Stat Scale Doubling

[Blue]

HERO System has been doing this for abilities like Strength since 1981 - four years before the first edition of DC Heroes.

It's a time honored technique when you want to encompass an extreme ranger, but there is some reason that linear number isn't the best for the game.

 

[Thomas Shey]

One way to address that would be to increase the granularity by an order of magnitude, so you could have a score of 4.6 or whatever. It feels less user friendly then though.

That was sort-of what the scale in TORG/Masterbook did as I recall. I want to say every 5 points multiplied by 10 or something like that (I remember it was a broader scale than DC Heroes (or Hero, which had five point steps per doubling, but a lot of the values were kind of meaningless), so it could handle a wider range of low-end characters relevantly.

 

[aramis erak]

Logarithmic stat values have been a staple for a long time...

DC Heroes, Champions, several small press games, all dating to the early 1980's. TORG, Shatterzone, and Masterbook, as well...

Champions STR is ×2 lift per +5 attribute points.

Torg/Shatterzone/Masterbook use a scaling of ×10 per +5.

 

[Jahydin]

First time I saw this was Ascendant. Cool to see where the inspiration came from.

 

[Rogerd1]

@Morrus these scales are absolutely amazing to be honest, and we are thinking along similar lines - I did talk about this in the level 20 fighter thread I believe, and I deliberately drew analogy to supers stats just as you have done. Then I noticed Shadow of the Demon Lord, I had the pdf unread, so then flicked through some of the chargen.

Str 20 you can lift 16,000 pounds, and on a success 32,000 pounds. Which is essentially low level MCU asgardian (Sif). Which would totally work for a 5e game.

Then I thought about it some more. You would have to have similar type things for all the stats, so how fast would someone with a Dex of 15 run using SotDL? I haven't worked that out yet, but once I do will think about healing too and incorporate into my games.

But yeah, best games for these scales are Champions, and my favourite M&M 3e.