So some friends and I are tinkering with a campaign in dealing with SR in a "real life" modern campaign. Different mutations or diseases would be our metahumans and intense body mods would be cyber/bioware. Magic would be handled by the whole underground Radionics/Psionics/Wicca/Occult/Reiki etc. movement. It would be low powered but actually working.
We're all huge on the flavour text aspect of it and someone brought up Tommy John surgery (for muscle replacement equivalent or something) and I had some questions. Where better to ask than here?
Tommy John surgery is where they take a tendon out of your leg and drill holes in your ulna and humerus and loop the tendon through the holes in a figure 8 and teach it to act like a ligament.
It was invented to save a baseball player's (Tommy John) career. Purportedly it can increase pitching speed by 15 miles an hour. Although some people say this is because of the physio training and the surgery's ability to recover your original speed, others dispute this.
Assuming it's true, would this surgery enable you to hit harder? I mean it seems like it could to me, but I'm unsure.
Also I've heard that they're making artificial tendons. Is this true? If they exist, are they any tougher than regular tendons? Would having a tougher artificial tendon in a Tommy John surgery let you hit even harder?
Also anyone have any thoughts/problems with the idea of building artificial knuckles out of surgical steel or something to hit harder? Realistically accurate?
Anyway, sorry this is so weird everybody and thanks for any input. We're going to come up with/modify stats as we get the facts sorted out.