Two modules are set at the circus. Both modules have circus strongmen. The strongman from Terror by Night has 18 Strength. The strongman from Organized Crimes has 26 Strength.

How strong is the circus strongman in your campaign? What does this say about the real and perceived limits or human strength in your world? What does it say about the demarcation between normal humans and superhumans and those in-between?

If you're assuming he's human with no powers, I've always used a limit of 20 for non-enhanced characteristics.

I'm close to Majestic on this. I would still cap him as a Non-Adventuring Normal at 18.

But if he Trained and went up levels - 24.

I  used 18 as the maximum for normal humans ability, 3d6 maxed out.  I then figured a normal human would not advance past 2nd level, so 18 with two levels of training would be a 20...

And that would require experience... You don't level up using a bench press.

Doctor Foom wrote on Dec 9^th, 2009 at 12:25pm:


I think that is an unfair cap to lay on someone who chooses skills.  That's like saying you can roll on any other table and limiting it to "only able to use real world provable human powers".  So you end up with device guy being a swat team member instead of a powered superhero.

The 24 number seems to be a good one, once you crunch the numbers (especially for the physical stuff).  Try it out with a strongman-type (with maximums in Strength and Endurance) and you'll see it's pretty close to the 'peak human' level, especially real-world levels (strongman competitions and the like).  For the spiritual/mental totals (C and I), we don't force a cap, as it's hard to say where the human max. is on those.

It's hardly ever come up where somebody is forced to stop at a certain number in our campaign.  Recently it did with a few characters that (temporarily) lost their super powers (in the Western I'm running).  So somebody with a 27 Agility might have been forced to suddenly only have a 24, and so forth.

Agility is something I have (as overall Editor-in-Chief of our campaign) been pretty restrictive with.  I usually start 'encouraging' players to stop training in Agility once they get around 21, unless their character is the type that should be focusing on Agility.  So if they're a speedster, acrobat, or martial artist, then they're fine.  If they're a typical brick, energy projector, mentalist, etc., then they don't need to push the limits of A (which is by far the most powerful of the Basic Characteristics of the game as written), and capping it at 21 seems to keep them fast enough without unbalancing the campaign.