Power and Power Maximum

Brute strength, physical fitness, endurance, how fast you can throw a baseball, vitality, shine, sexual prowess—all of these are measured by the Power Statistic. Power is important because it helps you whup the asses of your opponents and it contributes to your Base Votes, which determine how well you’ll do against HappyCOM-9 in an Election. Also, it keeps you alive: a low Power means that you’re staggering around the City on death’s door—in fact, if your Power ever drops to zero, you Die. If this happens, you should jump ahead to “Death,” as covered in the “Things That Suck” section of these rules (page 19), to see what to do about it. You should expect your Power to go up and down a lot during the game. 350 points is about average to start with.

Your Power Maximum is a measure of how healthy you can potentially be at a given moment. At the beginning of the game, your Power and Power Maximum are equal (but that will change). For now, simply note that no game effect can raise your Power above your Power Maximum.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that your Power Maximum itself can go up. The most common means of increasing your Power Maximum is by eating a certain potted meat product—you can find it in the front of the Catalog.