbs. will let Superman pick up a fairly heavy truck two-handed; damage 15.8 will require an average human to roll to stay conscious, but isn't likely to kill them.

[Infornific]

Originally Posted by whswhs

If an average Kryptonian, on Earth, has Heightened Strength B x3, that's +9d10 to S, which averages +49.5. Rounding that up to +50 gives total S 60. Their lifting ability then is 6^3+1 x (weight/2). An average human's lifting ability is 2 x (weight/2), so they're 108.5 times as strong as a human, in terms of lifting abiiity. That's equivalent to GURPS ST 104, or Lifting ST +94.

In V&V, damage inflicted scales approximately as the logarithm of carrying capacity. Assuming a male Kryptonian with body weight 175 pounds (I don't recall the original Kal-L having a "denser molecular structure"), I get 18,987.5 pounds, which gives 3d10 damage, or 6.6x a normal human's ability to injure with a blow; taking ST 10 as giving thrust damage of 1d-2, I get 6.6d - 13.2 = 23.1-13.2 = 9.9, which is roughly 3d, or Striking ST +20.

However, in GURPS, damage inflicted scales approximately as the square root of carrying capacity. The square root of 108.5 is about 10.4. Taking 10.4d - 20.8 gives 36.4 - 20.8 = 15.8, which is roughly 4d+1, which equates to Striking ST +30.

Or we could just equate it to ST+90, for Basic Life 2000 lbs. and thrust damage 11d.

I kind of think that the second of those options is probably best. Basic Lift 2170 lbs. will let Superman pick up a fairly heavy truck two-handed; damage 15.8 will require an average human to roll to stay conscious, but isn't likely to kill them.

This gets a little tricky. I assumed that 1 point of damage in V&V was roughly the same as 1d damage in GURPS. The logic is based on pistols and rifles in V&V doing 1d6 and 1d10 respectively. That in turn lead to the assumption that base damage for powers would peak around 11d or so (converting the d20 of Power Blast) and this also suggested an I level game.

That said, there's some oddities - HtH damage for a normal human is about 1d4. Which is about 2.5 points in V&V which would convert to 2d+2 or so in GURPS, far higher than the 1d-2 base. Now if a character is planning to do a lot of punching they're likely to drop 8+ points in Boxing or Karate. That still doesn't bring in anywhere near 2d+2.

That in turn causes inconsistencies with our Kryptonian. In V&V he's doing 3d10, a little more than 50% than a d20 power blast. In GURPS he drops to a base of 4d+1. Even assuming the character has Boxing or Karate, that's only good for a +8 bonus. Including the -1 for punching damage, that's 4d+8 or the equivalent of 6d+1. That's well under my suggested 11d for Power Blast.

On the other hand, I was already thinking of using survivable guns and halving gun damage. That would drop the rifle from 5d+2 to 2d+3 or so and the pistol would drop to 1d+2. If we apply that halving to all V&V abilities, that would get base HtH for a normal around 1d+1 - not too far off GURPS. Our Kryptonian's 3d10 would be 8d+1 which is over the 6d+1 for GURPS. But the Power Blast would convert to 5d+2 so the Kryptonian could outpunch a blaster. So perhaps the following genre rules for a V&V conversion:

1. As in Pulver's "Survivable Guns" in Pyramid 3/44, rifle damage is halved and guns are armor piercing by default. Unlike Pulver, I would apply that to all guns, including pistols. Body armor specifically made for guns has DR halved but is considered hardened by default. So still as effective against guns but less so against powers.

2. Damage from V&V converts at a rate of 1d of GURPS damage for every 2 points average damage from V&V. This makes power damage modest but still more potent than guns.

3. Damage Resistance from V&V powers will typically have the Hardened enhancement, making modest amounts of DR effective at stopping most guns.

Getting back to the Kryptonian, here's a suggested alternate Heightened Strength:

+ 6 ST (Super -10%) [54], Lifting ST 12 (Super -10%) [33], HP +4 (Super -10%) [8] and Damage Resistance 2 (Super -10%, Tough Skin -40%) [5]. Total cost is 100 points.

5 levels (rather than three) would get you to +30 Striking ST, +90 Lifting ST and +50 HP. With Boxing or Karate, you'd have a robust punch by the standard of V&V conversions.

Alternate version, that will stay at 100 points a level (the above has some rounding): + 5 ST (Super -10%) [45], Lifting ST 10 (Super -10%) [27], HP +10 (Super -10%) [18] and Damage Resistance 4 (Super -10%, Tough Skin -40%) [10]. Total cost is 100 points.

Not sure I want to make this radical a change but it might fit the genre better.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Infornific

This gets a little tricky. I assumed that 1 point of damage in V&V was roughly the same as 1d damage in GURPS. The logic is based on pistols and rifles in V&V doing 1d6 and 1d10 respectively. That in turn lead to the assumption that base damage for powers would peak around 11d or so (converting the d20 of Power Blast) and this also suggested an I level game.

It seems to me that what you're trying to do is come up with a configuration of GURPS traits such that a boost to strength has the same effects on character abilities in GURPS that it would have in V&V. And I think that at best that's needlessly complicated and at worst unachievable. It's true that ST in GURPS affects lifting and carrying ability, hand to hand damage, and hit points, and that S in V&V affects these things as well; but the effects scale very differently, due to fundamental differences of game mechanics. And it's almost always impossible to exactly replicate the mechanics of a different game.

When you come right down to it, even GURPS ST and V&V S don't mean the same thing. GURPS ST means that you can lift a certain absolute weight, and inflict a certain absolute damage, and withstand a certain absolute amount of damage. But V&V S means that you can lift a certain proportion of your body weight, and inflict and withstand damage proportionate to your body weight. A V&V hulk with Size Change giving x1.5 height and x7 weight automatically gets more carrying capacity, more hand to hand damage, and more hit points; a GURPS character with that increase in weight would have to buy ST separately to fit.

I think what I would recommend is defining the GURPS version of Heightened Strength B to give the same proportionate increase in Basic Lift that the V&V version gives to carrying capacity. There are a couple of reasons for this:

* The most direct visual manifestation of strength in the comics is lifting and shoving huge weights. If your strong character in V&V can lift a car, but your strong character in GURPS either can lift a tank or struggles to lift a motorcycle, they're not going to seem like "the same character."

* Both hit points and damage are largely artifacts of the game system. We can't really look at an injury in the real world and say "this is equal to X hit points."

* So far as hit points have a physical meaning, that meaning in GURPS is roughly "this attack penetrated to a certain depth," but in V&V it's "this attack destroyed a certain percentage of body tissue." Those are not equivalent concepts.

* In V&V, hit points are modified by both Agility and Intelligence; that is, if you're quick enough to get out of the way, or smart enough to plan not to be in the way to start with, you can stand more damage. This fits the old D&D assumption that hit points include dodging and even luck as well as physical durability. GURPS doesn't do that; it fits the RuneQuest/Champions assumption that hit points are purely a question of physical durability.

So I would look at Heightened Strength B, which gives an average +16.5 to S, as boosting carrying capacity from 1x body weight to 9.8x body weight. The proportionate boost in GURPS would be from BL 20 lbs. to BL 196 lbs., which is approximately what you get from ST 31, or ST +21.

You proposed to have GURPS power builds cost 100 points. You could take ST +11 (Super, -10%) for 99 points. But that seems to be roughly half what you get from Heightened Strength B; you'd have to take it twice. An alternative would be to define Heightened Strength B as ST +22 (Super, -10%) for 198 points, which comes really close to the ST +21 I worked out above. You could put the odd 2 points into perks such as Huge Weapons (SM), Power Grappling, or Acceleration Tolerance.

Or you could keep it at 100 points, and define Heightened Strength A as Strength +10 (with no modifier) for an even 100 points. (Or if you want to get fancy, you could take the Trained modifier from my Pyramid piece "Götterdämmerung": Each such ability must be maintained by an hour of supervised training a week, or twice as much time on self-study (-5%); failure to adhere to this results in gradual loss of abilities (+5%), but they can be regained with a week of fulltime training (+0%). +0%.

This is going to make combat somewhat more lethal than in V&V. You might want to look at rules tweaks to get around this. One that I recommended in GURPS Supers was to say that every character in a four-color setting has a free Hard to Kill +4 (and perhaps that inanimate objects have Easy to Kill +4!).

[maximara]

Using the Cinematic Rules can simulate Comic Code like supers:

*Cinematic Explosions: explosions do no direct damage though they do disarray clothing, blacken faces, and (most importantly) cause knockback.
*Flesh Wounds: ignore all but 1 HP (or FP) of damage . . . at the cost of one unspent character point
*Infinite Ammunition - oh I am supposed to reload the gun?

[Infornific]

Originally Posted by whswhs

It seems to me that what you're trying to do is come up with a configuration of GURPS traits such that a boost to strength has the same effects on character abilities in GURPS that it would have in V&V. And I think that at best that's needlessly complicated and at worst unachievable. It's true that ST in GURPS affects lifting and carrying ability, hand to hand damage, and hit points, and that S in V&V affects these things as well; but the effects scale very differently, due to fundamental differences of game mechanics. And it's almost always impossible to exactly replicate the mechanics of a different game.

Point taken. I still think the survivable guns option would be a good idea for a V&V style campaign but I admit that attempting a literal translation is probably foolish.

Originally Posted by whswhs

When you come right down to it, even GURPS ST and V&V S don't mean the same thing. GURPS ST means that you can lift a certain absolute weight, and inflict a certain absolute damage, and withstand a certain absolute amount of damage. But V&V S means that you can lift a certain proportion of your body weight, and inflict and withstand damage proportionate to your body weight. A V&V hulk with Size Change giving x1.5 height and x7 weight automatically gets more carrying capacity, more hand to hand damage, and more hit points; a GURPS character with that increase in weight would have to buy ST separately to fit.

I think what I would recommend is defining the GURPS version of Heightened Strength B to give the same proportionate increase in Basic Lift that the V&V version gives to carrying capacity. There are a couple of reasons for this:

* The most direct visual manifestation of strength in the comics is lifting and shoving huge weights. If your strong character in V&V can lift a car, but your strong character in GURPS either can lift a tank or struggles to lift a motorcycle, they're not going to seem like "the same character."

* Both hit points and damage are largely artifacts of the game system. We can't really look at an injury in the real world and say "this is equal to X hit points."

* So far as hit points have a physical meaning, that meaning in GURPS is roughly "this attack penetrated to a certain depth," but in V&V it's "this attack destroyed a certain percentage of body tissue." Those are not equivalent concepts.

* In V&V, hit points are modified by both Agility and Intelligence; that is, if you're quick enough to get out of the way, or smart enough to plan not to be in the way to start with, you can stand more damage. This fits the old D&D assumption that hit points include dodging and even luck as well as physical durability. GURPS doesn't do that; it fits the RuneQuest/Champions assumption that hit points are purely a question of physical durability.

So I would look at Heightened Strength B, which gives an average +16.5 to S, as boosting carrying capacity from 1x body weight to 9.8x body weight. The proportionate boost in GURPS would be from BL 20 lbs. to BL 196 lbs., which is approximately what you get from ST 31, or ST +21.

You proposed to have GURPS power builds cost 100 points. You could take ST +11 (Super, -10%) for 99 points. But that seems to be roughly half what you get from Heightened Strength B; you'd have to take it twice. An alternative would be to define Heightened Strength B as ST +22 (Super, -10%) for 198 points, which comes really close to the ST +21 I worked out above. You could put the odd 2 points into perks such as Huge Weapons (SM), Power Grappling, or Acceleration Tolerance.

Or you could keep it at 100 points, and define Heightened Strength A as Strength +10 (with no modifier) for an even 100 points. (Or if you want to get fancy, you could take the Trained modifier from my Pyramid piece "Götterdämmerung": Each such ability must be maintained by an hour of supervised training a week, or twice as much time on self-study (-5%); failure to adhere to this results in gradual loss of abilities (+5%), but they can be regained with a week of fulltime training (+0%). +0%.

This is going to make combat somewhat more lethal than in V&V. You might want to look at rules tweaks to get around this. One that I recommended in GURPS Supers was to say that every character in a four-color setting has a free Hard to Kill +4 (and perhaps that inanimate objects have Easy to Kill +4!).

I think I'll try to keep Heightened Strength in 100 point blocks, mostly for convenience sake. I'm likely to play looser with point cost of other powers but try to keep them in 50 - 100 point blocks. Probably overly influenced by Delvers to Grow but there's something to be said for making it easy to put together a PC. GURPS has a high level of detail & Supers amplifies this.

For now I'd keep Heightened ST a straight boost of ST but +7 ST and +13 Lifting ST might be closer to the effect in V&V.

Also I think on review I've been scrambling Heightened Expertise & Special Weapons and should revise and distinguish between those.

I like the idea of "intensive training" type powers, though I'm tempted to tweak that limitation to -5% with more time needed to get back in condition. A week seems a bit short to recover form requiring intensive training. But that might make more sense as a separate, low cost list of "super normal" powers. Honestly, that might make a good GURPS supplement.

[Infornific]

Originally Posted by maximara

It depends what "9.8 times as strong" actually means: Based on the point total ST can be broken up as follows:
*Lifting ST: (+3 per +1 ST)
*Striking ST: (+5 per +1 ST)
*Hit Points [HP]: (±2 points per ±1 HP);

The 9.8 here mostly focuses on how much you can lift. That said, the Strength stat in V&V affects HtH damage and damage capacity as well as lift. So it's simplest to treat it as a boost to ST. In fairness, V&V Strength isn't the main base for Hit Points so you could make a case for less of a boost to HP.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Infornific

The 9.8 here mostly focuses on how much you can lift. That said, the Strength stat in V&V affects HtH damage and damage capacity as well as lift. So it's simplest to treat it as a boost to ST. In fairness, V&V Strength isn't the main base for Hit Points so you could make a case for less of a boost to HP.

S of 60 gives you a hit point multiplier of 4.4, which boosts hit points from 4 to 18 (in V&V) or from 10 to 44 (in GURPS).

HP +34 is roughly comparable to Striking ST +30. You might approximate this as ST +30 for 300 points, and Lifting ST +65 for another 195 points.