Carrying Capacity when you're Hercules

[TavishArtair]

K succinctly pointed out that, in D&D, characters do not get the strength of Hercules very often, much less the ability to hold up a sky (or planet), thus it cannot be reasonably expected. Thus, the system is anulled from consideration by failing the when test, unless you expand it with rules. I do not know of every game in existence so I can only presume there's some that do fit there, so an existing game system might be a possible reference.

But if it could not fulfill the entire sentence, that is, when reasonably expected, it did not matter.

I was not attempting to be coy about it, I simply didn't realize that people would fail to read the sentence to the end. It's not a particularly long one, and it's not a run-on. It's not unclear about its prerequisites, either, though people could define "reasonably be expected" differently. Which would be acceptable. Except K specifically mounts his argument on the idea that the expectation is unreasonable, so I am literally uninterested in a word he has to say when he specifically goes to rule it out from possibility. In terms of logic, the original post specified a definition of the set of valid possibilities, and K chose to rule out D&D as a member of that set.

I am not, honestly, particularly interested in whether my sentence was applicable to D&D. I literally did not give D&D a thought. However every answer from the D&D position was that you don't, you avoid the question entirely. Not even the stated "eyeball it", but rather you use devices which do not meaningfully interact anymore with any kind of "feats of strength" rules, existing explicitly to remove things from those equations. Which is worthy of interesting game design consideration, but again... is not the question.

[TavishArtair]

You can also do a dicepool or a modified die roll, and just give things lift DCs.

At this stage in design, you still haven't decided whether lifting capacity is constant, or if you make lifting checks.

The admittedly unwritten question is whether it's desirable in a heroic epic (game) for lifting checks to exist or lifting capacity to be constant. It doesn't seem terribly desirable for a check to occur because then, unless diceroll manipulations exist (which are easy enough to rig), you can't guarantee they work, which means when you need to lift a mountain, you can't. If it is limited by resources, you can always push something over if you want to burn the resources, but you have to burn the resources, even if it doesn't matter much. Likewise, you always know what the result of an armwestling match is going to be.

Hmm.

Anyways, the question was partially inspired by Frank's statement about SR/oWoD/nWoD capacity, but my favorite games run more to the high fantasy side of things, so I'm more interested in rules that can handle pushing skyscrapers over or chucking mountains. So it seemed a reasonable question to toss out. Not many games even attempt to give you the ability, much less handle it with some tangible rules to wrap around. Nobilis comes to mind. Sadly a lot of games where it's a supposed theme in, it isn't really addressed in any meaningful rules sense.

Pretty much all heroic epics seem to be games without classes, instead defined by attributes, as you can potentially be good at all of them (some characters are, others aren't), and if you are, you're actually good at all of them, and rarely does someone have a totally unique power you cannot somehow obtain, either by trade, training, or taking (from their cooling corpse). So while there might be some value in a heroic epic with classes, I think the question is best concerned with ones where there isn't. Thus, everyone is permitted to buy whatever "Strength" ability is in the game as high as they can plausibly justify. In practice, characters will divide themselves into archetypes, as it often isn't useful to have multiple specialists in the exact same field, and the players will have to share story space, instead of having one person who achieves everything, however, a scenario that does not punish people for having two characters with an ability in common is probably best.

[squee_nabob]

Well in HERO system, all you do is buy a high enough STR score, plus some advantages for sky holding (affects desolid, area of effect both come to mind).

The lifting ability of a character is equal to 25*2^(Value/5) in kg.

[virgil]

If one were to incorporate some kind of mythic strength into 3.X, what are some ideas on rules to do so? I'm talking stuff like the damage of a thrown mountain, the investment needed to recreate it, expected levels, etc.

[TavishArtair]

As several people pointed out, there's really no interface system for it that is extant in D&D. A reasonable possibility might be on the low end having people gain virtual size categories in a similar manner to Powerful Build (so you can pick up someone's house and beat them with it) and at the high end having totally bullshit random numbers for things like throwing giant rocks or asteroids or the sky because the improvised weapons rules in D&D are retarded and you should pretend that they don't exist. Basically, you take the old 2e rules for belt of giant strength and scale them up, where having mythic strength gives you arbitrary related abilities.

Which, you know, actually answers the original question. Funny that.

[CCarter]

10 points of Str (+5 mod) quadruples your lift capacity. One size category doubles height so by square/cube law, multiplies mass by 8...say that's about a +7 modifier.
That gives you a lift DC by size category of object, start at say DC 10 for a Medium object and upping it by 7 per size category. Extrapolate sizes beyond Colossal / McFuckenHugeLarge as needed. Pick a base damage for a medium object, apply the weapon sizes modifier table to work out average damages as objects get ridiculously large.

If you actually want PCs to be able to lift asteroids regularly, you could invent a skill for it at and let them roll that against the given DCs, rather than pure STR. Possibly with a feat/epic feat required (sort of equivalent to the Epic feat that lets monks roll Concentration to break objects?). That gives you a new size category every 5 levels or so, though fighters could also buy Girdles of Manly Lifting that give them +30 to Lifting checks or what-have-you.

[Prak]

Herculean feats of strength could be a built in system quirk, like the vaguely western Rule of Cool equivalent to how in Wuxian films you just get to fly once you reach a certain renown.

In fact, if I were to build a system for it, I'd roll in a fix for class and hp hate, and make a system where being a powerful physical character means you ignore more and more types of minor attacks, and you get to wield bigger and bigger things, with a modifier based on, hm, tier, basically, but you always have about the same number of hit points (the usual hit box system from dice pool games, I think), maybe within one to three boxes for unusually sized characters.

So when you're playing post 12 labors Hercules, you ignore basically anything below high grade military ordinance, and can throw mountains. Anything of normal scale deals 1 damage in your hands, or it's normal damage for a given target, whichever is higher, except to people above your tier, who ignore it as normal. The next tier of weapons is max-mundane scale to double max mundane scale, and deals two, or normal for target, whichever is greater, except to people above you. And so on, hell, going by the labors, you'd seriously be able to wield the sky whatever that means...

But that's hypothetics...

[virgil]

Checking, one of the strongest D&D monsters would be a tarrasque, who can stagger with a blue whale in its arms. While lifting a blue whale is epic, it's not epic for someone at level 20.

A tangential problem is the rules for falling objects. Thanks to shrink item, you can deal 3d6 every two levels by using rocks in the countryside, and the damage triples when wall of iron comes online. Some DMs will 'solve' this by removing shrink item, which we all know to be short-sighted at best.

To fix both, we need to nerf gravity.

As it stands, one of the major ways to fix dropping things on people is to not have falling object damage be a linear relation to weight. The simplest method would to base it off the improvised weapon rules.

Once you get 20+ Strength, you stop caring about encumbrance from your active adventuring gear. At 19, you can wear full plate, a tower shield, a bastard sword, a longbow w/quiver, and have room to spare without broaching medium load. Keeping in tradition of prior D&D editions (assuming 18/XX = 19), we can make 20+ the minimum to qualify for an alternate carrying capacity.


Gravity: A heavy subject
There are many elements that go into damage dealt by objects falling from the sky. However, falling debris is just an attack on your person by physics, and attacks are already abstracted heavily in lieu of the staggering array of variables to account for. Therefore, we seek to better abstract the rules with the goal of playability in the genre of heroic fantasy.

Size categories are an excellent way to increase damage in a system that already uses it for its weapons. Let's get started with a few new definitions

• Absolute size is the basic size category of the object, generally determined by the length of its longest dimension
  Abstract weight is to very roughly describe how heavy it is, also described in terms of size categories

As a baseline, something like a chair has the same absolute size and abstract weight. Various traits make the abstract weight differ from its absolute size

• Fills most of the volume of its size, such as a crate (+1)
• Stone or similar density (+1)
• Metal or similar density (+2)
• Thin and barely fills volume, such as a club or stick (-1)
• Noticeably less dense than wood, such as cloth (-1)
• Hollow shell (-1)

These things are cumulative, so a solid 3' cube of steel is Small in size and Huge in weight, while a to-scale plush Gundam is Gargantuan in size and Huge in weight (my napkin says this isn't that far from the truth).

The base damage is 2d6 for Large size weight, following the rules for weapon scaling from there (1d6 for Small, 1d8 for Medium, etc).

When an object falls onto someone, it deals damage based on its abstract weight and the distance fallen. Every 10' fallen increases its size category for damage by one, and deals one size category less than normal if it falls less than 10'. The except is for objects of Medium weight or less. Every category smaller than Large doubles the increment it must fall to deal damage (20' for Medium, 40' for Small, 80' for Tiny). This damage increase ceases after 200', so a Tiny object can only ever deal 1d6 from falling, even if dropped from a skyscraper.

Super Strength
The carrying capacity rules largely work, so long as you don't try to recreate something with super strength. The Strength necessary to recreate the likes of Superman (77 to lift a 747 over his head) would synergize with the rest of the system into some kind of fanfic supervillain.

In order to recreate said individuals with extreme powerlifting technqiues while preventing their fists from turning into miniature spheres of annhilation, we need to pull them off the chart into something more narrative.

The super strength quality changes carrying capacity to instead be based off of abstract weight and level. The character's max load is equal to his own size in weight, increased by one category per 3 character levels (rounded up); so a 7th level strong man can lift an object of Gargantuan weight over his head. A light load is anything at least a full size category smaller than your max load in weight, and you can push/drag an object 5' as a full-round action if it's one size category larger than your max load.

You can use any object that's a light load as an improvised weapon. If it's absolute size is equal to or larger than you, than it's always a two-handed weapon. If the object is roughly club shaped, then it can used as melee weapon with a reach equal to its absolute size, but you do not threaten with it.

If an object is too bulky to count as a club, it can still be used as an area attack from range or melee. It covers an area equal on its absolute size.

The range increment of the weapon is 10' for every size category smaller than the character's max load. The character makes a normal attack roll against any one target in the area of the attack, automatically dealing normal damage if he hits. Even if he misses, the target and everything in the area of the object must make a Reflex save for half damage (DC 10+1/2 level+Str mod).

The weapon deals base damage as if its abstract weight were equal to the character's light load (can swing it faster/harder if less than, so it equals out).


I'm not sure how well any of this works, what with the lack of any playtesting or even basic wargaming.

[schpeelah]

while a to-scale plush Gundam is Gargantuan in size and Huge in weight (my napkin says this isn't that far from the truth).

Are you in possesion of the largest napkin in the world?

Other than that I like it. A lot. This kind of stuff was really needed.

[hogarth]

Superhero games often try to quantify super-mega-strength; some do it well, and some do it poorly.

For instance, DC Heroes had every point of Strength doubling carrying capacity (IIRC). Then you end up with dubious distinctions like "Wonder Woman can only lift 2 Mount Everests, but Superman can lift 32 Mount Everests".

Then there's the Marvel Superheroes system of saying "Okay, you have Thing strength, and then a moderate jump to Hulk strength and then a huge jump to Galactus strength". I preferred that method to the DC Heroes method. Being a bit vague about exactly how much a super-strong guy can lift is a good thing, IMO.

[virgil]

One thing I do need to consider is that whatever resource provides the super strength quality, there should be an additional resource to increase your super-strong character's carrying capacity besides directly increasing size. The carrying capacity I've described is an absolute minimum for the quality, and the maximum is undecided. Part of it has to do with the fact that I'm not sure what limits there need to be; such as stuff like "the lowest level a super strength specialist can be and still lift a 747."

Hmm, a 747 is three categories larger than Colossal in weight, and so does a base of 12d6 damage. If we use that as our baseline, then a max load of four categories above Colossal should be the limit for a 12th level specialist. Assuming something like [Fiend] feats, he can be Huge, which means we can allow a maximum of 4 additional 'virtual' size increases for carrying capacity through alternate means by this level. We don't have to worry overly much about other sources of carrying capacity, because they're few and far between and largely deal by increasing Strength directly.

One idea that might work is in the BoG magic item paradigm. We can make an minor magic item quality, increasing the wearer's size for determining carrying capacity by one category per four levels (rounded up).

Therefore, our 7th level strong man example could put on his girdle of giant strength and be able to wield an object of Colossal weight as a weapon (since it's a light load); examples include a fully expanded instant fortress, a 60' sword, a 30' boulder, and a 200' tall porcelain doll. Anything that big or smaller when used as an improvised weapon deals 6d6 damage (before Strength modifier). If the strong man chooses to instead throw a cow, he can get it up to 200' away with a good throw (five 40' increments).