I'm not running this at all. But yes, PvP. If Thor and Spidey are both
Avengers, then Spidey has "Proportional Strength of a Spider" as an
important ability.
Thor has "Unearthly Strength" as one of his. Both have Super Strength
as a core concept of their characters. I'd say Thor put a bit more into
it than Spidey did, in terms of plot importance.
But Thor certainly doesn't have 10 times the amount in it, which is
roughly what the old Marvel Universe books would have put them at. (10
tons for Spidey, 100 tons plus for Thor.)
I can, of course, simply say "Thor's working on a God level and Spidey is on just a super-human level", and consider all rolls using these stats in terms of that for credibility tests. Any direct PvP situation requires adjucating situational modifiers . That seems to be what the rules imply and I doubt any of my players would have much of a problem with it. I'm just wondering if that's how other people see it.
Gavain, for instance, seems to see it very differently.
> So, you use the resistance from the chart (session 1 = 14 resistance) and
> you modify it with difficulty, according to your story's needs. I
> think it's
> never to do with how strong the Hulk is compared to Spiderman. It's to do
> with what the resistance in the current conflict is. You can fall back on
> the pass/fail cycle if you don't have a feeling for the way your story is
> going but I think the idea with HQ is that you don't try to make things
> 'realistic' or 'a simulation'. The credibility test is there to make sure
> the story hangs together with it's own logic and within the genre.
>
And that's the idea. Is the view simply that the Credibility test is used to trump an obvious mismatch or massively re-adjust situational modifiers when necessary? I think so, and it sounds like you think so, too. In the case of Hulk, he's obviously poured just about every point he has into strength, considering he probably has a stat called "Hulk is the Strongest One There IS!" Now, he might be at 15W in that stat, while Thor's put his "Godlike Strength" at 7W and Spidey has "Proportional Strength of a Spider" at 4W. I can put a rock down and say it is an impossible feat for Spidey with his strength, but let Hulk or Thor roll for it as a credible use of their strength, even though the numbers are all in the same mastery. (Of course, Spidey could have any other number of ways of getting past the rock that are credible.)
Are we all agreed that's how the rules pitch it? If Spidey pits his strength against either in a straight up strength vs strength, thing, it is not credible for him to win. If Spidey has to "restrain" one of them, and is using his speed and webbing or whatever, I'd probably go back to a simple stat vs stat, because that's a credible contest.
> I may be way off-base here but it reads to me that you might be falling back to more traditional methods of getting your numbers. Would that be fair?
That you're way off base? Yes, that would be fair. I'm actually wondering where the line between "any ability can contest with another" and "credibility trumps all" falls when you have people who have made concepts central to the character but on wildly different scales. The book gives the example of the guy who can lift a horse vs the other. Credibility tests for using the non-extraordinary guy's strength when trying to do something like lift a horse, but a clear statement to use the numbers as written on the sheet when contesting against one another.
>People being scaled differently shouldn't be important. The resistance the >players pit their characters' abilities against can be different, even if >the antagonist is the same.
So you would have different resistances for the same antagonist if that felt credible for you?
> You should indeed rank credibility tests above all.
Ah, so we agree.
>Robin Laws was on RPG.net a while ago writing on this very subject
Here's the link:
>http://tinyurl.com/ygzpgb5 <http://tinyurl.com/ygzpgb5> - shouldn't be
hard to find
The thread is tangential, but does seem to support the idea you and I have that credibility tests trump all.
.LC
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