More MSH Mulling
In TSR’s excellent Marvel Super Heroes game, movement is abstracted into units called areas, with each area being “about half a city block, or 44 yards” for game purposes. A character with Feeble movement moves one area per round, or about 132 feet in 6 seconds. This has Aunt May (Feeble Endurance) running a four minute mile. Mister Fantastic hits a mile in about two minutes. Kingpin (with his Incredible Endurance) would be even faster.
In MSH, Kingpin runs at 45 miles per hour, and Aunt May would qualify for the Olympics.
In fairness, for the years that I played MSH, this was never an issue. We just counted out areas on the map. I don’t recall anyone ever wondering why Aunt May could sprint half a city block in six seconds. I’m certainly not going to complain about a lack of realism in game that includes superheroes.
But, still, really?
Turning over to the third edition of Mutants & Masterminds, I see that an elderly person would likely have a -2 Constitution rank. If that translated to movement (which it doesn’t in M&M) that’d be one-fifth normal speed, which seems a bit slow. Half speed, or 15 feet per round, seems better for Aunt May. That’d put Aunt May at about 15 minutes to hustle a mile.
If I expand on this idea, here’s what I get for ground speeds based on Endurance in MSH:
Feeble Endurance: 5 yards/round (or Feeble speed)
Poor to Excellent Endurance: 10 yards/round (or Poor speed)
Remarkable or Higher Endurance: 15 yards/round (or Typical speed)
Continuing the table with ground speeds for characters with enhanced movement powers based on this progression puts Unearthly running speed at a decent 50 yards/round. While fifty yards in six seconds is pretty quick, but it’s not Quicksilver quick. Powers need to have their own scale, and I think MSH has the right idea here.
A character with even Feeble Lightning Speed should be faster than pretty much anyone without superhuman powers. Using the normal values in MSH accomplishes this goal. A Feeble Lightning Speed speedster hits a mile in about four minutes, which would be about three times faster than the fastest person without movement powers. With Good Lightning Speed, he’s clocking a mile a minute. In keeping with MSH, air speed is even faster.
As shown on the table below, considerations related to tactical movement quickly become sort of irrelevant when dealing with movement powers. The Human Torch (Excellent Flight) covers 1,200 feet in one round. This is a shade slower in terms of areas (9 rather than 10) if using the area system of movement.
When it comes to hitting a moving target with a ranged attack, a -1CS applies against targets moving up to 600 feet/round, a -2CS against those moving up to 1200 feet/round, and -4CS against anything faster (assuming in all cases the target is charging straight at the shooter).
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