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Old 09-11-2016, 09:17 AM   #21
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: Highest strength of TL10 human?

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Originally Posted by Tallor View Post
NOTE: I am the GM! I just like having solid guidelines.

1. Grafts stack on base ST, Reinforcement stacks on top of Grafts. I suppose you could be grafted with pre-Reinforced muscles to avoid the weird math of having Reinforced muscles AND ordinary, grafted muscles. o-O

2. Bone Stimulation gives the standard +1 HP and allows +2 to total muscle enhancement--so a net +2 instead of a +2 for each.
These assumptions (plus not going over TL10) leave you with 14+5+6 for Lift/Strike 25.

You could add some more lift and/or striking by studying the right Martial arts styles. Some Arm ST too for Foot Archery.

Arm ST is probably the most realistic or at least most common in the Real world. Not just in archers either. Para-athletes, gymnasts, arm-wrestlers and for just one arm tennis players and others who use one arm much more than the other.

At TL10 Muscle Grafts are probably replaced by that muscle-boosting nanovirus talked about in the text of the grafts mod. It's not made explicit but I judge that muscles are among the "soft tissues" spoken of in the TL10 proteus virus section.

As a Real World note, c. 10 years ago when we were playtesting Bio-tech (yes, I have been hanging around here that long and longer) I found a reference to the international body responsible looking for ways to uncover athletes improving their strength by using gene therapy to get better genes for building muscles.

So we might be looking at a TL9 tech anyway and transplants of vat-grown muscles are retro-tech now. Like battlefield chemical lasers and maybe some other things I could name.
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Old 09-11-2016, 04:46 PM   #22
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Default Re: Highest strength of TL10 human?

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Meh, this isn't as impressive as you make it sound.
..
I wasn't making any claims, just describing comparisons.
I think world class lifters are using maxed out Lifting scores, Extra Effort rolls, "out of combat" set ups, and have specialized their bodies and muscles for specific lifts. I don't think for one second that you can extrapolate their freakish best to all aspects of strength or even "just" lifting strength.
I don't think it needs to be said that your linked guy and most if not all other record holders have used steroids. Because OP did even mention steroids after all.
Though I think we all agree that super strong people HAVE to be enormous just to contain all the muscle required, right? Gurps counts mass as a feature to avoid meta-gaming and complexity, but in reality it's quite important.
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Old 09-11-2016, 04:52 PM   #23
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Default Re: Highest strength of TL10 human?

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
...
As a Real World note, c. 10 years ago when we were playtesting Bio-tech (yes, I have been hanging around here that long and longer) I found a reference to the international body responsible looking for ways to uncover athletes improving their strength by using gene therapy to get better genes for building muscles. ...
OMG, you have good genes?! You can't compete. ??? Heck, even with genetic chimeras, real people could have differing genetic markers in different body parts/tissues.
Now known transgenic gene therapy where the markers don't exist in the human genome are a different story.
Then you'd get the related issue of transgenic therapy that doesn't directly relate to strength or whatever is most important to the sport, but perhaps helps anyway like regenerative/regrowth enhancements. It would allow them to train harder with lower risk of crippling.
Has there ever been a weightlifting contest where no one was wearing braces from recent injuries?
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Old 09-11-2016, 05:05 PM   #24
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Default Re: Highest strength of TL10 human?

One thing that may bear mentioning is that humans are 1/2 as strong as other primates when corrected for mass. We seem specialized for endurance and digestive efficiency. Cats are at the other end so you have a lazy zoo living man sized female tiger eating 5k Calories.
I imagine that if you only cared about strength, ultra tech could easily go that route. Leave the endurance enhancements to the other med techs. ;)
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Old 09-11-2016, 07:17 PM   #25
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: Highest strength of TL10 human?

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OMG, you have good genes?! You can't compete. ??? ?
At a guess they would be looking for markers of the carrier for the gene therapy and not the good genes themselves. There was usually a retrovirus involved in those rather overoptimistic attempts at gene therapy back then.

....and somebody who'd had a different gene therapy could hypothetically generate a false positive. It's all worked out as hypothetical from the view of 10 years later. Still, it wouldn't be the first time someone's (probably) legit asthma medicine showed up on a test for stimulants.
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Old 09-12-2016, 01:30 PM   #26
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Default Re: Highest strength of TL10 human?

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
At a guess they would be looking for markers of the carrier for the gene therapy and not the good genes themselves. There was usually a retrovirus involved in those rather overoptimistic attempts at gene therapy back then.

....and somebody who'd had a different gene therapy could hypothetically generate a false positive. It's all worked out as hypothetical from the view of 10 years later. Still, it wouldn't be the first time someone's (probably) legit asthma medicine showed up on a test for stimulants.
Retroviral gene therapy just inserts the new gene transposon randomly (which is why there are mutagenic and cancer risks) and additionally inserts long-terminal-repeats carrying the genes for reverse-transcriptase; these should be detectable.

CRISPR and other direct nuclease editing techniques might be less detectable, but currently these therapies are on a cell-by-cell basis; having any measurable effect on bulk muscle development would require absurdly impractical time-spans (centuries probably).

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Old 09-12-2016, 03:09 PM   #27
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Default Re: Highest strength of TL10 human?

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Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
I wasn't making any claims, just describing comparisons.
I think world class lifters are using maxed out Lifting scores, Extra Effort rolls, "out of combat" set ups, and have specialized their bodies and muscles for specific lifts. I don't think for one second that you can extrapolate their freakish best to all aspects of strength or even "just" lifting strength.
I agree with you in part, but I think you're significantly overstating the case. In the specific case of Hafthor--he's a generalist of a strength athlete--it's how the World's Strongest Man competition is designed, with a variety of strength feats involving irregularly shaped, awkward objects. I'm sure he uses the deadlift as part of his strength training regime, but he's not a deadlift specialist--there's no reason to believe he has specialized his body for that particular lift.

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Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
Though I think we all agree that super strong people HAVE to be enormous just to contain all the muscle required, right? Gurps counts mass as a feature to avoid meta-gaming and complexity, but in reality it's quite important.
I absolutely agree--mass is a big component in overall strength (although people can, obviously have varying strength to size ratios--gymnast for example tend to be shockingly strong for their size).

It's not particularly relevant to my argument though. The OP is asking for the highest possible human strength at TL 10--the answer to that question is going to start as a very large man with good genes for muscle building and work from there.
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Old 09-12-2016, 05:47 PM   #28
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Default Re: Highest strength of TL10 human?

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Originally Posted by aesir23 View Post
I agree with you in part, but I think you're significantly overstating the case. In the specific case of Hafthor--he's a generalist of a strength athlete--it's how the World's Strongest Man competition is designed, with a variety of strength feats involving irregularly shaped, awkward objects. I'm sure he uses the deadlift as part of his strength training regime, but he's not a deadlift specialist--there's no reason to believe he has specialized his body for that particular lift.
This is true. In order to be a world class strongman, the athlete would necessarily have to be exceptional at the deadlift, the squat and the overhead press. But there is nowhere near the level of specialisation one would see in a powerlifter or Olympic lifter. Strongman competitors would be more easily modelled with ST, Lifting ST and Lifting skill than the other common strength athletes IMO.
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Old 09-12-2016, 06:50 PM   #29
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: Highest strength of TL10 human?

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Strongman competitors would be more easily modelled with ST, Lifting ST and Lifting skill than the other common strength athletes IMO.
I used to watch a lot of World's strongest Man and it appeared to me that some of its' events were actually aerobic in that they required the competitor to exert himself for a significant period of time with some of them being quite a bit better than others.

Some of the events involved moving and/or carrying those massive weights too and thus would be Encumbrance + Move score rather than just a Lift number.

Not at all the sort of thing that rewards specialization and it produced a relatively high percentage of winners under 300 lbs. The heaviest champion I can remember weighed 350 but he was 7' tall.
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Old 09-12-2016, 07:48 PM   #30
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Default Re: Highest strength of TL10 human?

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
I used to watch a lot of World's strongest Man and it appeared to me that some of its' events were actually aerobic in that they required the competitor to exert himself for a significant period of time with some of them being quite a bit better than others.

Some of the events involved moving and/or carrying those massive weights too and thus would be Encumbrance + Move score rather than just a Lift number.

Not at all the sort of thing that rewards specialization and it produced a relatively high percentage of winners under 300 lbs. The heaviest champion I can remember weighed 350 but he was 7' tall.
Yep, they need to be quite fit as well, at least for short bursts of activity. Rapid movement under load is definitely a requirement, IIRC that's where multiple champion Mariusz Pudzianowski excelled.

Height is an interesting one, they need to be big to attach absurd amounts of muscle onto their skeletons but yeah over a certain point it seems to hinder peak performance. The sweet spot is probably between 6'2" to 6'6". Being short is a disadvantage on certain events as well, I think loading stones onto raised platforms favours taller competitors.
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