I'm curious about the maximums. The 4C PDF states that 30-39 is the maximum for a human. Is this the same as in the old system, or is that a change that was made to balance all the stats, or what? I ask because I notice that on conversion charts for the original system, various stats seemed to have different maximums. Similarly, writeups I've seen for characters like Batman max his Strength and Endurance out at 20.

I'm trying to work on my own system using a lot of 4C as a basis, and understanding the maximum for a normal human is very important. Thanks!

EDIT: According to this page the maximums are different. Has this been changed, then, for 4C? And how does this affect the various charts and so forth?

I don't know the actual reasoning behind that change from the old system, but I imagine it was done to create some sort of consistency between rank values of the various traits, like most game systems tend to have.

The only problem with this is that it totally borks the intensities of most every conventional action, particularly where Brawn is concerned, if you're wishing to stay at all consistent with the old rules (which might come in handy if you want to point others to resources other than what you yourself make for use in your system).

Consistency with the 'old' system isn't really necessary, but keeping it might make it easier for others to adopt your new take on the rules.

Myself, I'm sticking with the 'old' benchmarks in my own variant of the 4C System rules, if only because it'd be easier for a Gamemaster to just grab Classic MSH statistics and materials and plug them into their own games with minimal efforts. Maybe with a little filing off of the old serial numbers, but you know.

I expanded on the 'benchmarks' given with ye olde rules while working out most of the basics for my Edition 13 stuff, and if you're interested you can check them out here - though keep in mind that a) they're still under construction / may need editing, and b) I haven't done the Melee bit yet. Been busy and all, but these match up with the table you linked to:

http://www.technohol.com/custom/core-ru ... its-4c.asp

In the interests of full disclosure, I myself changed some of the benchmarks on the higher ends, particularly where Fortune is concerned - I evened it out a bit there. And most of the 'old' benchmarks stopped at rank value 100, so that was just attempt to quantify the more abstract portions of astoundingly high ability in a given trait.

Thanks for the reply. I wasn't sure if maybe it had something to do with copyrights - that maybe a little change like max ranks made it just different enough or something.

I thought that might also be why the rank numbers are a bit different as well as benchmarks. Also, the missing "blue" results. I'm afraid if this is the reason these things were changed that if I "changed them back" that I might be breaking a copyright. (Come to think of it, I can't imagine any other reason why 00 suddenly means "0" either, though I can't see why that would be an infringement anyway.)

On the positive side, the rank numbers not matching the old ranks exactly doesn't really matter since you can still use the same equivalent ranks(I don't even use rank numbers or anything like that, just straight ranks).

I bookmarked your page and will look at it within a day or so. Thanks again!