Peak human physiology and martial arts mastery

[Blitzgott]

I was wondering how y'all simulate characters with those traits, such as Batman and Captain America.

The game more or less stipulates that four (or five, though it's more like four) is the max a human can reach, right? However, giving Cap. four in all attributes will kind of make him really weak. Then again, a score of five is a bit too much. I mean, Cap. shouldn't be able to lift and throw car, right?

Currently, my Captain America has five in all attributes, with the exception of strength and energy (I gave a score of four to both). I gave him nimble too. How is yours set up?


And what about the martial arts issue? Lately, pretty much every single DC or Marvel superhero has unparelled skill on one or several forms of martial arts, right? How'd you simulate that? I gave Cap. blitzkrieg, since he is one hell of a hand-to-hand fighter. But, if I give it to him, should I give it to Batman too? And what about Hawkeye? He was trained by Captain America. Should he have it too? How'd y'all go about that?


Any imput is very welcome!

[DEATH]

Hi Blitzgott,

     I'm not so sure that the scales for various attributes are quite so linear (meaning 4 strength is somehow equivalent to 4 agility).  I tend to worry far more about whether a desired attribute level gives me the desired performance/behaviour in a particular hero file.  The only attribute where I've really considered what the various levels really mean compared to each other is strength.  My Cap has a strength of 3, by the way (Nightcrawler has 2, Beast 4, Spidey 5, Iron Man 6, Rogue 7, Thing 8, Wonderman 9, and Gladiator 10).  Cap's agility is 6, as opposed to giving him Nimble, which reduces endurance.  These values give me the "feel" I'm looking for in my Captain America hero file. 
     I also added Blitzkrieg to simulate Cap's amazing hand-to-hand abilities.  This more than makes up for strength 3.  If I were making a Batman file, I'd give it to him, too.  But Hawkeye?  He may have been trained by Cap, but if they duked it out 10 times, who would win how many times (I know this is a loaded question when it concerns comic icons)?  My money is on Cap.

DEATH

[wickerman]

I am not a big fan of blitzkrieg personally.  If you take a 3 strength guy like Cap and give him Blitz, he ends up doing more hand to hand damage than - say - Beast.  The point is he is a better fighter - not that he necessarily hits harder.

I like to make the adjustment on the 'power' end of things.  My martial artist types have fast or very fast melee attacks with some minor stun added to simulate nerve strikes and the like.  ONLY super fast guys like Flash get fast or very fast unless they have very impressive MA ability.

Remember, FF is only a 1-10 scale on attributes.  Ranking the difference between Batman's strength and Hawkeye's is just not practical.  However consider a batman basic punch vs a hawkeye basic punch at the same strength level of 3

Bats

Medium damage
very fast speed
trace energy
low stun

Hawkeye

low damage
normal speed
very low energy cost
no stun


This - to me - is a better measure of their hand to hand combat difference.  Hawkeye was a fav of mine in my comic collecting days - I actually had a subscription to Solo Avengers back int he day just for him! - but he is NOWHERE near a Batman/Cap level.  Hell he ranks below Nightwing/Daredevil level for that matter.  I put him in Oliver Queen territory - really good, but better stick to the bow when Deathstroke comes knocking.

Blitzkrieg is fine for quicksilver or the Flash IMO.  It does a better job here than on a Batman type.  The problem is, Batman is better than - say - Black Canary in a hand to hand fight, but not THAT much better than he should do like 3 times as much damage per hit.  Again, adjusting the attributes of his melee attacks will put her above her sufficiently to ensure he wins the majority of sparring matches with her.

As an example, my Bat and Cap stats look like this:

Bats

Str - 3
Spd - 4
Agl - 5
End - 4
Eng - 5*

Cap

Str - 4
Spd - 4
Agl - 5
End - 5
Eng - 3*

*I don't really think Bats has more energy in a stamina sense, but he has an enormous bunch of gadgets/weapons to use so I give him a decent energy pool to use them with.

In danger room fights, my cap wins 6/10 when they go hand to hand, but only 4 out of ten when they stand back and throw shields/batarangs at each other.  IMO this is a good mix - my personal belief is that Batman can win when the arsenal of explosives, gas and sun grenades comes into play, but loses the straight up hand to hand.  Like the above poster said - it is about the right 'behavior' of each hero file depending on what you like to see.

[laughing paradox]

For my martial artists, I give them higher agility levels than 4. My Black Cat, for instance, has an agility of 6. They know how to dodge better than your average person.

My Captain America is as follows:
Strength - 4
Speed - 5
Agility - 7
Endurance - 5
Energy - 5

Attributes:
Disciplined
Tough Guy
Acrobatic
Jumper
I forget...a leadership quality, I think.

His simple punch is
Medium Strength
Low Stun
No Energy (or Trace, for FF)

[Dr.Volt]

Fascinating discussion.  To further the examples, where would you guys put Wolverine (I've wanted to ask this for a loooooong time now)?? 

I'm donig this purely from recall, but I think I put him at something like:

Strength - 4
Speed - 5
Agility - 5
Endurance - 4
Energy – 4

I think I gave him blitzkrieg also just because of his combat experience and his berserker tendencies.  And of course tough guy.

Now, granted Wolvie is a mutant, but as I recall, most of the descriptions I've read put him, at least strength and agility wise at human limits.  It's his claws, skeleton, and regeneration that make him exceptional.  Well, that and his long lived combat experience (lots and lots of brawling).

[herodad1]

when i tackled this issue in my game play all characters that are basicly human level strength are level (3's ), slightly enhanced a (4.)characters like beast,sabretooth,ect get a (5) and spider-man range characters a( 6 )but melee magnitudes are at medium.ironman,vision,she-hulk,colossus a (7),thing,sasquatch,etc. a (8),wonderman,silver surfer,hyperion a (9), hulk,thor,herc,superman,etc a level (10).i fine tune them at their magnitude levels,damage,etc.To me wolverine is basically human level.all human level characters melee magnitudes are 3's( normal).

[Blitzgott]

Hey! Thanks for all the replies, guys!


DEATH: I gave Cap. a strength of four because it says on Marvel Database (one of my primary sources of information for creating Marvel hero files) that he can lift around 800 lbs, so strength 3 didn't seem to cut it for me. I also gave him nimble because, as you probably already noticed, I don't like giving attributes over 5 to non-superhuman charaters. I'm pretty neurotic about it... Anyway, it's how you see it. Myself, I tend to think of agility as a measure of a character's reflexes instead of his overall agility. Nimble, on the other hand, serves the purpose of simulating characters that have bodies better suited to more complex evasive maneuvers. So, while Flash has higher agility than Spider-Man, Spidey is as good (or better) at dodging because he has those incredibly flexible tendons and stuff that allows him to pull some pretty fancy stuff to avoid harm. Dunno if it makes sense for anybody else.


wickerman: I totally agree with you about blitzkrieg, but only on the first game. On the first game, I wouldn't give not even to speedsters. It's broken. +3 swiftness and +10 damage? WTH? However, on FFvTTR I think it's a pretty reasonable attribute to give to characters such as Cap. and Bats. It gives +2 of damage along with +3 swiftness. The swiftness simulates the superior technique that some fighters such as Cap. have or simply the insane speed with which speedsters' strikes are delivered, and the extra damage simulates hits to more vulnerable spots of the human body or simply the extra inertia added to speedsters' strikes (again, dunno if the later makes any sense).

Your Cap. and Bats are pretty similar to mine. The only differences are that I gave one extra dot of speed to both and energy 4 to Captain America. I also gave Batman higher energy because he has a bunch of stuff that costs quite a bit, and he isn't as effective as Captain America in hand-to-hand combat, so I specialized him a bit more towards ranged fighting. So he has those stats plus blitzkrieg. Hawkeye, on the other hand, has the same stats as batman, but has crackshot instead of blitzkrieg. So he basically is much worse than batman on hand-to-hand, but is also better than him from afar. I have been changing it pretty often, though. I'd appreciate some more input on this.


laughting paradox: The stats of your Captain America are exactly the same (except for the energy, which is a dot higher) I used before I changed to agility 5 plus nimble. It's pretty much the same thing. Mine has 1 extra dot to avoid and yours can take 10 extra points of damage. I'm actually currently split between these two setups.


Dr.Volt: Thanks for mentioning Wolverine. I was going to, but you saved me the bother. I'm also pretty curious about him. Wolverine is an hero file that I've been deleting and remaking and deleting over and over because I just can't decide on his stats. Currently, my Wolverine has strength 4, speed 4, agility 6, endurance 5 and energy 5. I gave him a rather high amount of energy because he is always taking hits and, since he has lesser regen, his energy was taking a bit to recover, so I pumped it up from 4 to 5. I gave him claws instead of blitzkrieg, but blitzkrieg might be a better choice, since he is a master of every single martial art in existence. Let's see what the others have to say about it.

I gave him lower speed because I never read anything about Wolvie being specially fast, so 4 seemed enough. Agility 6 because I read on Marvel Database that his reflexes are super-human. Something I'm very confident about is strength 4: for a 5'2'' man be able to move the way he does with 200 lbs of metal for bones, he has to be d*mn fit.

[Subrider]

Good discussion! This is one of my favorite topics in FF, how to properly scale the various powers of the characters. I am working exclusively with Marvel characters.

I really believe that way too much importance is placed on the various Marvel references on how "strong" a character is. Strength is important for knowing what objects a character should be able to lift and throw, but most heroes don't spend a fight throwing cars, etc. at each other. Most of the fighting (melee-type) is a hand-to-hand slugfest.

To me the most important factor should be the potential damage that they can do with a punch or a kick. Take Spidey for an example. Sure most of the references say that he can lift 10 tons (this implies a two-handed lift). The actual velocity of his punch must be very fast. The references say his reflexes are 15X that of a human, and his tendons are twice as elastic. A higher speed punch means more damage, higher elasticity means more damage (think about being snapped by rubber bands of different elasticity). His bones are probably harder than a normal human, therefore more impact damage. So how much damage should he do? How should this compare to the Thing (80 ton strength), but his punch travels much slower than spider-man's, but then again the Thing's fist is rock-hard?

The game (although my favorite) has some drawbacks in simulating fight effects and damage, for example:

Super-Human Reflexes - It would be awesome is some of the expert KF artists would make a wide range of comic book realistic keyframe contact times for things like common single punches and kicks, and weapon drawing. Most of the KF's out there have a single punch with a contact time of 0.44 seconds. If Spidey (or others characters) have faster reflexes, how about some times of 0.05 or 0.1 or 0.2 seconds (whatever is possible).  In a fight, the character that lands the first punch has an advantage. New KF times also needed to accurately simulate the various quick-draw old west gun fighters.

Material – Strength being equal, a stone punch should do more damage than a flesh punch. The game does not automatically take this into account when figuring damage for a hero. It does take into account the material that the person on the receiving end of the punch is made of. Iron Fist is able to deliver a very powerful punch when he makes his fist as "hard as iron".

Velocity of the Blow - Characters with blows that travel faster should do more damage with their punches and kicks. A typical human punch travels at about 30 mph. As another example, a baseball pitcher is able to throw a 90 mph fastball (this implies his hand was moving at 90 mph at the point of release). Doubling the speed of a moving object quadruples its kinetic energy and therefore possible damage. The game does not automatically take this into account when figuring damage for a hero. A study was recently performed that measured a top rate boxer punch force as 3.5 tons. Another study stated that Mike Tyson's punch delivers four times the force of an average punch.

Pressure Points – Martial artists do proportionally more "damage" because they are skilled at striking nerve centers in their opponents. Maybe this should be reflected as a higher stun probability or something. The game also doesn't automatically take care of this. Also, ordinary unskilled cannon-fodder thugs only get a single contact melee punch (KF of 0.44 sec), and a damage of 3 average, no arc. A trained boxer gets more damage and a faster KF, also a one-two two contact punch option, no arc and a low percentage passive melee defense. The various martial artists (depending on their training) start to get stronger blows, better passive melee defense, faster KF's and multiple contacts with arcs. True masters get all this plus tough guy, shake it off, etc.

Damage to Objects – A human should not be able to punch a lamppost, etc. and after several punches, destroy it. It would be awesome if someone could give all the objects used in the game an invulnerability rating (based on the material they are constructed of) similar to the attribute for characters.

We can compensate for most of these by adjusting the damage of attacks properly. Even a character with strength of 1 can do a lot of damage if you set the attack at VH and level 5.

What does all this mean? I don't know exactly. I wish someone smarter than me would come up with a formula that one could plug in all the various FF ratings such as Strength (from the Marvel reference), Speed (from FF), mass (from FF), and Material (from FF) they are composed of and then come up with an average damage (in FF hit points) for that blow. Then I can use the editor to give them the proper strength and attack damage in the game.

Any thoughts on this?

Rich

[wickerman]

Interesting post Subby, I've been stewing on it a bit...

As far as 'faster' keyframes, I see what you are getting at, but I think it becomes a balance issue once more.  If you say - 'hey spidey is 15x faster than Daredevil so he should have a .07 punch to DD's 1 second' that looks good on paper, but then what do you use for Quicksilver?  At the end of the day, the fact that Spidey is much stronger and more agile than Daredevil should win him a hand to hand fight which is probably the most important thing.

Similarly, while it makes sense that he Thing would hit harder than a flesh guy of his strength, you have to wonder how much of a difference it makes when you are talking about guys who throw dump trucks around like they are baseballs.  Now Benji is alot tougher (damage resistance wise) than Thor, but getting punched in the face by either one would certainly suck - regardless of one being made of a rock-like substance and the other being just dense flesh.  again, at that level of power, is it a huge difference?

I think speed of blows is similiar. Yes, Quicksilver hits MUCH harder than Captain America if he is running 500mph when he hits you.  Still, it is a comic book.  If you anaylze it too long you start to find all sorts of dumb inconsistencies.  The Flash can exceed light speed.  he would cream Thor if he hit him going 5000 miles per hour.  Thor has been hurt -though not beaten i grant you - by Iron Man and Submariner.  Niether of them are particularly fast.  If a speed force aura protected Flash motored up to 3 times the speed of light and smashed him in the face, he'd look like road kill.  Comics don't work that way though - Thor is generally accepted to be tougher than that, even though past history compared to the Flash's ability would seem to contradict it.  As Freedom Force is intended to capture the spirit of the comics, I think we generally have to ignore things like the fact that if Batman really spent years swinging through Gotham landing on rooftops, he'd need knee replacement surgery within 2 months.

I agree on pressure points, my cap, iron fist, batman and similar files have attacks with reasonably high stun on them to simulate this.  against non-invulnerable characters, Bats and the like would certainly seek to disable them with nerve strikes and the like.  My greatest beef with MA types in comics is their seemingly zombie-like fixation with standing toe-to-toe with people and punching each others brains out.  I mean, really, if Batman was fighting a guy who was stronger and physically tougher than him, would he ignore his mastery of every known martial art on earth and punch away hoping to beat him with superior stubborness?  Chances are, he'd hit him just right on the neck or the temple and drop him fast.  Wolverine suffers from the same problem.  For all of his martial arts prowess he attacks everything like a lumber jack going at a tree.  So much for 'great fighting ability'. 

I also agree abotu object damage.  It's a little annoying that jubilee can destroy a car if she punches it long enough.  unfortunately, short of giving everything in the game a level of damage resistance, I am not sure how to fix this to make it more 'realistic'.  Invulnerability, however would make it immune to EVERY form of damage to a certain extent.  A weak energy attack would be shrugged off like a punch from Aunt May.  Solid Skeleton style things might help, but that would make it possible for Hellcat to scratch up a car until it exploded (I EXPECT points for coming up with Hellcat, dammit!)

As far as a forumla for things, I think Taskmasters outstanding conversions are a good place to start if you want to analyse some of this stuff.  It also, I think, depends on what you are looking to do.  I have had the idea lately of making some hero files accurate within certain 'classes' of characters.

What the hell does that mean?  Glad you asked.

I have 2 batman hero files.  1 for the JLA, 1 for Batman related stuff.  The difference?  Batman is the king od his own comic - and of Gotham.  In the JLA, he's surrounded by gods.  Compared to Green Lantern in game terms, he's pathetic.  There is no way in the world he can match that damage output.  Physically, he has a fraction of Aquaman's ability let alone Superman or the Martian Manhunter.  Therefore, he has a very  (in my opinion) accurate hero file compared to them.

He also has a 'low powered' hero file.  He is actually more powerful here, but that is because he is being comapred to other 'low' powered heroes.  His endurance is like an 8.  That's because the hero file is built in comparison to Nightwing, Cat wo,man and the like....

I think if you do this and use the 2 files situationally, you get more enjoyment out of the game as long as you play it in the style you want that particular day.