Us Spiders were just on the edge of the sweet spot where the Big Boys played in terms of muscle power, sitting right around Strength: 50, which was the 10-12 ton Might range.
Very importantly, Spiders had true Strength there. In other words, Power AND Might. Not all the bruisers had that. It meant we could hit them, and hurt them, even if we weren’t bruisers ourselves.
Take the Wrecking Crew, and this Wrecker Buff making them pocket Asgardians. It gave them a fixed +Might, either +10 tons each, or +40 tons all in one... but it only gave half that bonus in true Strength.
So, the 15-18 Strength Wrecking Crew guys got booted up to 50 Might, as strong as I was normally, but only to 30-32 Strength. They just couldn’t hit as hard and fast as Spiders could. Even Cindy could punch faster than they could.
All by himself, the Wrecker would get to about 58 Might... and a 38 Strength. He STILL couldn’t punch as fast as I could, although he could wreck stuff if he hit it.
Me getting the Wrecker Buff? I went from a 50 to 55 Strength, with a 60 Might, not that much higher than the Wrecker. At this level, large real-world differences didn’t really mean much. The difference between punching through an inch of steel and two inches wasn’t really there for the average joe, and who had 40 and 50 tons of lifting power was minimally important when punching stuff.
60-65 was the Might playground for most true Bricks, giving them a range from 50 to 100 tons of lifting power. Their Power was often much, much lower. Mr. Hill, for instance, was something like 30/69 until I got him working on his Piston Punches. He’d rapidly climbed up to 57/70 now, able to punch faster than I normally could, although he wasn’t at breaking the sound barrier limits like, oh, Hercules was.
Most Bricks picked up Power Attack. While basically it was trading accuracy for force, the improved versions of it actually represented extremely efficient use of muscle power, trading in precision for brutal speed. If they could get through the Armor/Nat Armor Defense, then what they needed was more damage to overwhelm the DR and actually hurt an opponent... or smash through something, or knock it a VERY long way away.
Penetrate Damage Reduction was there if they had the spiritual force and discipline to learn it. Basically, punch through 1 DR of any type per point of Melee Attack Bonus. Overwhelming power worked perfectly well on most supernatural stuff.
Taking 30 points of DR down to 18 was a massive improvement for me. The fun thing was it stacked with Monkish Adamantine Fists, which ignored 1 point of Hardness per point of Melee Attack Bonus... and which were effective against Indestructibility. Weapons of adamantine, adamantium, adamant, uru, and Shieldium were proven to do the same thing.
Vibranium, no, it could go suck it. It had other uses.
Powerful Finesse was the defense against speedsters, where you exchanged Might for Power, moving your limbs very quickly without the massive force behind them. Speedsters typically didn’t have DR, so any hit on them at all from a Brick could lay them out cold.
Not many Bricks took that Feat, and as a result couldn’t hit many speedsters. Most relied on AoE’s, such as stomps, ground slams, or thunder-clapping as a defense.
So, then, here was me. I was sitting with my base 50 Strength as a Spider Totem, juiced to 55/60 with the Wrecker Buff. Sparking my Bands puts me at 65/70, meaning I was actually right up there with Hercules on both measures, although technically he had no Might limit.
My Arcane Fist open-hand damage was calculated off my Caster Level, which was a base 30 before Spell Power buffs. So, 6-36 base, like getting hit by a tree trunk-sized baseball bat.
My Philosopher’s Might actually had 5 Bars to it. +10 Might-equivalent damage, all there to help take down opposing DR.
I had the Hands as Weapons Tats that let me leech off Function, enchanted to +I Main-Gauche. My Rod defaulted to +Greater Soulbound Enmity/Evil Blooding Vivic Courageous Holy, and I could Infuse it with other effects if I so chose... such as the Shocking/Flaming from my concealed Tiara, Shocking Burst, and so forth. It was mostly configured to aid with spells, not fists.
+4 to hit and damage was still not something to ignore at this point, and the Blooding cancelling out the self-healing rival Bricks were used to was not a small thing.
In addition, I was not a One Strike specialist. Oh, I had Find the Flaw, which was sub Concentration Check for Damage, which did almost the same thing, but me using the Technique was obvious if you knew what to look for.
I was high base damage, and with Spider-Speed and Dexterity, I could perform exactly like a Speedster and rip out a Flurry of multiple attacks at tremendous speed and power.
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These guys could all hit harder than me with their One Strikes. However, I could easily exchange anywhere from five to ten of my blows to one of theirs with most of them, especially if they didn’t have Powerful Finesse, and I was very hard to hit.
I had a Dex score of 50, courtesy of Totem. That was +20. I had a working Intellect of 40, and a functional Monk AC from Arcane Fist. That was +15. I had a +9 Insight Bonus from the Red Eyes letting me know where danger was coming from ahead of time, and I normally had +9 AC from the Sacred, Luck, and Deflection Bonuses of Vier, although those had to be turned off for the competition, as they were Gear bonuses.
The Wrecker Buff gave me +5 Natural Armor... not a lot, but better than a boot to the side of the head. A +49 to AC was actually pretty damn hard for all these superstrong Bricks to hit, and that was before I started using Expertise or Defensive Fighting to up it by up to +8 more. It wouldn’t save me from Hercules, but he wasn’t going to be pulling anything fancy on me.
My own bonus to hit was +12 from MAB, +2 from Unarmed Mastery, +4 from Tats, and +27 from my current Strength (usually +20 from Dexterity via Totem). +45 was capable of pounding on anyone here, and I could juice it all the way to +57 if I didn’t care about doing a lot of damage... or if I wanted to land multiple attacks instead of one big one.
My DR was my Might Bonus due to Totem and Crystallized Damage Reduction, so 30/-, and if I used Bulwark, could spike to 40/- at a cost of -5 to hit. Plus whatever mysterious resistance to impact/blunt damage I got from being a Spider Totem...
Most of these guys had some form of DR equal to their Might Bonus, so Sasquatch was probably sitting on a base 27/- Invulnerability as a mystical entity, and probably 20 points of Nat AC, meaning his almost uncuttable fur/hide would just soak in most physical attacks from normal humans without effort.
What I was going to do was something most Bricks couldn’t, but speedsters routinely did, taking advantage of their effective reflexes and The-World-Is-Sloooow, to make more ‘Finesse’ attacks at cost of accuracy. If they were REALLY fast, speedsters could stack bunches of attacks into one, creating an ersatz One Strike Hundred-Punches-As-One as effective as a Mighty attack, but that was something else.
Sasquatch was only a 30 to 35 for me to hit. His DR was already cut in half against me. I bought off the Powerful Finesse damage penalty with my Philosopher’s Might, taking -10 to hit for two additional attacks with both hands at +10, bless Spider Ambidexterity and Reflexes for making it possible, then adding on another -10 to hit for a Full Attack Combination at +12 MAB.
I was still +35 to hit and wasn’t going to miss him.
“Fight!” the referee shouted.
Langkowski swept out a hand thrice the breadth of a dinner plate at me, bounding backwards at the same time. He’d seen my matches and how fast I could close in, and was trying to hit me on the charge.
I had 15x reflexes, and the Red Eyes. I watched his swing go by over my head as I slid forwards down low, and as he landed, I was actually coming in under his arm, and he could barely see me.
I slammed my left hand into his gut. Steel-hard muscles caved in, as that was a lot of power in a small area. I cut through the mystic edge of his invulnerability, overwhelmed it with raw Might... and then I stuck to him as I also welded my feet to the floor.
At this Might level, without even juicing it, I had a roughly 600-ton Attract/Root. He wasn’t going anywhere.
No, he wasn’t bouncing away with the force of the blow, as now I came forward with my right hand, pulling him towards me while he was still trying to get his striking arm out of the way, and his chin had come down almost on my head from the impact of my first punch.
He couldn’t bounce or get thrown away; he had to take everything I was about to hammer into him.
WHAMWHAMWHAMWHAMWHAM!
The air buckled in rings at the impact of five 50-pt right hands delivered in under a second, and the ref’s force field snapped on so he wouldn’t be blown away. I walked the strikes up Sasquatch’s chest, driving his upper body back, and my last blow came up right under his chin as he was whiplashing backwards, arms snapping out wide as the force ran through him.
He was tottering there at the end of my palm, totally limp while stuck there, but his thousand pounds didn’t weigh anything to me.
The ref took a look at Sasquatch’s lolling head and blank dark eyes, and I let go, letting the big orange not-ape crumple to the ground, out cold.
“KO and match to Dynamo!” he announced immediately, shaking his head.
I pulled out my Vaccine and typed into my Arena account, “Fur definitely covering up for something.”
The other big men waiting over there for their chance at me had interesting looks on their faces at the speedy takedown...
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Atlas grew to a full thirty-feet tall to face me. He had Might in the it’s-a-big-number range with his ionic-powered physique boost and magic Belt.
He never got to throw a kick or punch down at me. I Repulsed under his left foot, making the floor basically frictionless, and tossed his foot up in the air. Yeah, he weighed twenty tons, so what?
He did a high kick completely out of control, and came down on his head basically right next to me. It didn’t hurt him, of course, but then his eyes crossed as I grabbed the bridge of his nose and raised my right hand.
Five impacts later, he had a crater in his forehead, and wasn’t moving.
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Agataur the Brass Bull had a reputation for an invulnerable hide, a lot of strength, and great power on the charge. Getting rammed by him was not fun. Hercules usually wrestled him down to subdue him.
Those horns of his made for great leverage when I went over him, stuck to his back, anchored my feet, and pushed and pulled.
The crack as his neck broke and he found himself looking over his backside was pretty loud. His charge became a fall and skid for a good thirty meters before we came to a halt.
Nope, I didn’t get through his hide, so sad...
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I exchanged hand techniques with Orca, meaning he took a punch at me, and I took six at him, doubling him over and then straightening him right up off the floor... or he would have, if he wasn’t stuck to the floor, too.
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The Rhino kind of gave me a weak smile, knowing I was out of his league, but he gave it his best charge. He was tripped, Stuck to my hand, rammed the metal floor as I stood there holding his armored arm, and punched down on his head, twice.
He was only rated at 65 tons, and his defenses were so bad he’d been allowed to wear his armor, as there wasn’t anything particularly unique about it.