Sep 17, 2011

Mutants and Masterminds - Strength and Lifting

Mutants and Masterminds is one of my favorite systems.  The mechanics made excellent improvements on the d20 system.  Since it uses a point-buy system, there is no real distribution of strength.  Since it is based on the d20 system, though, which originally determined strength with a 3d6, I am using the 3d6 curve as a proxy of the distribution of strength within M&M.
It is accurate enough at the far bottom and top of the distribution of lifting ability, but, as with nearly every other system, it overestimates the abilities of most people in the average range.  The average person in the M&M system is stronger than 75% of people in the real world.  The average person in the real world is only stronger than 10% of people in the M&M system. 


Here is the lifting/dragging table for M&M 2nd ed.  Weights are in pounds.

2 comments:

  1. Have you ever examined the Height and Weight of individual super heroes as given in, say, "The Marvel Universe Handbooks"? I remember a published letter pointing out that the average height and weight of the heroes, villains, and even supporting characters tends to be significantly above that of the average human.
    It would be interesting to correlate the data.

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  2. The only information I remember about super hero heights is that Cyclops is a full foot taller than Wolverine. I would be interested in correlating height with strength for heroes and for normal people.

    I am not surprised that story characters tend to be tall. It makes sense not only for drama, but to reflect the real world trend (slight, but extant) of taller people being more successful academically, socially, and professionally.

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