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#1 |
Join Date: Mar 2013
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Hey, I have a player who is big bodybuilding fan. And I have some problems with creating PCs for him.
The main issue is that he always want to have character who is able to lift at least certain amounts of weight in certain exercises (notably Military Press X kg, Bench Press Y kg, Dead Lift Z kg, Barbell Squats, Biceps Curls etc., and also exercies like "I can do X 1-arm-push-ups" or "I can do 20 chin-ups"). How the hell should I stat these things? The second, not as important issue, is about muscle mass vs real strength. We all know the bodybuilders are just weak relatively to their mass - how is best way to treat this? ST according to real strength (above) and HP accordingly to his weight? |
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#2 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Well, bodybuilders and weightlifters are different creatures. Bodybuilder culture focuses on the extremes of appearance (reducing body fat to 5% or less is a common goal), though they often gain a decent amount of strength in the process of conditioning and sculpting their bodies. Weightlifting culture focuses on the extremes in performance (lift strength and lift endurance), though they will often gain a muscular physique through adding muscle mass and conditioning muscle mass.
HP is an abstraction of overall durability, so it is only dependant on weight when related to the durability of a specific substance (for example, a metric ton of bronze should have a lot more HP than a metric ton of pine, even when we take into account the difference in DR). When it comes to human characters, HP is only related to weight dependent on build (for example, a HP 10 person with Skinny will average 1/3rd the weight of an HP 10 person with Very Fat), and that is just an average. It is quite possible for an HP 10 person with Skinny to weigh 80 lbs and a HP 10 person with Very Fat to weigh 350 lbs (a 4.375x difference in mass for the same HP). Bodybuilders should probably have mass on the lower end of the weight scale for their build for their HP, as they have reduced their body fat by a great deal for competition. Extreme versions may also have reduced HP for their ST due to the damage that their activities have done to their body. Conversely, weightlifters may mass on the upper end of the weight scale for their build for their HP, as gaining bulk is not necessarily an issue in weightlifting, and may have increased HP due to their activities. |
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#3 | |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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A suggestion: The ability to lift weights is clearly ST-based, and the ability to do it many times is clearly a matter of HT and fitness levels. Get your player to work out how Military Press Xkg, Bench Press Ykg, Dead Lift Zkg and so on relate, since he knows more about that than you, and "the game system doesn't work in as much detail as he wants." His output should be something like MP Xkg = BP 0.9Xkg = 1.2Xkg, and so on. With any luck, he'll stop bothering you. If he produces that information, and it looks credible to you, pick a value of X for ST 10, and scale X by GURPS Basic Lift for other ST scores. Finally, sell him ST, Lifting ST, Striking ST, and HP, until he works out that they're of limited value as an adventurer.
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The Path of Cunning. Indexes: DFRPG Characters, Advantage of the Week, Disadvantage of the Week, Skill of the Week, Techniques. |
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#4 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Alternately, you could give him ST 6 and a perk Can Military Lift X kg, only when doing this specific lift in a controlled measured circumstance, *never* useful during an adventure. By and large record measured lifts measure the ability of a fraction of your muscles to move in one specific direction, which is *why* bodybuilders are "weak relative to their mass", they aren't really, it's just they're only unnaturally "strong" at very specific tasks that are largely useless in more ordinary contexts.
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-- MA Lloyd |
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#5 | |||
Join Date: Mar 2013
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100 kg untrained man can have something like MP 40 kg; BP 60 kg (MPx1.5); DL 75 kg (MPx1.875); BS 60 kg (MPx1.5). 100 kg man traning for a couple of years will be more like MP 75 kg; BP 100 kg (MPx1.333(3)); DL 160 kg (MPx more_than_factor_2); BS 135 kg (MPx1.8). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 60 kg untrained man is more likely to can do MP 30 kg; BP 45 kg (MPx1.5); DL 50 kg (MPx1.666(6)); BS 40 kg (MPx1.333(3)) 60 kg man training for a couple of years: MP 50 kg; BP 70 kg (MPx1.4); DL 100+ kg (MPx2.[something]); BS 90 kg (MPx1.8) As you can see, such table won't work, there are many variables, and I accounted just 2 of them (and eyeballed these). I think it should be more acceptable if I could tell him what >exactly< is Basic Lift etc. In the Basic Set there is: Quote:
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And how to account Extra-Effort and the Lifting skill? Last edited by GWJ; 08-20-2020 at 09:59 AM. |
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#6 |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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So much for that plan!
However someone without training in lifting would do it. It is entirely possible not to know what any of these moves are - I'm an example.
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The Path of Cunning. Indexes: DFRPG Characters, Advantage of the Week, Disadvantage of the Week, Skill of the Week, Techniques. |
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#7 | |
Join Date: Mar 2013
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BTW of course I still have my gold Ultimate Argument: "The gym exercises are moves in controllable, ideal conditions. If you lift X kg in Y way it doesn't mean you can lift in that way anything weighing X kg - usually these items are more unconvenient to lift, and your position, rest of your EQ etc. means the actual conditions are much worse than at the gym. And conversely, while doing exercise you often deliberately use your muscles in non-optimal way, to make them the weakest link in the chain, and put more emphasis to them - when you're lifting to lift, not to traing, you'll usually do it in some other way. So you could lift much less than at the gym, and you could lift much more than at the gym - and nobody can tell that accurately without actual field tests." But I want to give him so much accuracy I can, without doing some advanced mathemathics about it every time :P |
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#8 |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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World records are definitely specialized feats in controlled circumstances. At a lower specificity, there are things GURPS does well and things it doesn't do as well.
Body builders rarely have exceptional ST, although they might have Fit if they don't abuse themselves too much. They aren't likely to break any records apart from "lowest possible body fat and not die." Weightlifters are different. They come in a variety of builds, and have a variety of specialties. I think for GURPS purposes, you can shoot for ST that splits the difference. Then realistically add like +1 Lifting ST or Arm ST. Maybe a perk, Unusual Training, could allow a "realistic" specialist to go up to about +3. Most weightlifters I would say are Fit or better, apart from the occasional monster power lifter who does not train in a "normal" way. I'm not sure where the GURPS benchmarks were derived from... going by the numbers, I rate about ST 13, although I can't do a clean chin-up to save my life. |
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#9 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Extra Effort and Lifting Skill as successd fully applied to competitive lifts is something like a Will-based Lifting Skill of 17 or higher. With such a Skill number and the expenditure of 1 FP your lifter can increase his lift by 10% of weight 98% of the time. If he thinks a 90% success rate is good enough he could shoot for a 30% increase. Some people wpould argue that you could aim for a 70% increase and have a 50% chnce of setting a World's Record or bombing out of the competition but Real world competitors don't match up with this pattern to my knowledge. Real World sports don't actually match up with the Gurps rules very closely.
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Fred Brackin |
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#10 |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Most definitely alone
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Rather than trying to figure out what GURPS ST score matches to a particular real world established technique*, see if he can figure out how he would want his character to perform on the actual GURPs metrics. Make sure the character is strong enough to reasonably meet (with Lifting, Extra Effort, etc) all of the expectations he would have on GURPS metrics, and then just handwave it.
Basically, what does he think a guy with the stats and skills he does want would be able to do in GURPS? Once he (and you) have created a character that satisfies that, then just assume it can also achieve the specific real-world feats as well. *unless you are doing a game where those techniques are a consequential focus of the game, and need to have objective mechanical rules, in which case, I dunno.
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Build a man a fire and he's warm for the night. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. |
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Tags |
basic lift, strength |
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