The issue of super strength

[Silverthrone]

The Living Tribunal could wipe out and recreate as many galaxies as he wanted to at will. He is the second to supreme being in the Marvel Universe. He is above the Infinity Gauntlet.

Galactus and Tyrant destroyed galaxies in their fight. They did not demolish them, they destroyed them.

There were pictures of some of this over on Wizard's old SHSD boards.


Superman has already nearly destroyed Earth's moon and acheieved even greater powers against Imperiex.

Your idea of these heroes is vastly, vastly underpowered.

Try this site:

Super Hero Chat

Some of those guys can likely give you the issue numbers if you don't believe me. Your general power level forthose heroes is way off.

 

[Moreganis]

In the Supers game we are developing we had the same issue with strength, But after a careful look at Comic Book heros we discovered one key thing Strength does not add to the ability to land a punch, So it was a simple solution. All attacks are made useing Dexterity as the primary base. this seems to have solved the problem with out hampering the rest of the system in any major way.
Of course this changes the discription of a melee attack. which violates the D20 Lic. therefore we are curently working on a method to resolve this issue.

http://geek_gods.tripod.com/

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi Silverthrone!

The Living Tribunal could wipe out and recreate as many galaxies as he wanted to at will.

There is no evidence to substantiate this (as far as I am aware).

The Living Tribunal made Earths Sun go nova and then fled the multiverse rather than fight Korvac (In the Marvel What If #32).

He is the second to supreme being in the Marvel Universe.

Well the enigmatic race of Infinites may be more powerful (?), but I agree hes generally regarded as the most powerful being in the Marvel Universe.

Marvel always hints at a Supreme Being, but thats essentially what the Infinity Gems are; however its unlikely Marvel will ever clarify such an ambiguity.

He is above the Infinity Gauntlet.

I disagree. Thanos with the Infinity Gauntlet is more powerful than the Tribunal. The six infinity gems are whats left of the Supreme Being who decided to divide its essence rather than exist alone.

What you may be picking up on was that the Tribunal ruled that the six gems could never function for the one being. Of course that was when he was effectively given the infinity gems rather than in a situation when they would be used against him.

Galactus and Tyrant destroyed galaxies in their fight. They did not demolish them, they destroyed them.

That seems to smack of incongruity. Even Galactus, in and of his own power cannot destroy a planet (evidence: Galactus vs. Ego); though he was close to defeating Ego until Thor got involved. Therefore the idea that he could destroy a galaxy must be a false claim. Its plausible that Galactus could have some technology that might (?) destroy a galaxy (evidence: even Thanos has created weapons that can destroy a planet) but that is not then in and of his own power.

There were pictures of some of this over on Wizard's old SHSD boards.

As I explained above either its a mistake or the act of blowing up a galaxy was some sort of technological achievement.

Korvac was able to destroy the universe with one shot from Galactus weapon the Ultimate Nullifier...of course firing that weapon kills the wielder too.

Superman has already nearly destroyed Earth's moon and acheieved even greater powers against Imperiex.

I am only vaguely familiar with the Imperiex threat (I'll see about checking out the relevant Superman issues this week). I read that Imperiex disintigrated Doomsday which begs the question how did Superman defeat him/it (don't spoil it for me). I am guessing Imperiex is somewhat akin to Tyrants (or possibly Galactus) level of power?

Your idea of these heroes is vastly, vastly underpowered.

I am only going on evidence.

The Beyonder was supposedly able to destroy a galaxy (in and of his own power).

The Stranger was just about able to destroy Earth's moon (in and of his own power).

But the only issue I have seen was when an army of thousands of celestials warped into space to take on the galaxy sized Super-Ego being...though I don't have all the relevant issues, so details are sketchy on that one.

The crude hierarchy of the universe has a few rungs on the cosmic ladder.

- Tribunal (at least Solar System destroying power)

- Eternity; Death; Infinity; closely followed by abstract entities like Law & Chaos; Kronos etc. (possibly Solar System destroying power though channeled into different areas)

- Celestials; closely followed by Galactus); Eon; In-betweener etc. (Planet destroying power)

- The Stranger; Elders of the Universe; the Watchers; Tyrant; Surtur; Terminus etc. (Continent/Moon destroying power)

Try this site:

Super Hero Chat

Some of those guys can likely give you the issue numbers if you don't believe me.

Thanks I'll check it out.

Your general power level for those heroes is way off.

Not according to any evidence I have seen.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi Moreganis!

In the Supers game we are developing we had the same issue with strength, But after a careful look at Comic Book heros we discovered one key thing Strength does not add to the ability to land a punch, So it was a simple solution. All attacks are made useing Dexterity as the primary base. this seems to have solved the problem with out hampering the rest of the system in any major way.

Yes that is something I would advocate as a short term solution.

You still have strength/damage; hit dice/skill; armour/damage reduction problems to solve (among a number of other issues) before d20 starts to make sense.

Of course this changes the discription of a melee attack. which violates the D20 Lic. therefore we are curently working on a method to resolve this issue.

You could implement the change as an 'Optional Rule'.

http://geek_gods.tripod.com/

Thanks I'll take a look.

Good luck with everything.

 

[Toj]

There are lots of things wrong with d20 that would make it pretty hard to play in a supers game.

As UK said, you have strength, HD=Skill, Armor, etc.

We, being my friends and I, already changed it to the way we like it.

I have always liked DC heroes way of doing stats, where the next point is twice that of the first. Meaning someone with a 5 strength is twice as strong as someone with a 4 strength.
The 3d6 stat method, along with the progression just don't work well for realism and for a supers.

Each point in a stat should mean something. Having a plus to damage is also lame.

Hulk hits Thor for 250 damage.
Thor hits Hulk for 200 damage.
Hulk hits Thor for 250 damage.
Thor hits Hulk for 200 damage.

Blah!

Also, we make strength be the determining factor in HP. You never see anyone strong who can't take punishment as well.

Here is a link to the chart we use. It's to hard to posts charts in the forum.

http://members.cox.net/bwendeln/strength.htm

We also do a lot of other things, like armor reducing damage, automatic dodge and parry, etc. HD does not equal skill either... in fact we don't even have HD.

Got to head out, I'll be back to write more later.

 

[Villano]

In addition, the Hulk can only lift 100 tons, not 100,000, and he can only lift that when enraged. In general, Marvel characters are weaker in terms of lifting capacity than DC characters...Superman can easily lift a cargo-laden large plane (several hundred, if not thousand tons), while the Hulk, supposedly the strongest Marvel character, cannot...unless he gets really really P.O.ed.

Okay, in my years of reading comics, here's some of what I've got (although you should bear in mind that I haven't collected anything from Marvel for a several years and, for the past few, am only regularly reading 4 DC books, so some things may have changed).

The Hulk is "Class 100" strength. This means that he can lift over 100 tons when enraged.

The only time I've ever seen the Hulk reach the maximum level of strength was back when John Byrne was doing the book (in the '80's, I think). During this story arc, the Hulk and Banner were seperated and the Hulk was a mindless destruction machine.

The Hulk had just gone several rounds with Doc Samson (who can lift 75 or so tons) and defeated him when the Avengers showed up.

During this fight, the Hulk's strength kept increasing and increasing. Eventually, the Avenger's noticed that he wasn't getting any stronger, and, in fact, was weakening.

To bring him down, it took:

Hercules
Wonder Man
Iron Man (silver armor)
Sub-Mariner
She-Hulk
Captain Marvel (the woman with energy powers)
Captain America
Vision
Hawkeye
Mockingbird
Tigra
Wasp

I'm pretty sure that I'm missing more. If I'm not mistaken, every Avenger of the time except Thor was present.

Anyway, it turns out that the Hulk was weakened by being seperated from Banner, so he wasn't even at full power.

There have been many stories which have shown Hercules and Thor as having equal strength (that's probably Marvel's official policy), this means that the Hulk far stronger than him, as well (to be fair, while Hercules is as strong as Thor, Thor has other abilities that make him more powerful overall).

I also remember a comic where the Hulk was "enhanced" by the villain Apocalypse. In his new, more powerful state, he lifted one of the pyramids (which leads me to believe that this would be beyond his ability normally).

Now, I once saw a special on the pyramids on tv which said that the Great Pyramid weighed in the millions of tons (I don't recall the exact weight), so that should give you an idea as to the Hulk's limits.

Also, the Hulk, according to Marvel, could not survive a near miss from a nuclear bomb.

Now, bearing how powerful the Hulk is in mind, the Silver Surfer has taken him out at least once with little effort. The Surfer has also flown through stars.

Over at DC, the Who's Who (their guide to their characters) said that Superman could easily lift the Great Pyramid (millions of tons, remember).

It also says that he can survive a direct hit from a nuclear weapon, which has been shown in the comics (What's the DR for taking a hit by a nuke, btw? ).

This probably puts Superman and Silver Surfer in the same catagory (more powerful than gods such as Thor and Hercules). Actually, SS would be a bit more powerful (like the Hercules/Thor example, SS has far more ablities than Supes).

Also in DC, Darkseid is shown being the equal of classic gods like Zues and Odin (who are probably more powerful than Thor).

There was a Marvel/DC crossover not too long ago, and, IIRC, Darkseid defeated the Surfer (so Odin could probably take down Supes and SS).

However, he was nowhere near a match for Galactus.

Now, as to the cosmic characters, the In-Betweener is equal to Galactus. In fact, they are counterparts of one another, filling the role of balancers on a universal level (there was a Silver Surfer comic in which the In-Betweener tried to take over Galactus' position).

Also, in an issue of Fantastic Four, the Beyonder was revealed as not being as powerful as everyone thought. He was, in fact, only a half-formed cosmic cube.

This means that he never really destroyed Death, and was, in fact, only as powerful as the Molecule Man (who had the other half of the power). Eventually, they merged and became the current Cube.

Even still, the Beyonder was capable of causing galaxies to simply cease to exist and creating "pocket" universes.

Eternity is the incarnation of this universe (which probably means that there are other beings in other universes), and Death is his equal.

The Living Tribunal, I believe, was in charge of overseeing the multiverse, making him much, much more powerful than Eternity (and most likely the most powerful being in existence).

Now, what does this all mean? I have no idea. I'm just glad I finally found a use for all this useless information!

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

*blink*

I've recently become a comic book fan. I read a lot of things including many Marvel titles. I'm reasonably familiar with the kind of stories that have been going on at Marvel for the past year or so and I must say...

I am so grateful that Marvel no longer seems to do this kind of silly stuff!

Sheesh. The incredible Hulk is a very good book under Bruce Jones. The classic Dr Jekyll VS MR. Hyde. Stories about the monster within. Very classy, adult and entertaining. It's the kind of book I'm shamelessly trying to get friends to read, friends who usually read more classic litterature.

And now I hear that the Hulk used to be separated from Banner?! That he once lifted one of the great Pyramid?! How do you lift a Pyramid, anyway? By which end do you hold it? How do you prevent all the individual blocks of stones from falling all around you? If the Hulk tried to lift the pyramid, beside looking like an idiot, he'd just end up tearing away one block at a time.

And you're telling me there used to be story about this sort of non-sense?

*shudder*

Superman; to each his own but I see no appeal in him.

An alien who looks exactly like an homo sapiens. Who is able to lift ridiculously heavy objects without having them collapse on their own weight. Who flies faster than a plane and is invulnerable to bullets that he is able to dodge anyway, thus making him one of the most redundantly superpowered hero that I know of. Whose personality has the complexity of a paper clip. Whose main weakness is not a flaw of character but an allergy to an alien metal.

Oookay. I guess it worked in the 40s because he was the first superhero as we know them. And it could still work in the 60s because of the code. But today?

I'm willing to suspend my disbelief long enough to accept superpowers but once I do that I expect a good story with meaty characters and no incoherances.

Oh yeah, on the topic of superstrenght: Mutants&Masterminds seems the right way to do it. Cap all stats at 20 and then use powers for superlifting. And use common sense. You can't lift one of the great pyramids just because your maximum lifting capacity says you can lift 10 million tons for example...

 

[RangerWickett]

Hurray!

 

[Villano]

*blink*

I've recently become a comic book fan. I read a lot of things including many Marvel titles. I'm reasonably familiar with the kind of stories that have been going on at Marvel for the past year or so and I must say...

I am so grateful that Marvel no longer seems to do this kind of silly stuff!

Sheesh. The incredible Hulk is a very good book under Bruce Jones. The classic Dr Jekyll VS MR. Hyde. Stories about the monster within. Very classy, adult and entertaining. It's the kind of book I'm shamelessly trying to get friends to read, friends who usually read more classic litterature.

And now I hear that the Hulk used to be separated from Banner?! That he once lifted one of the great Pyramid?! How do you lift a Pyramid, anyway? By which end do you hold it? How do you prevent all the individual blocks of stones from falling all around you? If the Hulk tried to lift the pyramid, beside looking like an idiot, he'd just end up tearing away one block at a time.

And you're telling me there used to be story about this sort of non-sense?

*shudder*

I'm just the messenger, man, I didn't write it!

Actually, to clarify things a bit concerning the pyramid lifting, DC actually said that Superman could if it were possible to without the pyramid falling apart. He never actually has done it, they were just using it as an example of his strength.

The Hulk did it in a few panels as he was testing his new strength. I believe that this was written by Peter David, so I wouldn't be surprised if he did this because someone told him about Superman's strength.

David occasionally adds in-jokes to his writing. I remember when he had the Hulk beat up Doctor Octopus between panels because Erik Larsen wrote an issue of Spider-Man in which the Sinister Six (a group of Spider villains led by Doc Ock) defeated the Hulk.

However, IIRC, Larsen and David didn't like each other very much at the time, so it may have been more of a personal shot from each of them (David even tossed in a line about "petty larceny" in that issue).

On the other hand, you shouldn't knock the seperate Hulk/Banner story. The character has been around for decades, and the Jekyll/Hyde thing can run out of steam after a while.

I only began collecting the Hulk at the end of that story arc, so I can't comment on how good that particular was. However, the series was excellent during that time.

The idea isn't that bad actually. You would think that someone in a world of super science would suggest trying to separate the two.

The story was probably begun with the idea that they would be merged again (they both began to die without each other).

In fact, this story led to my favorite run of the Hulk: the grey Hulk saga.

When the Hulk comic premiered, the character was grey, emerged at night instead of when angry, wasn't as strong, and had some intellegence. The 2nd or 3rd issue is when they went with the dumb, green character.

During this time (his 2nd grey incarnation), it really was a Jekyll/Hyde situation with the new Hulk being a pretty mean character (in one issue, when he felt himself changing back to Banner at dawn, he broke into a liquor store and gulped down a bunch of booze to keep Banner sedated during the day).

My favorite arc was when the Hulk was believed killed and the grey Hulk went to Vegas and worked as a mob enforcer (no one recognized him because the world only knew of the Hulk as green and just assumed that this superhuman, grey guy was a mutant).

That may sound dumb, but it wasn't. The grey incarnation had an actual personality and was able to do more than "Hulk smash!". He was a complex character, being a complete S.O.B. one minute and able to show compassion the next.

Marvel was really great in the '80's. The '90's is when things went downhill. They began making "collectibles" instead of comics ("Hey, it's our special 88th issue! Platinum, hologram cover! Only $7!" ).

Most of the writing sucked, things happend for no reason, and every other artist aped Jim Lee's style.

For an example of the type of writing what went on then, back in the '80's Wolverine took a sword through the abdomen. It took him a month to fully heal, while in the '90's, he got 3rd degree burns over his entire body and healed in 3 panels (Marvel also said that he couldn't be killed if dropped in an active volcano).

Stupid? Very.

Characters killed in one comic were back alive in another series with no explanation. Claremont was fired from the X-Men after several decades of writing and the new writer killed all the old villains the next issue.

I stopped collecting their stuff around this time because it honestly seemed that people on different books didn't know what other writers were doing.

Now, as to Superman? Well, I never really like him. I collected his series when DC rebooted in the mid-80's, but it got stale real quick. His powers aren't bad, and neither is his personality, but the writing is boring.

The problem with DC is that, while they have "cosmic" characters, they never face cosmic threats.

The Silver Surfer was in space fighting alien gods while Superman battled the Toyman (a fat guy who uses toys to commit crimes).

I'm glad to hear that Marvel has turned things around. I'm still hesitant to pick up anything from them because I still feeled burnt from some of the crap they used to put out (Peter Parker's parents were androids?! Well, it doesn't really matter because he's actually just a clone. Arrgh! ).

 

[Silverthrone]

The rational for Superman lifiting large items and them not breaking is his tactile telekinesis and EM field. Like modern Superboy, Superman has some sort of teleknietic ability when lifting objects that make them lighter when he is flying. It also holds the objects together when he lifts them. It is related to the forfeidl that surrounds his body and protects him. This field is also why his clothes seldom are destroyed.