Highest strength of TL10 human?

[Tallor]

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.)

[McAllister]

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.

[Tallor]

Originally Posted by McAllister

...
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.

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.

I figured that the ending result would be a ST 14 athlete grafted into 17, then Reinforced into ST 17 with Lift/Strike 21. The whole reason I asked is because I was wondering if there was some kind of limit of 20 on non-giant human, and/or if there were "space adventure" TL11+ wacky ideas y'all had that would turn someone superhumanly strong... but not genre-breakingly elephant-strong. :P

[Flyndaran]

14 is as strong as two men; 18 stronger than 3 men; 20 as strong as 4 men.
How many men do you as the GM think is the limit beyond which things get silly?

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

14 is as strong as two men; 18 stronger than 3 men; 20 as strong as 4 men.
How many men do you as the GM think is the limit beyond which things get silly?

My strength is the strength of ten, because my heart is pure. :-)

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Icelander

My strength is the strength of ten, because my heart is pure. :-)

My strength is a thousandfold greater, for I wield the manrikigusari!

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

14 is as strong as two men; 18 stronger than 3 men; 20 as strong as 4 men.
How many men do you as the GM think is the limit beyond which things get silly?

Meh, this isn't as impressive as you make it sound.

In GURPS, a person of average strength can deadlift (lift with 2 hands in 4 seconds) 160 lbs, and a person with ST 20 can deadlift 640 Lbs (with the help of neither Lifting Skill nor Extra Effort). Since Basic Lifts are added in GURPS when people work together, that is indeed "the Strength of 4 men!"

However, it's not at all an unrealistic range of ability in the real world.

I can probably deadlift over just over 200 lbs (I never lift at my maximum weight, so I can't be sure) and Hafthor Bjornson can lift 994 lbs.* Since I'm a man with above average ST (I work out 3 times a week not counting martial arts classes) it's very reasonable to say that Hafthor has the strength of 4 men. If there were 4 of me trying to lift the bar in that video, we'd fail. It's not even much of a stretch to say he has the ST of 5 men.

It's worth noting, that while one of the strongest people alive, Hafthor is not the record holder at the deadlift.





*That comes out to a basic lift of 124 lbs and a lifting ST of 24. But let's assume he's getting a 50% bonus to his Basic Lift from VERY good rolls on Lifting and Extra Effort--that's a Basic Lift of 93 Lbs which is STILL a lifting ST of 21! I'm very pleased at how this works out in GURPS's favor. Hafthor is a multiple "World's Strongest Man" winner, who probably has ST 20 and Special Exercises (Lifting ST 1) all bought at a discount thanks to Giganticism.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by aesir23

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.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Tallor

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.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

...
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?