At the height of his career, Arnold Swartzenegger probably had 3@10 strength. Or at least very close to that. Godzilla, in my first world, also had 3@10 strength. Obviously, Arnold is nowhere near as strong as Godzilla, so how is that worked out? Thanks in advance.
Because Arnold probably only had 2@10 strength. I thought I read somewhere that normal mortal humans can't go above 2@10 in any attribute without magical, psionic, or divine intervention. Godzilla meanwhile probably had 3@1 or 3@2 plus jacked modifiers for being the size of a skyscraper (I've never seen a game system that didn't include some kind of accounting for scale).
3@10 attributes tend to be the realm of legendary heros and demigods. MJ once told me that Thor himself would have a 3@10 Strength, and in no way is Godzilla going to be able to beat on Thor, scale or no scale.
Well, as I understand it, 3@10 is "So good it's ludicrous to talk of improving". I don't think Arnold could improve, so, by my definition of it anyway, Arnold would have 3@10. Or do you really think he could improve from how huge he was at his peak?
Wait, maybe you're right. Arnold could improve through magic or psionic ability. I might just be misunderstanding what 3@10 means.
Oh and Osevens, strength isn't the only factor in a fight. Bruce Lee wasn't that big, but I would bet just about everything I own that he could whip Arnold.
Arnold has a 2@10 strength, why? In baseline earth there is no way to go beyond 2@10 without extraordinary means (cybernetics, genetic manipulation, etc). 2@10 is the peak human attributes without help. For those of you with the Referee's Rules, it is also explained there. Now once you become a verser and leave baseline earth, it's possible to break the 2@10 barrier, but it is not easy.
Adam
Gotcha, I was thinking that Arnold has 3@10 human strength. I keep forgetting all the other factors involved.
Part of your confusion comes from the fact that skills and attributes use the same scale, but they don't use exactly the same definitions. Anyone who works long and hard enough can become 3@10 at a skill--defined, as you say, as so good it is ludicrous to talk about it getting better. A 2@10 attribute is probably one in a generation, or maybe not as many as that, and a 3@10 attribute is as strong as anything can be.
As to handling "scale", we do it through skills. For example, Thor is one of a number of gods who has 3@10 strength, but he also has skills that enable him to lift and wield his hammer. Sure, Superman might be able to lift Thor's hammer--he gets a penalized difficult strength check to do it--but for Thor the difficult strength check is the fallback, because he first rolls that lifting skill.
I don't usually see 3@10 strengths, and if I recall correctly Godzilla didn't have one. there are a couple of long-term versers who have achieved that level, though.
--M. J. Young
If 3@10 is the best, you cannot get any better. Suppose you had a verser with 3@10 everything. Just about every skill and attribute that you could imagine. There's no way he can ever get better than that? I could imagine an insanely elder verser having something along these lines.
That scenario is the exact reason why Versers need the option to die eventually. If we don't have the capacity for death, eventually we'll ALL be that guy. And not only will we not be able to get any better - there's nothing left for us to learn. We know everything about everything and lose the capacity for self-improvement. And then where would we be?
Well, first, it's extremely difficult to get to be 3@10 in an attribute at all; but admittedly some do accomplish it. On the other hand, as good as characters like Michael di Vars and The Architect are, they don't have a lot of 3@10 attributes because they never made that a priority. Those characters that do have 3@10 attributes have only a few, in the areas they think important.
Second, probably there is an infinite number of skills, particularly when you're talking about 3@ SAL skills. After all, if I have a 3@10 skill in a sword, I don't have a 3@10 skill in swords, nor even in broad swords--I have a 3@10 skill in this broadsword. If I want to have a 3@10 skill in two different broadswords, I have to practice with each of them individually. Similarly, if someone tells me they want to "read minds", I always distinguish what sort of mind reading they mean--the default is that you're going to read the present surface thoughts of the individual in the language in which he is thinking, but there are such variants as searching his memories, tapping his language processing center, cutting into his senses, hunting for images, and many more, all under the general heading of "read minds". That kind of specialization means that I'm going to have to have a tremendous number of skills even to think that I have exhausted a single area of life.
Third, that aspect of having expertise in a limited part of a field opens up the possibilities for shifting interests, that I might spend many years trying to become a combat monster, and then set it all aside while I attempt to become a great scholar, or a powerful wizard, or a potent mentalist, or a great artist or artisan. One things versers do is re-invent themselves from time to time, becoming someone new by exploring new facets of who they might be.
Fourth, it is a narrow and particular view of role playing games that thinks that this is all about who you can become in terms of stats. What is genuinely interesting is actually not so much what you can do as what you actually do. Since the worlds are infinite, and there is no limit on what is possible, you'll never reach the point where you've seen it all and done it all, no matter how many skills you've maxed. (You might exhaust my creative abilities, but the question at hand is not practical but theoretical, whether you would ever exhaust the infinite.) I've been on a sailing ship that used fans blowing into its sails to build up enough velocity to leave the water and fly to the next chunk of the exploded world--crewed by intelligent humanoid animals, no less. Eric was in a world in which giant spheres like spider webs floated like planets in a breathable fluid darkness. Ryan is currently exploring a world in which technology barely works at all, the generally good creatures all look like demons and use magic for ordinary tasks, and are all in a tightly woven mutually-supportive community. Not long ago John I was in an underground world that had been designed as a utopia, in which humanity declined to barbarism because they did not really need to know or do anything. Sure, most of the worlds I run are simple, familiar, even cliche--but that's because I've got to run so many worlds, and I'm always looking for something different. In Donna's current world (where is Donna, anyway?), two aliens are invading the southwestern United States in the midst of the late nineteenth century indian wars, and they want her to explain to the humans that they, the aliens, are now in charge and want all the food delivered to them to take back to their starving people; I got that from an episode of Time Tunnel. There are a lot of crazy possibilities out there. I hope I can keep my players interested for my lifetime. I'm pretty sure that the real multiverse would continue to surprise, intrigue, challenge, and inspire real versers, if there were any such things.
Fifth, yeah, sure, some of the senior versers are bored. Why should that be an argument that they should be able to die? Some old people are unhappy with their circumstances but still live. Some handicapped people don't like their limitations but continue to survive. Some depressed people wish they were dead, but wishing doesn't make it so and suicide attempts are sometimes thwarted. So maybe Michael di Vars is a bit tired of having seen so much and wishes he didn't have to continue. That, though, is a matter of perspective. The Architect is still interested, fascinated by the variety of universes and motivated to discover what he can contribute anywhere he goes. Dan O'Malley still sees each universe as a new story, another book worth reading, which will have nuances of difference from every other book that are worth discovering. Boredom is a choice, more often than not.
Finally, there are ways for versers to come to the end: by stepping into the deep supernatural. Anyone who has, as suggested, gotten to be "3@10 at everything" certainly can find a way to gate himself to a friendly border supernatural realm, orient himself within its strange dimensionality, and find the point of no return beyond which he is no longer within anything resembling time or space--what some would call dead and others alive, and maybe it is one for some and the other for others. Similarly, if you find yourself in a world that is coming to its own end, you might be able to stay with it as it passes into either oblivion or eternity, or both. There are ways to get out of life.
So I think this question is kind of settled.
--M. J. Young