[mrcatman]

We've got a troll with a maxed out 15 STR (inclusive of the positive quality & +4 worth of aug's) and the throwing weapons skill (was for throwing knives, but now he's think about tossing heavy desks and bikes [and perhaps small cars?] at people for fun). We had some questions from you gurus on this...

1. What are the weights for the bikes and small cars? I spotted the p.152 rules on lifting, but nothing on how heavy the vehicles are.

2. Presuming the troll can lift something, is the toss just a straight up opposed throwing weapons skill vs. defense test? Is there a penalty to the roll for the abnormal nature of what he's throwing (it's not like he trained the skill by throwing bikes at people).

3. What are the ranges for tossing a bike? Nothing on the range table seems appropriate.

4. Base damage just STR(P) and no AP? Or should there be something added? While the crash/ramming rules certainly don't apply (troll isn't tossing the bike at the same speed as a vehicle travels), perhaps some variation works here?

5. We're thinking there is a good chance for secondary effects (e.g., a heavy vehicle hitting you could pin you to the ground or against a wall). Would the pin only be possible with a called shot, or is there a chance it could happen regardless? Would it be reasonable to have something akin to the crash/composure test by being tagged with a tossed vehicle?

6. Do you think having Bone Density Aug would assist in the roll to lift heavy things (I know the rules for this note the +BOD only applies to damage resistance rolls). But it seems somewhat relevant for lifting IMHO.

Thanks ahead of time for your assistance, and happy holidays!

[martinchaen]

Yeah, good luck with that one. I don't even know where to begin from a rules perspective, but I'll give it a try for what I would do.

1. Look up similar type vehicles in real life and just do some comparisons. A sportsbike like the Suzuki Mirage can weigh anywhere from 150kg to 300kg, but 200 is probably pretty average. A moped like the Dodge Scoot would likely be less than 100kg, while a Harley-Davidson Scorpion could be as much as 400kg. I'd be surprised if even the smallest type cars would weigh less than 800kg, with more realistic weights of around 1200kg and up.

2. I would likely require a complex action to use the lifting skill (you're not picking up a set of car keys here), and then a subsequent throwing action test in the next phase; throwing vs defense sounds good, modify as you like if you think the bike is coming at the target slowly enough for them to get the hell out of Dodge (heh). I probably wouldn't add negative dice for throwing an unusual object, but that's just for simplicity's sake.

3. I would enact ranges based on weight and modified by throwing. Something like STR * meters for every 100kgs, with each additional 100kgs reducing the distance by X meters. Take care with this, though, as you could be looking at a troll tossing a motorcycle a very long way, which does not seem very apt to me. With 15 STR you're absurdly strong, but you're still not going to be able to throw a 1 ton car very far.

4. I would base damage off of the BOD of the car, maybe add Armor as well, similar to the ramming attacks (if he manages to toss the thing more than 10 meters, then straight up BOD).

5. See 4 above; instead of secondary effects I would just apply ramming damage. Sure, if they fail their defense test and take damage, then maybe you can have them get pinned, but I have no clue how you would rule this...

6. No. Denser bones does not for a stronger lift make, so unless you plan on having the character roll Body to avoid breaking his arms or legs while lifting the heavy things, I'd leave this aside.

[Namikaze]

throwing vs defense sounds good, modify as you like if you think the bike is coming at the target slowly enough for them to get the hell out of Dodge (heh).

I see what you did there.  Nicely played, sir.  Nicely played.

[Ryo]

I would say damage would be Strength + Body of the vehicle, with a range of Your Strength - Vehicle's Body in meters.

However, it's kind of a moot point, because the numbers given for Lift/Carry mean you don't have a snowball's chance in hell, even at Strength 15, to throw a vehicle. You can lift Strength * 15 kilos off the ground without a test, but lifting something over your head, which you probably need to do to throw it at someone, is Strength * 5 kilos. At Strength 15, that's 75 kilos, which even the Dodge Scoot probably outweighs. The lightest Harley Davidson I could find googling weighs 250 kilos, so being generous and saying the Scorpion is that light means your troll buddy would need 35 successes on a Strength + Body roll to get that over his head.

Is that realistic for a 3 meter tall mountain of muscle with a Strength value more than double that of the strongest man to ever live? Maybe not. But that's how the numbers work.

[ZeConster]

A Dodge Scoot isn't exactly a Harley, though: it's an electric-powered scooter with a terrible max speed (60 "safe" m/turn in 4th, 40 m/turn running in 5th). Some googling leads me to a brand called "Novox", which has a few different types on their site. Most of them weigh 110kg or 116kg, but there's some lightweight versions which weigh 93kg, and there's one that can weigh as little as 75kg. The max speed is a bit low (45 km/h, or 36 m/turn, although the lightest version only comes with 25 km/h, or 20 m/turn), though.
With that in mind, I'd go with a weight between 90kg and 120kg for the Dodge Scoot. 90kg means 3 hits needed, 120kg means 9 hits needed.

Of course, there's a few complications: something that big will probably take you 2 Complex Actions (1 to lift, 1 to throw), the range will be way less than that of thrown grenades (martinchaen's Extreme Range of STR * meters sounds about right, or you could lift something of 20-25 kilograms above your head (if you're of average strength) and see how far you can throw it), and there's going to be a pretty hefty penalty to your Accuracy (so in this case, your Physical Limit), like with improvised melee and ranged weapons. Based on the numbers there, I'd say -2 or -3 (or you could go with -1 per X kg, where X could be anything between 20 and 50).

[martinchaen]

I will concede that I think the rules for lifting above your head is ridiculous; even I can lift more weight over my head than a really, really strong character in SR5, apparently.

That being said, I would allow the character to use just pure lifting off the ground which is multiplied by 15 instead of 5, for the sole reasons of activities like the caber toss and hammer throw. Imagine a troll grabbing a bike by it's handlebars, lifting it off the ground, swinging it around himself and letting go as he made a turn. That's more along the lines of what I was thinking off. Now, that probably wouldn't be possible for cars, but I'm thinking cars wouldn't be liftable anyway, with their weight of 800kgs and up I posited. A STR15 and BOD10 character can lift 225 + 15d6>5*15 kgs, and with a physical limit of around 15 the maximum such a character could ever lift would be 225 + 15*15 = 225+225 = 550kgs.

Wit that in mind, tossing a motorcycle like a hammer? Sure, I'd allow that. Picking up a small car? Probably not.

I would also as mentioned require two complex action (one for using a skill, even if it is attribute related, another for throwing an item), though I like the STR + Vehicle BOD damage factor. You could even use the vehicle BOD / 2 as a threshold to avoid getting pinned with a Gymnastics test if it successfully hit. Range is still something I'm unsure of; normally you would have penalties based on range, but STR + BOD (lifting, basically) - vehicle BOD * hits meters may make more sense as an absolute.

With the above, a STR15 + BOD10 + AGI 6 (just for laughs) with Throwing skill 6 character would roll 12 dice to hit, 25 - Vehicle BOD of 8 for a Harley = 17 dice for range totaling hits meters, doing potentially 23 physical damage if he succeeded. The opponent, if unable to dodge the incoming "weapon", would roll Gymnastics + AGI (4) to avoid being pinned underneat it, requiring an attribute Lift skill test to get out from under it.

I could work with that...

[mrcatman]

Thank you all for your help. Some really good ideas and things to work with here!

[Nobody]

Pg. 168 states that improvised ranged weapons tend to have an accuracy of 3, rather than impose a dice pool penalty. Motorbikes seem pretty improvised to me.

Also, Attribute + Attribute tests don't use limits, so theoretically a stupidly strong/sturdy trog could potentially get into the compact car tossing neighborhood, even with the lackluster lifting rules. Especially with Edge.