> Actually,I think Logan,that while you have got
> Doug's INT score right,you may have reduced his
> DEX too much.Remember,his best attribute is his
> DEX.I personally think that Doug is at least a 12
> in Fuzion terms.Doug should be able to defeat Lady
> Shiva (the 20th Century DC Universe's best martial
> artist) after all.
I don't know who Lady Shiva is and I've never seen her published in a Fuzion book. Forgive me, but I don't know DC comics all that well beyond "the big names". I don't know what Lady Shiva's stats and skills would be, so I can't make a direct comparison with her. I can only go with what I've got handy.
For comparison purposes, I was going with what has actually seen publication in Fuzion books, such as "Champions: The New Millenium", "Alliances", and "Bay City", for superhero comparisons, and the Bubblegum Crisis trio of books for purposes of direct comparison of the current setting. Note that I included their "Speedster" character above as a comparison. And he only has a REF 13 and DEX of 11. Most of their high-end martial artist type characters only go up to 10 on their REF/DEX scores. And the exceptions to that, such as Crusader in Bay City, only go up to 11.
Further, a REF/DEX of 10, corresponds to a Hero DEX of 30. And I compared that score to dozens of martial arts characters that Hero had published in various products, such as "Watchers of the Dragon" (now out of print, sadly.) Only 2-3 of those characters had a DEX above 30, and those were the absolute top end. The average martial artist has a DEX of 26 and a SPD of 5-6. The highest I saw was Lin Hu, in WOTD, with a DEX 35, SPD 7, which would correspond to a Fuzion REF/DEX of 12. And he's an immortal who's been around for a couple of hundred years. He isn't even built with normal martial arts, but has a power pool for martial arts powers! Definately someone who would wipe the floor with Doug in terms of sheer physical prowess, IMHO.
Speedsters in Hero terms tend to start with DEX scores in the low 30's and top out at in the high 30's. As I said above, I've never seen a published Hero character with a DEX higher than 36. I've heard of campaigns that have allowed higher. And there are a few character sheets that people have put out on the web for characters like The Flash with DEX scores in the low to mid 40's. But that's about it. SPD scores tend to start at 6 for Speedsters and go to the absolute max of SPD 12 for your top end characters like The Flash.
To bring all this back to Fuzion, I'd say that REF/DEX scores for paranormal martial artists should absolutely top out at 11, and speedster REF/DEX scores should start at the same point with a top end of around 15 or 16.
Doug, as presented in Drunkard's Walk, doesn't come across as a Speedster to me. He's a top end martial artist who's clearly in the paranormal range of ability.
> I'd agree with Morgan on the Dexterity score.
> If 100 on the Valmon whatsit is human norm,
> than that's about a 3 or 4. 4.7 times human
> normal would be between 14 and 19 and I'd
> lead towards the lower score from the
> descriptions.
I apologise, but I should have been more clear in my article above. I meant to be, but somewhere in the writing, I forgot to explicitly state this -
I had to completely throw out the "Valmon Index" in terms of absolute numerical translation precisely because it was giving me unacceptable numbers. Using it as a straight DEX comparison was what was producing the Hero DEX 47 / Fuzion REF/DEX 16. It was also giving him a SPD of 8 in Fuzion terms. Yikes. As I said before, that's out in Barry Allen/Flash territory.
At this point, the logic admittedly becomes fuzzy and arbitrary. I went with what I could glean from how Doug was presented in the story and what, in terms of game balance would be acceptable in terms of playability were I to theoretically include him in any campaign like the one in BGC.
What is his "ecological niche" in terms of what he is as a superhero? He's not a speedster, that's for sure. He doesn't seem to move _that_ much faster on average than the Knight Sabers or Boomers. So we go with the concept that he's a martial artist and compare and contrast that concept with other martial artists both in Fuzion and Hero. Put him near or at the top of that scale, and see how he compares. And as it turns out, he compares quite favorably. He's _still_ getting in nearly half again as many actions in the same amount of time with a better overall ability to attack or dodge than everything around him in the BGC world, and that's not even counting his "field" to help him out.
Like I said, it's a guess, but it's an educated guess. If I had to rationalize the Valmon score based on this, I'd count in the SPD score on top of the REF/DEX in order to ballpark the figure. Since the extra SPD has to be bought with 10 extra points per level, I'd count those points towards his DEX score in the Valmon rating. If he has a (Hero) DEX 30, that gives him an automatic (Hero) SPD 4. Add 20 points to raise his score from SPD 4 to SPD 6. Add the raw point score of 20 to his absolute DEX of 30 and you get 50. You only have to fudge by 3 to get his "Valmon" rating of DEX 47.
Or look at it another way. Use the Valmon rating as DEX score plus the character points needed to raise SPD. You can either have a raw DEX score equal to the Valmon rating outright. Or, if that's too extreme, lower the DEX, but use the extra points to raise the SPD to match.
or - in raw numbers =
Valmon Index =470
Divide by 10 to get DEX and/or SPD points.
470/10 = 47
47 is too high a DEX for the campaign. Drop to 30
DEX 30, with 17 points left.
Dex 30 makes for a Derived SPD of 4. In order to raise it to 6, you need 20 points. Doug needs 3 extra points in order to do that, but we'll fudge it and assume he's got the experience he needs to do so. So now he has the SPD 6.
Translate to Fuzion by dividing his DEX by 3 to get his REF/DEX score. And use Option points to raise the SPD to match.
Voila! And there you have it!
> IIRC, FUZION defines anything above 7 to be
> highly unusual, but within human capacity e.g.
> someone with very specialised apitudes might have
> them. So STR 10 would be one of the dozen or so
> strongest humans alive for example. DEX 10 isn't
> unreasonable in that range, but it's not distinctly
> paranormal.
Actually, in later Fuzion products, they redefined things such that 1-8 is human norm. With 8-10 being "Incredible". And 10 is, in some campaigns, the beginning of Superheroic. There's some overlap there.
> 12 seems a good compromise between those two
> arguments.
Well, as I said, I might be convinced that he could go to REF/DEX 11. But no higher than that. Right now, I think 10 reflects him well. As far as I'm concerned, 11 is the breakpoint between martial artists and speedsters. If you're at 12, you're a dedicated speedster. And Doug isn't that.
Anyway. I hope I made my rationalizations and logic as clear as they can be. But if I can't convince you, I'm not going to worry about it too much.
-Logan
> Doug's INT score right,you may have reduced his
> DEX too much.Remember,his best attribute is his
> DEX.I personally think that Doug is at least a 12
> in Fuzion terms.Doug should be able to defeat Lady
> Shiva (the 20th Century DC Universe's best martial
> artist) after all.
I don't know who Lady Shiva is and I've never seen her published in a Fuzion book. Forgive me, but I don't know DC comics all that well beyond "the big names". I don't know what Lady Shiva's stats and skills would be, so I can't make a direct comparison with her. I can only go with what I've got handy.
For comparison purposes, I was going with what has actually seen publication in Fuzion books, such as "Champions: The New Millenium", "Alliances", and "Bay City", for superhero comparisons, and the Bubblegum Crisis trio of books for purposes of direct comparison of the current setting. Note that I included their "Speedster" character above as a comparison. And he only has a REF 13 and DEX of 11. Most of their high-end martial artist type characters only go up to 10 on their REF/DEX scores. And the exceptions to that, such as Crusader in Bay City, only go up to 11.
Further, a REF/DEX of 10, corresponds to a Hero DEX of 30. And I compared that score to dozens of martial arts characters that Hero had published in various products, such as "Watchers of the Dragon" (now out of print, sadly.) Only 2-3 of those characters had a DEX above 30, and those were the absolute top end. The average martial artist has a DEX of 26 and a SPD of 5-6. The highest I saw was Lin Hu, in WOTD, with a DEX 35, SPD 7, which would correspond to a Fuzion REF/DEX of 12. And he's an immortal who's been around for a couple of hundred years. He isn't even built with normal martial arts, but has a power pool for martial arts powers! Definately someone who would wipe the floor with Doug in terms of sheer physical prowess, IMHO.
Speedsters in Hero terms tend to start with DEX scores in the low 30's and top out at in the high 30's. As I said above, I've never seen a published Hero character with a DEX higher than 36. I've heard of campaigns that have allowed higher. And there are a few character sheets that people have put out on the web for characters like The Flash with DEX scores in the low to mid 40's. But that's about it. SPD scores tend to start at 6 for Speedsters and go to the absolute max of SPD 12 for your top end characters like The Flash.
To bring all this back to Fuzion, I'd say that REF/DEX scores for paranormal martial artists should absolutely top out at 11, and speedster REF/DEX scores should start at the same point with a top end of around 15 or 16.
Doug, as presented in Drunkard's Walk, doesn't come across as a Speedster to me. He's a top end martial artist who's clearly in the paranormal range of ability.
> I'd agree with Morgan on the Dexterity score.
> If 100 on the Valmon whatsit is human norm,
> than that's about a 3 or 4. 4.7 times human
> normal would be between 14 and 19 and I'd
> lead towards the lower score from the
> descriptions.
I apologise, but I should have been more clear in my article above. I meant to be, but somewhere in the writing, I forgot to explicitly state this -
I had to completely throw out the "Valmon Index" in terms of absolute numerical translation precisely because it was giving me unacceptable numbers. Using it as a straight DEX comparison was what was producing the Hero DEX 47 / Fuzion REF/DEX 16. It was also giving him a SPD of 8 in Fuzion terms. Yikes. As I said before, that's out in Barry Allen/Flash territory.
At this point, the logic admittedly becomes fuzzy and arbitrary. I went with what I could glean from how Doug was presented in the story and what, in terms of game balance would be acceptable in terms of playability were I to theoretically include him in any campaign like the one in BGC.
What is his "ecological niche" in terms of what he is as a superhero? He's not a speedster, that's for sure. He doesn't seem to move _that_ much faster on average than the Knight Sabers or Boomers. So we go with the concept that he's a martial artist and compare and contrast that concept with other martial artists both in Fuzion and Hero. Put him near or at the top of that scale, and see how he compares. And as it turns out, he compares quite favorably. He's _still_ getting in nearly half again as many actions in the same amount of time with a better overall ability to attack or dodge than everything around him in the BGC world, and that's not even counting his "field" to help him out.
Like I said, it's a guess, but it's an educated guess. If I had to rationalize the Valmon score based on this, I'd count in the SPD score on top of the REF/DEX in order to ballpark the figure. Since the extra SPD has to be bought with 10 extra points per level, I'd count those points towards his DEX score in the Valmon rating. If he has a (Hero) DEX 30, that gives him an automatic (Hero) SPD 4. Add 20 points to raise his score from SPD 4 to SPD 6. Add the raw point score of 20 to his absolute DEX of 30 and you get 50. You only have to fudge by 3 to get his "Valmon" rating of DEX 47.
Or look at it another way. Use the Valmon rating as DEX score plus the character points needed to raise SPD. You can either have a raw DEX score equal to the Valmon rating outright. Or, if that's too extreme, lower the DEX, but use the extra points to raise the SPD to match.
or - in raw numbers =
Valmon Index =470
Divide by 10 to get DEX and/or SPD points.
470/10 = 47
47 is too high a DEX for the campaign. Drop to 30
DEX 30, with 17 points left.
Dex 30 makes for a Derived SPD of 4. In order to raise it to 6, you need 20 points. Doug needs 3 extra points in order to do that, but we'll fudge it and assume he's got the experience he needs to do so. So now he has the SPD 6.
Translate to Fuzion by dividing his DEX by 3 to get his REF/DEX score. And use Option points to raise the SPD to match.
Voila! And there you have it!
> IIRC, FUZION defines anything above 7 to be
> highly unusual, but within human capacity e.g.
> someone with very specialised apitudes might have
> them. So STR 10 would be one of the dozen or so
> strongest humans alive for example. DEX 10 isn't
> unreasonable in that range, but it's not distinctly
> paranormal.
Actually, in later Fuzion products, they redefined things such that 1-8 is human norm. With 8-10 being "Incredible". And 10 is, in some campaigns, the beginning of Superheroic. There's some overlap there.
> 12 seems a good compromise between those two
> arguments.
Well, as I said, I might be convinced that he could go to REF/DEX 11. But no higher than that. Right now, I think 10 reflects him well. As far as I'm concerned, 11 is the breakpoint between martial artists and speedsters. If you're at 12, you're a dedicated speedster. And Doug isn't that.
Anyway. I hope I made my rationalizations and logic as clear as they can be. But if I can't convince you, I'm not going to worry about it too much.
-Logan