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I've been doing a little lightweight research on how powerful a character with few feats might be by using fairly sensible gameplay mechanics for power-scaling ("This character is flat-out immune to attacks this weak or less").
Long story short, I'm trying to figure out how one would go about calculating a character that requires a somewhat hefty minimum amount of AP to do any harm, but can take astronomically more than that in one blow and hang in there by a thread, still able to keep attacking.
For a hypothetical example: Billy Bob Basher, the recurring villain for a low-budget western cartoon show, gets slugged repeatedly by expert martial-artists and hulking bruisers with crowbars and maces without a scratch, rendering our low-power superheroes useless when it comes to straight up fisticuffs or other forms of peak-human attacks. When the police fire at him, he hides behind walls and winces in pain when shot with a pistol, the bullets leaving bruises, paper-cuts, and other minor injuries, but nothing like a normal person would experience when pelted with gunfire. Later on, he gets into an enemy-mine situation with the heroes to defeat another villain, Flame Fondue, who blasts him with fireballs that blow up suburban houses. He manages to keep fighting after four explosions, but is gravely wounded and admits a fifth would have done him in. At the end of the series, he gets cornered by a horde of police and is knocked out after about seventy gunshots' worth of trauma and taken into prison for standing on the grass.
Where would Billy wind up?
Would we say he was merely a little tougher than the attacks he tanks without effort (wall level), as tough as the biggest attacks he's tanked (small-building level+), somewhere in-between (wall level+), or would just deem it too inconsistent to really work with and move on (at least wall level)?
I ask this because, though I'm not terrible at math, I loathe it. I'm a creative person, not an analytical one. I come here to imagine how each fighter reacts and strategizes, not merely totaling up points for each side and saying whoever has the bigger number is the winner. I was wondering how one might go about recording the story-element of a character surviving a big assault and powering through the pain.
Long story short, I'm trying to figure out how one would go about calculating a character that requires a somewhat hefty minimum amount of AP to do any harm, but can take astronomically more than that in one blow and hang in there by a thread, still able to keep attacking.
For a hypothetical example: Billy Bob Basher, the recurring villain for a low-budget western cartoon show, gets slugged repeatedly by expert martial-artists and hulking bruisers with crowbars and maces without a scratch, rendering our low-power superheroes useless when it comes to straight up fisticuffs or other forms of peak-human attacks. When the police fire at him, he hides behind walls and winces in pain when shot with a pistol, the bullets leaving bruises, paper-cuts, and other minor injuries, but nothing like a normal person would experience when pelted with gunfire. Later on, he gets into an enemy-mine situation with the heroes to defeat another villain, Flame Fondue, who blasts him with fireballs that blow up suburban houses. He manages to keep fighting after four explosions, but is gravely wounded and admits a fifth would have done him in. At the end of the series, he gets cornered by a horde of police and is knocked out after about seventy gunshots' worth of trauma and taken into prison for standing on the grass.
Where would Billy wind up?
Would we say he was merely a little tougher than the attacks he tanks without effort (wall level), as tough as the biggest attacks he's tanked (small-building level+), somewhere in-between (wall level+), or would just deem it too inconsistent to really work with and move on (at least wall level)?
I ask this because, though I'm not terrible at math, I loathe it. I'm a creative person, not an analytical one. I come here to imagine how each fighter reacts and strategizes, not merely totaling up points for each side and saying whoever has the bigger number is the winner. I was wondering how one might go about recording the story-element of a character surviving a big assault and powering through the pain.