strength in Villains and Vigilantes

[whswhs]

I've lately been looking back at Villains and Vigilantes, and particularly its ability to model some of the classic DC superheroes. (This is V&V 2.1, which is fairly recent, but it uses the same mechanics as 2.0, which dates to 1982.) It doesn't seem capable of modeling the more cosmic heroes of the Silver Age; multiple levels of Heightened Speed won't even get up to the speed of sound, and there's no way it can describe the Silver Age Superman, who could shove the moon out of orbit. But it looks as if it could do the original Superman of the 1930s with no problem.

But this led me to think about D-scale, C-scale, and M-scale heroes (in GURPS terms that I contributed to defining). What would it take to do these in V&V?

A V&V character's "carrying capacity" is calculated as ([S/10]^3+E/10) x body weight/2, where S is Strength and E is Endurance (both rolled on 3d6). An ordinary human being can "carry" their own body weight. (This is heroically optimistic; a more realistic figure would have a divisor of 5. "Carrying capacity" might better be thought of as "maximum lift.")

So to get 10x that, a character would need a multiplier of 20 rather than 2. Assuming that this comes entirely from Strength, with Endurance remaining at 10, (S/10)^3 needs to equal 19. So S needs to be 26.7, rounding to 27. Heightened Strength B gives +3d10 to Strength, averaging +16.5, which gives a total of 26.5, almost exactly right. D-scale is easy.

For C-scale, Strength needs to be 58, which can be reached by taking Heightened Strength B three times; since powers are randomly rolled, that's quite unlikely, but not impossible. M-scale needs Strength 126, which requires almost exactly seven occurrences of Heightened Strength B, which is statistically effectively impossible. If the characters are being designed by choosing powers rather than rolling them, both are possible, and C-scale is fairly reasonable, but M-scale is an extreme design and would only work in a campaign that allowed a lot of powers (the maximum roll is seven powers, or eight powers and a disadvantage).

It looks as if V&V could do a generic strong character, or the original 1930s Superman, or a calm Hulk, or the John Byrne Superman. But I don't think it could do an angry Hulk, or the Silver Age Superman. Not bad for a first generation supers game.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by whswhs

A V&V character's "carrying capacity" is calculated as ([S/10]^3+E/10) x body weight/2, where S is Strength and E is Endurance (both rolled on 3d6).

It looks as if V&V could do a generic strong character, or the original 1930s Superman, or a calm Hulk, or the John Byrne Superman. But I don't think it could do an angry Hulk, or the Silver Age Superman. Not bad for a first generation supers game.

Just as a V&V exploitation note similar to other contemporary simulationist FGU games body weight is critically important. This stands in marked contrast to Gurps' and other systems disinterest in the subject.

For this V&V ogffers nt only Growth but in some published character examples I've seen the undefined wild cards of "Body Power" and/or "Mutant Power" used to multiply body weight.

"Dense flesh" was common to the Marvel character guides of the time. Asgardians and most gamma-powered characters were noted as having flesh 3x as dense as the human norm. The density of DC characters of that period seemed to vary however was convenient.

This body mass increase of course acts as a direct multiplier of carrying capacity and HP as well. So some character types might be even more achievable than an analysis of Strength alone might show.

[David Johnston2]

Fred's right. There are exploitable synergies in V&V, and one of the settings for Size Change, 1.5 height/7x weight is specifically intended for Hulk knockoffs. The Hulk would also have Damage Absorption to Carrying Capacity (which would also increase his damage under V&V rules). Increased density could be acquired as a Body Power. I think Maxima, their experiment in showing how close V&V could get to Superman had that.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Fred's right. There are exploitable synergies in V&V, and one of the settings for Size Change, 1.5 height/7x weight is specifically intended for Hulk knockoffs. The Hulk would also have Damage Absorption to Carrying Capacity (which would also increase his damage under V&V rules). Increased density could be acquired as a Body Power. I think Maxima, their experiment in showing how close V&V could get to Superman had that.

I'm aware of the effects Fred cites; in fact, I had noted that Strength is not absolute, but relative to body weight, in designing some test characters. I noticed the 1.5x/7x multipliers as clearly applying to characters with increased girth, such as the Thing.

On the other hand, the "denser molecular structure" line doesn't appear in the original Action Comics writeup of Superman. And for that matter, it's not obvious in the early comic book treatments of characters such as Thor or the Hulk; for one thing, they aren't shown as making the floor creak under their huge weight, or crushing or breaking chairs, or sinking when they try to swim. The mentions of density in sources such as the Marvel Universe handbooks strike me as afterthoughts attempting to provide a rationalization, but not consistent with the data. I don't feel obliged to follow this theory in what I'm doing. (The Hulk being physically huge, on the other hand, was there from issue #1 back in the 1960s.)

Body Power seems to be limited to powers that go with a specific body part. Mutant Power doesn't have a lot of application in DC continuity, and not at all in the Golden Age or the early Silver Age (up through at least the first JSA/JLA crossover); I'm houseruling that it can simply be called "Special Power" and used for any power that isn't elsewhere specified. That could certainly be used for an increase in body density, for a character who had that, such as Ferro Lad (though in his case it actually would be Mutant Power, I think!).

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I'm aware of the effects Fred cites; in fact, I had noted that Strength is not absolute, but relative to body weight, in designing some test characters. I noticed the 1.5x/7x multipliers as clearly applying to characters with increased girth, such as the Thing.

On the other hand, the "denser molecular structure" line doesn't appear in the original Action Comics writeup of Superman. And for that matter, it's not obvious in the early comic book treatments of characters such as Thor or the Hulk; for one thing, they aren't shown as making the floor creak under their huge weight, or crushing or breaking chairs, or sinking when they try to swim. The mentions of density in sources such as the Marvel Universe handbooks strike me as afterthoughts attempting to provide a rationalization, but not consistent with the data. I don't feel obliged to follow this theory in what I'm doing. (The Hulk being physically huge, on the other hand, was there from issue #1 back in the 1960s.)

Body Power seems to be limited to powers that go with a specific body part. Mutant Power doesn't have a lot of application in DC continuity, and not at all in the Golden Age or the early Silver Age (up through at least the first JSA/JLA crossover); I'm houseruling that it can simply be called "Special Power" and used for any power that isn't elsewhere specified. That could certainly be used for an increase in body density, for a character who had that, such as Ferro Lad (though in his case it actually would be Mutant Power, I think!).

That's not a houserule. There's nothing in Mutant Power that actually says you have to be a marvel-style mutant to have one. In fact it specifically says you don't since your "Mutant Power" can be a device although inexplicably not an Item (or perhaps not, since an increased chance of "Psionics" takes its place)

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

That's not a houserule. There's nothing in Mutant Power that actually says you have to be a marvel-style mutant to have one. In fact it specifically says you don't since your "Mutant Power" can be a device although inexplicably not an Item (or perhaps not, since an increased chance of "Psionics" takes its place)

It seems to me that calling it something different is a sort of houserule, though a rather trivial one. I'm not going to require players to come up with a rationale about their characters being mutants.