Has anyone solved the brick problem?

[Gef]

The problem I refer to is specific to a supers campaign, that a "brick" with enough strength and toughness to take on a main battle tank is hellaciously expensive, whereas a character with another concept can pose an existential threat to governments on far fewer points. While ST and DR may be fairly costed in other genres, a government that has lots of tanks is less worried about the human equivalent than they are about the guy who can mind control the leader, replace him by shapeshifting, steal official secrets with telepathy, predict the stock market, locate submarines anywhere in the world, create fissionables out of thin air, wipe out a city with repeated application of a 1HP wide-area malediction, or open a gate through which an army can pour into the capital for a decapitation strike.

There are ways to build a brick on the cheap, but they're clunky, for instance start with Insubstantial and use limitations to strip away everything except the part where he can only be harmed by attacks with Affects Insubstantial. Or Affliction (ST bonus, Cumulative, Cosmic No Roll, Enhanced Duration, Reflexive, Self Only); the guy uses this ability on himself for free, continuously, so multiply the bonus by duration in seconds and that's the net benefit. Not sure if it's allowed, but applied to anything but ST for a brick in a comics genre, it's very broken. With Altered Time Rate, you get a guy who can live his whole life while the universe blinks.

The obvious thing to do seems to be changing the cost, to make a brick posible on the 500pt I allow for all those other scary people. Tentatively using an exponential formula, that's just as clunky: Pay for level X, and get level Y, where for X greater than 25,

Y = (X-25)^2/2+25

(round up), otherwise Y =X.

That means things are normal in the human range and a bit beyoond, but after 25, you get 26, 27, 30, 33, 38, 43, 50, 57, and so forth. One thing I like about it is that you can buy no level of ST where damage fails to increase over the previous level. Another thing I like about it is that with creative limitations, you can manage a kiloton lift (buy ST 72, get ST 1130) with a 500pt character and have something left for being tougher, too: Enough DR to stop small arms, Diffuse to limit damage from larger attacks (especially important against grab-n-smash by another brick under Technical Grappling rules), and Damage Reduction against those area attacks that Diffuse doesn't stop. Yeah, it takes a thoroughly min-maxed design, but it's doable.

What I don't like about my method is that it's almost as clunky as the alternatives that I'm trying to avoid. Has anyone here come up with something more elegant?

Thanks,

GEF

[Leynok]

It really depends on the scale that you take it. 500 points? No, you won't be bashing down tanks.
Damage Reduction and ST with Super Effort both make use out of the speed/range table, and become incredibly efficient (especially with a cosmic enhancement to round down damage), but only with enough points sunk into them.
Sadly GURPS doesn't support the Brick types very well, because it views being able to dish out loads of damage, carry heavy loads and resist a lot of damage as a very effective thing, and naturally worth a lot of points.

[vitruvian]

Originally Posted by Gef

The problem I refer to is specific to a supers campaign, that a "brick" with enough strength and toughness to take on a main battle tank is hellaciously expensive, whereas a character with another concept can pose an existential threat to governments on far fewer points. While ST and DR may be fairly costed in other genres, a government that has lots of tanks is less worried about the human equivalent than they are about the guy who can mind control the leader, replace him by shapeshifting, steal official secrets with telepathy, predict the stock market, locate submarines anywhere in the world, create fissionables out of thin air, wipe out a city with repeated application of a 1HP wide-area malediction, or open a gate through which an army can pour into the capital for a decapitation strike.

There are ways to build a brick on the cheap, but they're clunky, for instance start with Insubstantial and use limitations to strip away everything except the part where he can only be harmed by attacks with Affects Insubstantial. Or Affliction (ST bonus, Cumulative, Cosmic No Roll, Enhanced Duration, Reflexive, Self Only); the guy uses this ability on himself for free, continuously, so multiply the bonus by duration in seconds and that's the net benefit. Not sure if it's allowed, but applied to anything but ST for a brick in a comics genre, it's very broken. With Altered Time Rate, you get a guy who can live his whole life while the universe blinks.

The obvious thing to do seems to be changing the cost, to make a brick posible on the 500pt I allow for all those other scary people. Tentatively using an exponential formula, that's just as clunky: Pay for level X, and get level Y, where for X greater than 25,

Y = (X-25)^2/2+25

(round up), otherwise Y =X.

That means things are normal in the human range and a bit beyoond, but after 25, you get 26, 27, 30, 33, 38, 43, 50, 57, and so forth. One thing I like about it is that you can buy no level of ST where damage fails to increase over the previous level. Another thing I like about it is that with creative limitations, you can manage a kiloton lift (buy ST 72, get ST 1130) with a 500pt character and have something left for being tougher, too: Enough DR to stop small arms, Diffuse to limit damage from larger attacks (especially important against grab-n-smash by another brick under Technical Grappling rules), and Damage Reduction against those area attacks that Diffuse doesn't stop. Yeah, it takes a thoroughly min-maxed design, but it's doable.

What I don't like about my method is that it's almost as clunky as the alternatives that I'm trying to avoid. Has anyone here come up with something more elegant?

Thanks,

GEF

I'm guessing that you don't like the use of Super-Effort ST and Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction) to make a character's strength and toughness logarithmically effective? I guess if you're looking at character point totals around 500 pts, that is in the not so sweet in between spot where Super-ST and IT (DR) remain pretty expensive as compared to some potentially very effective other abilities, although I think things get more comparable at ~1000 pts and up.

Anyway, if you just don't like Super-ST, there's always the option of just recosting ST.

You could either go for the solution that's been bruited about in this forum a few times (and is preserved at TBone's site) of making it so each 50 points spent brings ST (and HP!) up a level on the Speed/Range table's progression (so 50 for ST 15, 100 for ST 20, 150 for ST 30, 200 for ST 50, 250 for ST 70, 300 for ST 100, 350 for ST 150, and so on), with in between values prorated.

Or, if you want to go linear at some point so that thrust damage from ST doesn't start being cheaper than Innate Attack, you could adapt the old 3e costing for Enhanced ST, although I might stop short of making it 1/2 CP per point of ST above a certain level, since that is actually just as cheap as energy blasts with more uses. Maybe something like the regular 10 CP per point of ST up to 20, 5 CP per point of ST up to 30, and 2 CP per point of ST thereafter, with Striking ST Only at -50%, Lifting ST Only at -70%, and HP Only at -80%. Sure, even with Striking ST Only, an eventual 10 CP per additional die of Thrust damage might seem a little steep, but remember that even in the absence of giant or superheavy cutting or impaling weapons, that still allows you to throw objects for considerable damage at range and bonuses from unarmed combat skills can apply.

I guess in deciding which type of solution works for you, you need to consider if any linearly priced for effect ability can ever really compete on a point efficiency basis with other abilities that are either pretty scary once you have them at any effective level (like Mind Control or Insubstantiality), or that are always exponential/logarithmic in effect (like Enhanced Move). I.e., are you trying to let the point efficiency of ST and HP and maybe DR compete with the point efficiency of Innate Attacks, or is the comparison with Enhanced Move, or with Afflictions and Mind Control? The further along the scale your answer lies, the more chance that you'll not only want to go for a logarithmic progression of some kind for ST, but that you'll want to do the same for things like DR and Innate Attack starting at some point.

[Gef]

Hi Vitruvian, exactly right, Super Effort and Damage Reduction don't do enough at the 500pt range. That's actually 100pt normal guy, plus 200pt mutant template, plus 200pt power. I think of the characters who already have one godlike power and imagine what they'd be with a couple more at the point range you suggest, while the brick is still a guy who can win any fistfight but can still be mind controlled, teleported away to Mars, or just taken out by enough firepower. Yeah, it may take an army versus a brick, but armies are easier to come by. It doesn't sound like the solution I'm after. I actually don't mind if ST-based damage winds up being cheaper than Innate Attack, because there are all kinds of ways to make Innate Attacks better. You can apply those to ST-based damage, too, of course, but you then you pay according to what the equivalent Innate Attack would cost.

I get the impression that the consensus of the forum might be to hand out enough points to do bricks with Super Effort, enforce genre conventions to keep them relevant, and say no to many concepts that would spend the same total in other ways, like planet-wide mind control.

Don't get mw wrong, please. I'm not say that "the point system sucks." Has faults, sure, but overall, I like it. I just find that it breaks down in this particular case, in this particular genre. And I have a workable solution, but I'd like something a bit cleaner, if anyone has it. I'm not sure the speed-range table is much neater than my formula, though.

GEF

[vitruvian]

Originally Posted by Gef

Hi Vitruvian, exactly right, Super Effort and Damage Reduction don't do enough at the 500pt range. That's actually 100pt normal guy, plus 200pt mutant template, plus 200pt power. I think of the characters who already have one godlike power and imagine what they'd be with a couple more at the point range you suggest, while the brick is still a guy who can win any fistfight but can still be mind controlled, teleported away to Mars, or just taken out by enough firepower. Yeah, it may take an army versus a brick, but armies are easier to come by. It doesn't sound like the solution I'm after. I actually don't mind if ST-based damage winds up being cheaper than Innate Attack, because there are all kinds of ways to make Innate Attacks better. You can apply those to ST-based damage, too, of course, but you then you pay according to what the equivalent Innate Attack would cost.

Is that the consensus of the forum? Hand out enough points to do bricks with Super Effort, enforce genre conventions to keep them relevant, and say no to half the concepts proposed to spend those points on other powers?

GEF

No, I thought I offered a number of reasonable alternatives to Super-ST that don't have that costly nature at the lower point levels. Sure, on the order of ~300 points for ST 100 isn't cheap, but given that it includes full HP (your HP for purposes of mass, so Slams, falling, and other collisions could be lower), there's quite a bit of toughness covered there as well.

Or do you have major issues with the cost of DR and IT:DR as well?

Another interesting idea from a few years ago.... http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=1960

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Gef

Hi Vitruvian, exactly right, Super Effort and Damage Reduction don't do enough at the 500pt range. That's actually 100pt normal guy, plus 200pt mutant template, plus 200pt power. I think of the characters who already have one godlike power and imagine what they'd be with a couple more at the point range you suggest, while the brick is still a guy who can win any fistfight but can still be mind controlled, teleported away to Mars, or just taken out by enough firepower. Yeah, it may take an army versus a brick, but armies are easier to come by. It doesn't sound like the solution I'm after. I actually don't mind if ST-based damage winds up being cheaper than Innate Attack, because there are all kinds of ways to make Innate Attacks better. You can apply those to ST-based damage, too, of course, but you then you pay according to what the equivalent Innate Attack would cost.

Have you looked at buying Super-Strength at a moderately high level and then buying Power Blow on top of that? You can get a rather high Power Blow for not many points by comparison with what ST costs.

[simply Nathan]

My solution for supers is to just reprice ST to 1/level, Striking ST to 1/two levels, Lifting ST to 1/3 levels, and HP to 1/5 levels. I'd still charge full price for DR and Injury Tolerance, but I've always hated Super Effort.

[ArchonShiva]

The Four-Color solution isn't on the Brick, it's on the tanks - non-super weapons and equipment, especially on the higher-end, is notoriously weaker than it should be.

You don't want the Hulk to have DR 5k to shrug off the blast - you want the blast to do only 6dx2 damage, so Hawkeye doesn't die immediately from it.

Seriously, trained normals get back up from being hit by attacks that can punch through brick walls. ST and DR aren't the solution here.

Unless you want a "what would actually happen?" campaign. You may want to check out Warren Ellis' Ruins.

[Gef]

Originally Posted by ArchonShiva

Unless you want a "what would actually happen?" campaign.

That is the point, yes.

I see a level of ST that's really useful not for punching through tank armor, but for carrying a big effing gun that can, along with armor that'll protect you from anything but a direct hit from similar weapons. I don't necessarily want to make that level cheap. But, the next step up, and an expected feature of the mutant premise, is that the strongest one around can punch through a tank. Maybe Bill's right, and I should look at Breaking Power Blow to make that work.

Originally Posted by ArchonShiva

The Four-Color solution isn't on the Brick, it's on the tanks

Exactly my problem. I'm starting with a comic book premise, but I want to extrapolate logically from there, not enforce tinfoil tanks just to favor a brick's self-esteem.

[Gef]

Originally Posted by vitruvian

No, I thought I offered a number of reasonable alternatives

Sorry if I sounded snippy. I actually edited that last bit, evidently at the same time you were replying.

I think my biggest problem with Super Effort is this: Its percent value wipes out the discount from limitations. There's a big difference in price between ST+X and ST+X (Must Be Angry), but the difference between ST+Y (Super Effort) and ST+Y (Super Effort, Must Be Angry) is much smaller as a proportion. Once you go Cosmic, with any advantage, a -20% "half the time" limitation isn't worth the savings; you apply it for characterization or not at all. And that's a good argument for multiplicative modifiers, but they have their own problems. Ah well.

on the order of ~300 points for ST 100 isn't cheap

Does ST 100 (punch weaker than a ma deuce) suit your idea of a brick?