As has been said, technique is just as important (if not more so) then strength. All the same, if you are much of an experienced climber, I would say you are likely strength 2, at least. I myself am more strength 3-4 range, but I can`t climb worth salt.



I agree about the draging, after all, it is easier to push or pull something then it is to carry it. I would probably request a str.+ bod roll, to see how many meters, probably with a threshold for heavier objects. But, that wouldn`t just apply to weak characters, and hasn`t come up in my games.

Agility is the stat for bumbling fools, of course you are right at that, after all, it is the balance stat.


On characters with attributes of 1, as with all attributes, I prefer my players to role play their attributes accordingly, when possible. 1 is underdeveloped, and the character will make a lot of mistakes in situations, but it should only be pointed out if it is necessary. If a charisma 1 character with no ettiquette was raised in the woods, he has a hard time blending in with the bustling metro., and the guards at the building he is checking out should have a chance to tell the difference. A logic 1, willpower 1, Intuition 2 adept just questioned by the police won`t reason that said police might have his place surrounded, and will try to make a run for it. (unfortunitely, followed by a fight scene where said adept died. Ooops)

I will start this post with a caveat. This is my perception from my GM's narrative point of view and my personal life experience. Note this is not enough evidence to make generalizations, nor is RAW, RAI or anything similar. I do hope, however, it is illustrative:

During character creation I warn my players. I say that the human average in /my/ campaign is a 2. In order to work in my SR4 society, a charisma 2 is enough to make friends. A strength of 2 is enough to do some basic strength workouts (pull your body weight on a rope, or make a single chin-up), a body of 2 gives you a decent medical readout after diagnosis (You should cut out a bit of carbs, anyways, you know?), a logic of 2 is enough to pull you through higher education. Attributes in this sense are basic human potential. A 1 is the attribute of someone with a disability. A Body of 1, means you /are/ sickly, you have a heart condition or are overweight. Negative qualities help define this mechanically, an attribute of 1 needs as much explanation as an attribute of 5. I also explain that this is an abstraction and cannot ,and will not, explain all the cases and exceptions they can come up with. I tell them to live with it.

A 3 means someone who has trained in said attribute -logic 3, your friends describe you as smart, logic 4, your friends are usually cracking jokes about your incredible ability with numbers or philosophy, at 5 you were the one shaming ph.D teachers in Collerge with your reasoning capabilities, at logic 6 you are the reincarnation of Einstein, and then some. At 7 -exceptional attribute- well, you are beyond human potential and into the realm of superheroes and Chuck Norris (Yes those are saparate categories) -, and I explain this to players. It gives me two results: a) Cuts down some min/maxing and players feel better with lower attributes. This has enhanced the playability of some characters -ex-special forces- and, b) it has also allowed me to make NPC's faster, just as effective, narratively speaking, and with saner and lower dice pools.

On the other hand, you can skimp out a bit on some attributes with the proper gear and training. A strength of 2 is more than enough for a proficient climber -say at 2- and some climbing aids -say a positive bonus of +2- and a specialization -+2- for a dice pool of 8 nice. In this case you default to 2 successes routinely and can do a LOT of climbing as matter of fact. You can have it even a bit lower during training -remove the gear bonus because you are in the cave- and default to 1 success. You can still make that girl look at you and say: "Oh! he is good..." because she doesn't have the training nor specialization, she has just started -climbing 1- and can't default to automatic successes -her dice pool is 3-. She sometimes can do what the guy does matter of factly, and sometimes glitches, breaking a nail ("Damn it!"). When he is really trying to impress her, he can routinely achieve more successes with his dice pool (He rolls).

This supports the idea that you don't need to have /huge/ numbers in strength in order to pass in your group of friends as a very good climber.
On the other hand, why workout in the Sixth World? Joe Wimp -str 1- has been bullied all his life, and he decides that he has had enough. So he goes to the clinic and buys the brand new muscle toners and muscle augmentations (R2, say), and skill wires (R2) and a Kung Fu master chip (Unarmed Combat 3 or 4). In a week he suddenly goes form underdeveloped wimpy kid to proficient and dangerous opponent. He will not win a MMA championship with that, but he can kick all of the block's bullies' asses matter of factly.

He is, as is any MMA champion too, still vulnerable to shock gloves, but well... Technology is the great equalizer.

Also, in Shadow Run, you can always command your house drones to move furniture, pick up large bags of rice, and preform manual labor for you.

@Inncubi I like your setup more or less, but it seems a bit odd that there is such a big jump in condition from 2 to 1. 2 is human average, and 1 is severely disabled? I don't think it makes much sense that PCs are at least human average in every category, and then well above it in several others.

Personally I think this problem is more the system itself than any particular interpretation of it. A 6 point scale (in which the 6th point is even really used) just isn't enough to encompass such verity in ability. Mechanically, a 1 isn't all that much worse than a 3, yet from fluff it is a massive (But specifically undefined) difference. The problem is compounded by the fact that these dice pour directly into your DPs as opposed to indirectly in the form of limiting skills.

So, if you have such big problems with the stats, use a different system. If you like SR (And I know you do) but dislike stats of 1, then imagine that there is a theoretical stat of 0, which no player can obtain, which represents what you current think of as 1. Then all your problems are solved.

@smokeskin I wasn't doing all that stuff, I didn't climb all that much, not a ton of time for it. I'd mostly just have fun freebasing the first 10m of the climbing wall. Strength did come up, but I didn't feel it was nearly as important as knowing what you were doing. And there was more endurance (body) than strength to be honest.

I agree with you essentially. I simply roll with it. And about the 1's, I think its a way of telling players: avoid 1's in attributes. These mean something relevant for the game. That is all. Although the odd jump is a very easily debatable point form many points of view (yours Karoline is quite good, as is the "only 10 karma away from 2"), and the fact that the characters are above human averages, well that is play preferences I believe. I like runners being special, without the need for huge pools. It also emphasizes a lot high attributes (That charisma 7 elf chica IS someone you record and post on AZTube). Instead of, oh yeah, yet another one of those...



I don't have huge problems with the stats. And I can imagine the theoretical 0, I think my solution of lowering general averages a notch allows for a placebo effect. High-level play then is not rolling 24 dice for shooting or 50 dice in negotiations. A dice pool of 13 is seen as /very/ competent, and it allows me to make powerful opponents without spending too much time on the books. It also allows me to use the NPC's from missions /as is/ and archetypes from SR4 as prime runners. It saves time for me, and delivers the same fun for players.



In my experience this is true in essentially /any/ sport.
Endurance is probably the most important part of your training. And strength in competitions is measured in weight lifted in relation to your bodyweight. A 150 pounder lifting 150 pounds is "stronger" than a 200 pounder lifting 180 pounds, even if the second is lifting more. However the punch from the second guy may hurt more, the first one is probably in a better physical state (Has better attributes), than the second one.

Consider the mechanics of defaulting on a skill - attribute minus one. The character with a 1 attribute has NO DICE to roll, i.e. they have no untrained ability in that area at all (not counting unusual circumstances/Edge use). Also, consider that 1 is the lowest you can be - there's nobody less strong, less agile, etc. than someone with a 1 in that attribute.

This has some very bizarre implications. For example, the implication is that either Strength 1 characters are incapable of movement or that advanced muscular dystrophy does not exist (arguments about it being curable are inadmissable unless the assertion is that it has in fact been globally eradicated—remember, the assertion is that there's nobody less strong); similarly with age- or starvation-related strength loss.

~J

Yes, to a point. Remember we aren't talking individual data points so much as ranges, since the rating system is not very fine-grained. So in "game reality" a 1 (or any other value) has some fuzziness, and some characters with a 1 will be stronger than other characters with a 1. You might also say that the system is only meant to represent Shadowrunners, and not everyone. It's a huge simplification in any case. Personally, I would argue at my table that a 1 is still functional, and non-functional people (i.e. the crippled cases you mention) are below that on the scale.

One would argue that Muscular dystrophy, starvation and age strength loss are a negative quality.
Just like Paraplegic and Quadraplegic.

I think the rules for something like rock climbing are fairly laid out. As has been mentioned as long as you can get your legs involved strength may make things easier but you don't absolutely need it if you have the skill. This is reflected in the rules I'd say.



I also disagree with this. There are other disadvantages explicitly for those sorts of things. A one just means you're at the bottom of the spectrum of functional people.

However there is a question of what this should mean. I think many adults that are functional in society can't do a chin up.

Or put in game mechanic terms. If a character isn't strong enough to pull their clone up a ledge (their max lift is less than their body weight), should they be able to pull themselves up? I'd propose that pulling yourself up by your arms should be a lifting test.

I'd also propose that body weights should be reasonable for characters, and probably linked to body in some manner.

But that undermines the premise of your argument above; we're suddenly saying "there is no one weaker than you… unless you're in this separate vaguely-defined reference class", and then we're back around to where we started (with the minor alteration that now we're debating the upper edge of this reference class instead of the nature of Strength 1).

I really do think that attempts to declare low attributes as "crippled" that don't rely on preexisting functional inadequacies within the rules are destined for a world of hurt. Carrying capacity would do the job nicely if equipment had mass, but it doesn't; this may be an instructive lesson in "how not to simplify your game". Similarly, once upon a time Quickness 1 was visibly functionally crippled due to a running speed equal to a typical human's walking speed (this had its own problems, but that's beside the point); now, movement rates are by-metatype and some other operational deficiency must be found.

If there genuinely are no or negligible repercussions to a particular dump stat the principled options are to accept it, to introduce well-defined house-rules (not ad-hoc additional tests or random penalties), or to find a better system. If playing as you would otherwise doesn't expose something as a "glaring weakness", that means it isn't.

~J

I'm of the opinion that the attribute rules are there to represent things that can pose a threat to shadowrunners or their equipment, not represent the entire world. If some critter or invalid NPC is so feeble as to be incapable of dinging up a microdrone then frankly, I don't assign them individual physical stats at all.

Who were you addressing this at?



Except that it does have mass, it's just that the writers didn't bother to specify it. Similarily weapons have some physical size. So when the players want to jam something through a hole, or more likely crawl around in some air ducts with it, the GM has to decide if it fits.

In the same manner it falls upon the GM to use their discretion when a character wants to haul around a given array of stuff.

I think some GMs treat things like some first person shooters where you've got a dozen weapons and a short ton of ammo, but they all fit into your fanny pack or something.

This begs for player abuse, and usually gets it.

In short I think the reason why strength is notorious as a dump stat is that most GMs do not apply the rules that do exist, and allow the strength one character to act as if they had strength three most of the time. Why not dump a stat if you get a free +2 as a result!

Sponge. I'd missed that you'd managed to sneak a reply in there.


It seems to me that there are two interpretations of the lack of mass. The first is that the intention was to simplify the game through the removal of gear mass, and the consequent tracking thereof. The second is, what, laziness? Incompetence? Gear really is supposed to have mass, and this really is supposed to have an impact on your characters, but each individual GM is required to do the grunt work every time a player picks up a new object (or worse yet, the GM just declares a loadout to be "too much" based on how it looks and how much he or she likes the numbers on the player's sheet)? Even for this game I try to give more benefit of the doubt than that.


But (to my knowledge) there aren't preexisting rules for "fitting objects into places" which are paired with a clear lack of dimensions on gear, or somesuch. This is an issue that simply isn't covered. Mass is an issue that's covered, and gear doesn't have it.


Regardless of whether or not gear is explicitly intended to be massless, assigning masses to gear cannot by any reasonable interpretation be considered "apply[ing] the rules that do exist". Gear mass is rules that don't exist.


Arguing this is arguing against the position that Strength 1 means "there's nobody less strong", and then you bring back the whole issue of "how weak is the weakest you can be without a Flaw?"

~J

I do hope you're not advocating actual equipment weight tracking to "fix" the game. That kind of bookkeeping is no fun at all.

Funny thought:If you consider doing a chin up lifting your own body weight, a 150 lb person would need to have a str of 7 to do it...

Depending on how you look at it, it could be some form of climbing test.

I am a (now) typical mouse-clicking pen-pushing skinny asian office type. I think I have Str 1, at the very most Str 2. When I go back for training, I have no problems carrying my SAW and combat load if I load my gear onto my webbing, but I can barely make 2 km at a walk on a road if my officer tells me to bring the GPMG and I have never ever, even at my fittest, been able to carry a buddy who had been declared casualty. Yet I have no problems passing the physical fitness test (I even manage to qualify for a fitness badge) or have problems passing other combat tests. It seems far fetched to me that a Str 1 shadowrunner should not be able function well simply due to his low Str.

Alright, if you let your players wander around with naval weaponry no skin off my back I suppose.

The question I was asking was what would you think would be reasonable and supported by RAW for strength and weights, if you didn't treat everything like it was in outer space.



Nah. Probably just some general guidlines with generous rounding such that, if they want to make a stink about it and get down to numbers, they'd wind up with a worse penalty.

The game is actually pretty harsh with the penalties, dishing 'em out every five kilos.



Um. I think you may have neglected to convert from pounds to kilograms. A strength 7 chracter could sling a 150 person over their shoulder and still be completely unencumbered.

By the rules a strength one character could lift a 150 lb person...but they'd need at least body three.



Well, how much can you lift? If you make a guess at your body (I'm thinking 2 from your description) you could probably figure out what SR considers your strength. One is pretty weak, I've got a hunch you're two.



That sounds like strength two. Though that depends on how much your combat load weighs. Of course I think load distribution would make a difference, but I don't think the rules go into that in this edition.

Hmmmm. That reminds me, the old editions did list weights for everything, and the stuff in the new edition is, for the most part, the exact same stuff. Sometimes a different model, sometimes not. So it actually would be pretty quick to just do the seat of the pants with generous rounding thing, and if they make a stink and make me bust out one of the old books they can just have the extra penalty they likely have coming.



We're not talking about them collapsing under their own weight. We're talking about the occasional -1 dicepool or difficulty performing a chinup if their body is too high.

Where the he'll do Orks and Trolls fall into this? Exactly how much does any one point of STR represent? Does it mean different things for different races?

Weird, I'd thought it was stat-2, not -1. But even so, provided that the character does in fact have the skill in question the difference between 2 and 1 is minimal. And if the action doesn't require a test the difference is non-existant. And yet while there is no one less strong, less agile, etc, I'm sure you can agree that all humans can't be discreetly divided into 6 categories on every single attribute. I mean, I'm sure we could grab 7 random people, and have them arm wrestle and very quickly determine 7 discreet strengths. So no, having a 1 doesn't mean you're the weakest thing on the planet, it just means you're somewhere in a range that is generally defined as weak.

1 only means you are crippled/disabled because you interpret it as such. No where in any of the books will you find a single mention that a stat of 1 means a crippled person. And in fact, if you follow the other 6 point scale in the book skills and use it as a comparison of what a 1 on a 6 point scale means, it simply means the person really doesn't tend to that area of their person any, but can still physically (or mentally) function. It even enforces my mention of a theoretical 0 stat which no player can obtain, which is closer to the crippled descriptor that you arbitrarily slap onto a 1 stat.

I will admit that the defaulting penalty is something to think about when giving the descriptor crippled to the 1 stat though, making it somewhat less arbitrary, but I also have this to say: Look, it's a built in punishment for people with a 1 stat. They can no longer default on any skill linked to that stat. Does there really need to be any further punishment beyond the loss of defaulting and the disadvantages that already come with having a stat so low? Not to mention how little it will contribute if the person actually does have the skill?

Now, as to the entire weight argument, I've only kind of glanced over it because it looked like it was getting stupid. Would it have been potentially handy if the devs had included weights? Yeah, but then people would have felt compelled to keep track of them (regardless of any sort of comment in the book about 'these are only for reference when specifically needed and should not normally be kept track of') and people would complain about all the extra bookkeeping. So overall I think the devs did what was best for the game, and the GM and players will just have to get together and look over a character's inventory if something like this comes up. But as soon as this is done for one character, it needs to be done for every character. Did the guy who took strength 2 just to slip under the GM radar also pack himself with 6 weapons, 20 grenades, and another 30 kilos of gear? Heck, does the troll have a couple heavy weapons along with his assault rifles? Remember, if you're going to focus on an aspect of something, it needs to be applied to all characters, not just one as some form of punishment for having a low stat.

It's the one you're going to need if your answer to Strength as a dump stat is "how are you carrying all that?"


As it happens, I play an edition that has masses for items. In principle a Troll could wander around with a Xicohtencatl Light Railgun (only 135 kilos, totable by anyone with Strength 14 or above), but he doesn't have the CF for ammo.


Right, but this is your problem. Gear weights aren't supported by canon. There are plenty of avenues and resources for creating such rules, but you can't pretend they're grounded in the text.


If the strengths were really discreet we wouldn't be able to determine them

~J

Sadly no, which creates serious problems when you have things like pixies able to carry several times their body weights, or (average) gnomes able to lift twice as much as a human. And don't even get into problems with things like leverage for these races.

If someone tried to load up with 6 weapons, 20 grenades and another 30kg of gear, I'd be asking about how he actually carried it in terms of slings and webbing also.

It is pretty easy to ballpark this stuff as GM. Rifles weigh 3kg, LMGs 6kg, clips and grenades .5 kg each, heavy sniper rifles and MMGs 10kg, armor jackets 3kg, full body armor 10kg, etc. Str 1 chars get easily in trouble, Str 2 need to go for heavy stuff, Str 3+ has to go absolutely nuts with gear. It really isn't any different to any other stat. A Charisma 1 char easily gets in trouble in social situations, Charisma 2 can get away with more, and at 3+ you pretty much stop worrying about it - doing it like that is treating the characters equally.

If all strength is really for is lifting gear and close combat damage, then it deserves to be a dump stat. You can delegate carrying equipment to teammates, manservant drones and cars. And you don't even really need strength in close combat; Shock Gloves are better.

Stuff that costs an equal amount of BP should be equally valuable. By using Strength+Body instead of Body*2 for armor encumbrance, you make Strength useful to all characters. By linking Strength and recoil, even gunbunnies will start to think about picking up some Strength.

Yeah, my scrawny hacker has a Strength of 1. He prefers to play overwatch from a coffin hotel. I don't see anything morally wrong with a cerebrally focused character dumping Strength. Strength is for dumb people who work with their own muscles. If I need a couch carried up the stairs I'll get a Manservant or an Ork to do it.

Nope, did the math from wolphram-alpha. 150 lbs is 68 kilos. at 10 kilos per str, you need 7 strength to do it without a test.

There is a notable difference between 'able to lift' and 'unencumbered'


Nor do I, given that it is exactly what happens in real life. Heck, I'm also fairly sure you won't see many gun enthusiasts hanging out in the gym pumping iron either. Why? Because gun's don't rely on strength to hurt people. It's why guns have been so popular since their inception. You didn't require hours and hours and hours of strength training to swing a sword hard or be able to draw an arrow or even to cock a crossbow, in addition to the hours and hours and hours required to learn to actually use the weapon.

Except of course you'll find that serious shooters have /really/ strong hands/wrists/forearms.

Same with mountain climbers. They're incredibly wiry and strong, even if they might not be able to benchpress 400 lbs.

And yet you can't represent that at all in the game. So, you're left with spending a bunch of BP on a mostly useless stat in order to incorrectly represent one tiny facet of your character, or saving BP by representing being overall not that strong with a low strength.

I think that Karoline's arguments are the ones that convinced me the best...

As a GM, then, I'd simply describe the strength 1 character as skinny, flabby and other such adjectives and epithets... from NPC's in bars and stuff. Rules wise he plays in the exact same way as the RAW says... but in play I'd make fun of him and have him describe himself like what he is: the weeakest functional person around. Same iwth other attributes, and will also expect him to play it adequately (A Charisma 1 ork in a restaurant with Johnson is expected to burp every once in a while), etc.

Other than that, I won't bother. If the player abuses it, I'll let him know and work it out with him. Just as you do with anything else.

As to the having strength 7 when you are 68Kg and being able to doa chin up... then YAY! I can do 20 and I am 68 Kg, that means I can arm wrestle orks?!

a lifting test is actually str+body

you can lift off the ground 15Kilo/33 lbs per point without making a test. If you make a test, that adds 15Kilo/33lbs per Hit
You can put over your head 5kilo/11 lbs per point without making a test, +5kilo/11 lbs per hit.
You can lift&cary 10kilo/22 lbs per point without making a test, +10kilo/22 lbs per hit.

So a str 2 body 2 human can easily lift 60Kilo/132 lbs , and can lift 75-90 kilo/ 165-200 lbs with effort, and can carry 40 kilo/88 lbs easily and up to 60 kilo/ 132 lbs with effort.
A str 3 body 3 human would do 90 kilo/200 lbs , effort: 120-135kilo/250-300lbs , with luck up to 180 kilo/400 lbs.

That's perfectly reasonable.

I have a book, Training for Climbing, where the author suggests that a climber never even try to benchpress more than 80lbs - climbers just don't need much strength there, and you don't want to drag unneeded muscle up the wall. On the other hand, it has tips for working your way up to doing one-handed pull-ups! In comparison I can benchpress with 2 90lbs dumbells, and only do pull-ups with 110lbs on my back. Strength can become really skewed if you train hard enough for it.

Wait, doesn't a pushup and a benchpress work the exact same muscles? I mean the motion is identical, the only difference is that one uses your own body weight as the resistance, and the other uses a metal weight.

Part of the problem here is that we're trying to apply specific examples to rules that lack any granularity. Strength is a whole body measurement, but in real life you can find plenty of people who have more upper body strength than leg strength (or vice versa). Or who have exceptionally stong hand/grip strength, abdominal strength, whatever.

Beyond that, by RAW there's a huge amount of difference between each level of attribute. The average person in a non-physical job (office worker, doctor, lawyer, whatever) has a strength 2 but often varies +-1 and the average person in a physically vigorous job (construction worker, lumper, infantryman, etc) has strength 3 but easily also varies +-1. Strength 4 is exceptionally strong, and professional football players are in the 5-6 range.

My point of reference for attribut range is based on my own experiences:

• As a college wrestler I probably had strength 4. I would bench around 300lbs, do a 100 pushups, 75 situps, or 25 chin ups in 2 minutes.
• After graduation, as a soldier and then a construction worker I decreased to strength 3. I could only bench 225 pounds, do 75 pushups, 50 situps, or 15 chin ups.
• Now after sitting behind a desk for a dozen years I'm probably a high 2 or low 3. I can bench 180, do around 50 pushups, 50 situps, and only around 8-9 chin ups.
• Most of my co-workers at the gym probably bench between 100 and 180 (few higher, few lower). They can do anywhere between 10 and 30 pushups, and maybe do a couple chinups. This is what I think strength 2 is.
• My wife is probably a strength 1, body 1. She can walk around and do basic tasks, but because of challenges she has with fybromyalgia can't lift much more than 15 pounds over her head. She can't do a straight-legged pushup, or chin up, but she's still very much functional for normal activities in the office.
• Before she died last year, my grandmother was mostly bed-ridden. She needed help to get out of bed, could stand and shuffle along but needed help to keep her balance, and couldn't pick up anything heavier than a book. This is strength 0.

Setting this question aside, you appear to have misread "pullup" as "pushup"

~J

Ooooohhh. Yeah, that would make way more sense

Alright. So lets see if I've got the gist of how most people feel.

Because of the popularity of the athletics skill group, shock gloves, multiple running tests if you have multiple IPs, other bonuses, etc, if gear weights/encumberance and lift tests to pull oneself up were used, they would be the main drawbacks of low strength.

However gear weights would be a hassle, also it isn't likely to be abused too greatly because GMs that won't consider weight usually do consider volume in an abstract manner, and the nature of SR4 skills means that there probably aren't all that many useful things that a player can use anyway, particularly when it comes to weapons (i,e, often players have a specialty weapon, and they might not carry any other).

A result might be players with strength one running around like they had strength five, but the feeling seems to be "big deal". And it's true that, since just giving them strength five outright wouldn't break your game, doing this certainly wouldn't.

And climbing is there as a skill, it uses strength, just use that for pull ups, and such.

I agree with Sunnyside on his sum up of this thread...

Can you explain what you mean by "doing this certainly wouldn't"?

Is it a double negation on giving the characters strength five outright?

Do you mean that you simply should give every character strength five, that you should enforce the fact that characters do /not/ have that attribute?

I mean lets say you have a character with strength one, but with their armor, weapons, and gear they'd need a strength of five, if you figured out the gear's weight, to haul it without any penalties. But you're letting them haul it around without any penalties.

Does this "break the game?"

Well, would just giving them strength five break the game? The other players might complain, but no, I don't think that would break the game.

Therefore letting them effectively have strength five in this one respect won't break the game.

Does this make strength dumping smart minmaxing? Yup. Is it worth calculating gear weights to prevent the possible exploit? The consensus seems to be a big "no."

no. only a rolled TEST is bod + str, flat rates are str only. (p. 130 and 300, sr4)


so a str 2 body 2 character can, without a test, lift 30 kg, and rolls 4 dice (one bought success) for an additional 15 str 3/bod 3 would be 45 + 15-30 extra (1-2 successes on 6 die)

As someone else said, it is a pull up, not a push up.

And a one-armed push up is easy, while a one-armed pull up is incredibly, incredibly difficult. A few climbers can even do one-fingered pull ups!

Well, one finger isn't that much more impressive than one armed. If you can hang by one finger, and do a pullup with one arm, then you can do a one fingered pullup. All the work is being done by the arm, the finger just acts as the anchor point.

Which is why I just use armor values for encumbrance and set it against STR+BOD. It takes a few seconds to calculate and encourages taking at least a point or two of strength.

That's not quite true, given that the finger needs to support not just the body's weight but also the lifting force. The question, I guess, becomes how fast the pullup is

~J

That's true, but most people don't do pullups all that quickly, so I don't think the added force is that extreme. You are right though, I was forgetting about that additional force.

Try one and see how you feel afterward. You need a lot of grip strength to pull it off.

That would require me to be able to hang by a single finger, and be able to do a one armed pullup, neither of which I'm sure I can do.

Many people would make the same claim, which is understandable!

So, try this instead - two arms, one finger each hand. See if you can hang, first, then try to lift.

One thing i've noticed here is that people keep mentioning weight of items and so forth, that's fine and all but as a former Infantryman I have to say weight isn't everything. There is also bulk, my standard combat load was in excess of 80 pounds, and my SAW gunner had about 2o pounds more on him just in extra ammo he carried, now that was 5 years ago and TO&E my have changed as to what is included in gear for combat patrols now. My point is that it was never the weight, you got used to that, it was the bulk you had to carry, there is only so much room on the human body to but things, adn you end up looking liked a stuffed bear pretty quickly, armor, LBV, Ammo, Water, NODS, Pro mask, bayonet, extra ammo, butt pack, Weapon, extra ammo, assorted knick knacks, you run outta space real quick. So for the STR 1 characters, yes at first encumbrance will be a facter but after 10 25 karma, it's not unreasonable to raise your 1 to a 2 or 3 to show that ylour STR has improved. My concern is people with BOD of 1, a skinny as a rail or short as a Hobbit metahuman will have trouble finding places to carry all that gear around on. I think as GMs use common sense, if the RAW is not there to support reality, use your best judgement, and house rule it. Make characters spend 10 points of karma to improve a 1 to a 2 to show their body's have gotten stronger for having carried around extra pounds of gear. When I entered basic I was in good shape, able to pass a PT test no problems, others in my platoon had difficulties with poor lower and/or upper bodies, but by the tiem we finished in 15 weeks, we where all able to hump our basic loads 15-30 miles no sweat. Bodies will adjust to more weight, you'll grow stronger and increase muscle mass. So if a character wants to dump stat STR to a 1 cool, no problem, the daily live a runner leads is sometimes more physical that cerebral yes, so use common sense guys and spend the 10 karma to increase the stat to a 2, 10 karma takes like what 2 or 3 game sessions to get, spend it on a increasing a low stat, boom makes sense right. So yes at first you will be strained to keep up with your more athletic party members, use it a so good chance for roleplaying, but realize that you will get better and stronger as time moves along if you wanna carry 20-30 pounds of gear with ya. There is no real concrete RAW for this in 4E so GMs palyers use your best judgement and be realistic to home rule it and you should be fine. Low physical stats are easier to home rule as ir real life we can go to the gym and work out or play sports or whatever so you can see how that would increase STR/BOD/AGI/REA in life, so it's easier to apply that in gane terms, and again 10 points of karma is a no brainer to increase a 1 to a 2 in a dump stat

The bulk thing slaps bod 1 characters pretty hard with the armor rules. I would be surprised to actually see a bod 1 char, save for the occasional bunker rigger type character.

Played a Necromancer who had all Physical Stats at 2 once (Followed the Dark King, no less)... lasted almost 100 Karma, all told, before he fell to ghouls...