Life Support: How much is "Intense"? [Archive] - HERO Games Discussion Boards

gojira

Jan 17th, '06, 11:30 PM

I would probably rule that LS makes you immune to whatever earthly hazards you bought protection for. Thus things like burning houses and the highest mountains would present little if any danger. Dramatic imperative is important, of course, so certainly you might be in some danger or at least discomfort, but you wouldn't be killed outright or even take damage automatically.

Character concept is paramount, and should be talked out with the player before play begins. So for example, Starman and Aqua Guy might both have LS: High Preasure, but only Starman would be safe in deep in the atmosphere of Jupiter. However, considering how unlikely Jupiter is to appear in a campaign, I probably wouldn't even charge one more point for this, it's just a SFX of the character concept.

The Sun (or any star) is a different matter. The Sun generates an energy killing attack that no one is safe from, with out a huge ED. Anything plunging below the photoshpere is disassociated into atoms.

As others have said, LS protects you from CE but not attacks with the same SFX.

Rapier

Jan 18th, '06, 12:09 AM

It depends a lot on the genre.

For Supers it means anything except specific weapon damage. So space and magma are no issue.

For Heroic it means quite a different thing. It's usually when the damage from the environment would exceed 30 AP. I've gone ahead and given an option for increased Environmental LS (10 pts)...mostly because its a monster hunter campaign and some creatures should be REALLY resistant to extreme temps. You can only take the extended version with GMs approval. The extended LS is the same as in my Supers game.

OddHat

Jan 18th, '06, 02:17 AM

The Sun (or any star) is a different matter. The Sun generates an energy killing attack that no one is safe from, with out a huge ED. Anything plunging below the photoshpere is disassociated into atoms.

This is a genre issue. In a high power Supers game, you should be able to explore the interior of a Star with nothing more than 40 points of Desolidification and 17 points of Life Support.

Both powers are absolutes, and both are fairly cheap because it fits the genres where they're likely to come into play.

That's not to say that they must be allowed; however, as they're meant to be used, they're not broken.

OddHat

Jan 18th, '06, 02:19 AM

Trebuchet

Jan 18th, '06, 03:29 AM

So would Life Support allow a character to ignore someone's Change Environment Power?

Example: The Resister has Life Support versus Heat and Cold, and is attacked by the Evil Thermostat, with the power to raise and lower temperatures. The Evil Thermostat raises the temperature around the Reisister by 1000 degrees, and the Resister yawns. Undeterred, the Evil Thermostat lowers the temperature by 2000 degrees, but the Resister just stands there, still unaffected.As I read the rules, LS does provide total protection from most damaging effects of CE. It's somewhat dependent on sfx; a character might be immune to extreme cold from CE but still take damage from large hailstones generated by the CE. Perhaps the best way to determine this is if the CE user purchased additional damage as part of the effect.

Zed-F

Jan 18th, '06, 06:47 AM

I would probably rule that LS makes you immune to whatever earthly hazards you bought protection for. Thus things like burning houses and the highest mountains would present little if any danger. Dramatic imperative is important, of course, so certainly you might be in some danger or at least discomfort, but you wouldn't be killed outright or even take damage automatically.
For the mountain, you can always fall off. :D

As for the burning house, smoke inhalation and oxygen deprivation will also be a problem without appropriate breathing-related LS. Plus you won't want to actually step in a fire or anything -- that still constitutes attack damage in my book. But you could do the usual firefighter routine (tolerate the heat while trying to avoid being set afire) without suffering too much from the temperature of the environment you're operating in.

keithcurtis

Jan 18th, '06, 06:49 AM

Steve Long has gone on record as saying LS does not protect against the heart of the sun.

Keith "For what that's worth" Curtis

OddHat

Jan 18th, '06, 07:49 AM

Steve Long has gone on record as saying LS does not protect against the heart of the sun.

Keith "For what that's worth" Curtis

Steve has also gone on record saying that he is the queen of Sardinia, and that his armies of Pudding People would soon make short work of his enemies!

Or was that someone else?

EDIT TO ADD: I did specify Desolidification + Life Support, not just Life Support on it's own. The build is taken from Supernova in Galactic Champions.

gojira

Jan 18th, '06, 07:58 AM

This is a genre issue. In a high power Supers game, you should be able to explore the interior of a Star with nothing more than 40 points of Desolidification and 17 points of Life Support.

Both powers are absolutes, and both are fairly cheap because it fits the genres where they're likely to come into play.

That's not to say that they must be allowed; however, as they're meant to be used, they're not broken.

I can see that, sure. This goes along with "character concept." If the concept of the character and the genre envisioned by the GM allow such a thing, why not?

But, I feel that is also not a part of the vast majority of genres. Possibly only galactic champions, possibly even that requires "galactic champions Z" before it should be allowed. I don't feel the PCs should ever be all powerful, least the mysteries of life all become blasé. But I also realize that I'm expressing a preference for a range of genre, and that's a personal bias.

Rapier

Jan 18th, '06, 10:29 AM

Is this a house rule?

Yeah.

We needed a breakpoint someplace. The standard LS: Environment was just way too cheap to provide any kind of half-step.

2 pts - Can run around in Winter without a jacket
10 pts - Can run around in Antarctica in Winter without a jacket
10 pts + Desol - Can run around at Absolute Zero without a jacket

megaplayboy

Jan 18th, '06, 12:48 PM

Steve Long has gone on record as saying LS does not protect against the heart of the sun.

Keith "For what that's worth" Curtis
was Steve also responsible for throwing exponential damage progression out the window and saying the heart of the sun does 975d6 KA APx8, Penetrating x16 per segment?
Apparently a questonite sphere with the mass of a neutron star would be instantly vaporized 3 or 4 times over in one second by the heat of the sun's core.

OddHat

Jan 18th, '06, 01:13 PM

was Steve also responsible for throwing exponential damage progression out the window and saying the heart of the sun does 975d6 KA APx8, Penetrating x16 per segment?
Apparently a questonite sphere with the mass of a neutron star would be instantly vaporized 3 or 4 times over in one second by the heat of the sun's core.

Yup.

And again, we have at least one official character who can sundive all day according to his write-up.

Part of the problem is the genre issue; thermal underwear seems to have a -1/4 Real Clothing limit that prevents it from protecting from temperatures below X.

For those who don't want any absolutes in Hero System, what price do you think Life Support is worth? 1 pnt per 5 points of def against Environmental Damage Type X? 1 point per 10?

The most obvious change from that kind of approach is that many kind of NND would instead become AVLDs. Instead of Radiation being an NND Does Body, it would become an AVLD Does Body vs Radiation Defense, and players would have to worry about how many points to invest.

I don't know if that's an improvement. Players would be spending tons of points on defences that might rarely or never come up in play, just because it's silly to talk about certain character types being affected by certain forms of environmental damage.

Mentor

Jan 18th, '06, 01:46 PM

A 2 point life support works for exactly that situation. It works in the near absolute 0 of space, and it doesn't protect you against Mister Chill's 3d6 Ice Gun.

It's one of those absolutes in Hero System that some players want to get rid of and others want to expand. Personally, I don't mind it. It's one of those "Boring Things Won't Kill Me" effects that every cinematic universe uses.
Bloody well right and repped. Who wants James Bond to die of exposure when Q supplied him with nuclear long johns. Save the danger for the bullets, explosions and esoteric bladed thingies rather than the weather, please.

Lethosos

Jan 18th, '06, 02:24 PM

In short...

LS: Heat only protects you against the long-term effects of just heat.
Immunity: Fire will give you both that and the ability to sit in the bonfire.

keithcurtis

Jan 18th, '06, 04:48 PM

I did say "for what it's worth"...

Keith "not much, apparently" Curtis

OddHat

Jan 18th, '06, 04:58 PM

I did say "for what it's worth"...

Keith "not much, apparently" Curtis

Well, it is worth something. :)

Sorry, I seem to be posting in a confrontational manner tonight.

keithcurtis

Jan 18th, '06, 09:24 PM

It's OK. We're still bestest buds.

Keith "Oddhat's Pal" Curtis

Trebuchet

Jan 19th, '06, 03:27 AM

OddHat

Jan 19th, '06, 03:33 AM

megaplayboy

Jan 19th, '06, 05:09 AM

1) Damage in Hero never has been exponential in nature. That's quite inexplicably been one of it's longest held fantasies. Only lifting is exponential.

2) Everyone knows questionite is highly flammable at nuclear fusion temperatures. That's why every piece has a UL warning label "Caution: Keep Away From Nuclear Fusion Sources" :p

well, yes and no. It's not strictly exponential, but it generally tracks pretty closely to it. First of all, a guy who's a thousand times stronger than a normal throws 6x as many dice, not a thousand times as many dice of damage. A tank gun throws 3 or 4 times as many dice of damage as a .44 magnum, not 10,000 times. A nuclear bomb, about 10-20x as many DC as a hand grenade, not a million times.

But the base(non-area) damage of a nuke(the simplified version) is 300 active points, 20d6 KA. The base damage at the core of the sun(where, I note, the core temp would actually be lower than that at the center of an H-bomb blast) is nearly 50x higher, and then one applies the +12 in damage-enhancing advantages, for an active point cost 600x higher.
Note that about 51d6 KA is sufficient to vaporize the Earth instantly. Why does the damage inside the core of the sun have to be over 100x greater per segment than that of a planet-vaping attack?
If you built the aforementioned neutron-star sized piece of questonite(DEF 30, BODY 30 per 100 ton hex, +3 BODY per doubling(owing to the material toughness), up to 90 doublings, yields 30 DEF, 300 BODY for the toughest object in the universe)--200d6 KA would vape it handily, and I doubt the Sun would generate that much damage, either.

It's just a horrible writeup. Steve's a great game designer, but it wouldn't be the first time he's done a bad writeup(Iowa-class Battleships with 10 DEF come to mind...).

Hugh Neilson

Jan 19th, '06, 05:12 AM

1) Damage in Hero never has been exponential in nature. That's quite inexplicably been one of it's longest held fantasies. Only lifting is exponential.

Must we go there again?

The theory is that a doubling of force exerted is required to raise an attack by one damage class. This doesn't hold up under close analysis as defenses and stats affected (BOD, STUN) don't hold up as being exponential themselves.

megaplayboy

Jan 19th, '06, 05:23 AM

Must we go there again?

The theory is that a doubling of force exerted is required to raise an attack by one damage class. This doesn't hold up under close analysis as defenses and stats affected (BOD, STUN) don't hold up as being exponential themselves.
well, DEF and BODY go up by +1-3 per doubling of thickness/mass, which at worst corresponds on the damage end of things to +2-6 DC KA per doubling of force/energy. So, a trillion-fold increase in damage/energy over a hand grenade(9 DC) should yield an extra...80-240 DC of KA. Note that the base damage at the core of the sun equates to almost 3000 DC, which would be about 500 doublings under the most generous calculations--about 10^150.
This is orders of magnitude beyond the energy output created by converting the mass of the universe into energy.
5 points of STR(+1d6 damage) also adds +1 PD and +2.5 Stun, which happens to be exactly equal to the average amount of stun rolled per die.

Hugh Neilson

Jan 19th, '06, 05:31 AM

well, DEF and BODY go up by +1-3 per doubling of thickness/mass, which at worst corresponds on the damage end of things to +2-6 DC KA per doubling of force/energy.

Remember what I said about not holding up to close scrutiny? Here we go.

Assume we have a 1" thick wall made of HandWavium. It's DEF 15, and has 12 BOD. If we make it 2" thick, it increases to 15 BOD (+3 per doubling).= I believe the official rule is 1 BOD = doubled, which is even worse.

Now, assume a character has a 6d6 KA, standard effect. It will always strike for 18 BOD, and inflict 3 BOD on the wall.

The 1" thick wall requires 4 hits to breach. If the 2" thick wall is twice as durable/twice as much BOD, shouldn't it require 8 hits (ie twice as many) to breach? Alternatively, if the 2" thick wall is reduced to half its BOD by one hit, a second hit should eliminate the other half and breach the wall, shouldn't it?

To evaluate +1 BOD = doubled (which is the more appropriate rule as =5 points adds 1 BOD to a KA), we need simply reduce that KA to 5d6+1, which does 16 points on Standard Effect. It will take 12 hits to breach the 1" thick wall, and 13 to breach the 2" thick wall (since 2x thickness = +1 BOD). Shouldn't the 2" wall require 24 hits?

Since any hit capable of doing 1 BOD halves the object's BOD, a second hit for 1 BOD should eliminate the remaining BOD. Any hit doing 2 BOD should destroy the target, since 1 BOD reduced it by half, and 2 BOD is double 1 BOD, under the "doubling = +1 BOD" rule.

This is why I say that, despite the claim +1 DC = 2x the force, it doesn't hold up to close scrutiny, as the mechanics don't support the claim force has doubled.

Happily, I can ignore these rubber physics and just play the game, so I see no need to change it, but (as Treb says), the "1 DC or 1 BOD doubles the power" theory doesn't hold up to close analysis.

megaplayboy

Jan 19th, '06, 05:52 AM

Remember what I said about not holding up to close scrutiny? Here we go.

Assume we have a 1" thick wall made of HandWavium. It's DEF 15, and has 12 BOD. If we make it 2" thick, it increases to 15 BOD (+3 per doubling).= I believe the official rule is 1 BOD = doubled, which is even worse.

Now, assume a character has a 6d6 KA, standard effect. It will always strike for 18 BOD, and inflict 3 BOD on the wall.

The 1" thick wall requires 4 hits to breach. If the 2" thick wall is twice as durable/twice as much BOD, shouldn't it require 8 hits (ie twice as many) to breach? Alternatively, if the 2" thick wall is reduced to half its BOD by one hit, a second hit should eliminate the other half and breach the wall, shouldn't it?

To evaluate +1 BOD = doubled (which is the more appropriate rule as =5 points adds 1 BOD to a KA), we need simply reduce that KA to 5d6+1, which does 16 points on Standard Effect. It will take 12 hits to breach the 1" thick wall, and 13 to breach the 2" thick wall (since 2x thickness = +1 BOD). Shouldn't the 2" wall require 24 hits?

Since any hit capable of doing 1 BOD halves the object's BOD, a second hit for 1 BOD should eliminate the remaining BOD. Any hit doing 2 BOD should destroy the target, since 1 BOD reduced it by half, and 2 BOD is double 1 BOD, under the "doubling = +1 BOD" rule.

This is why I say that, despite the claim +1 DC = 2x the force, it doesn't hold up to close scrutiny, as the mechanics don't support the claim force has doubled.

Happily, I can ignore these rubber physics and just play the game, so I see no need to change it, but (as Treb says), the "1 DC or 1 BOD doubles the power" theory doesn't hold up to close analysis.
you're only looking at one side of the equation--there are obvious reasons why doubling the body for every doubling of thickness doesn't resolve the issue. if a mm thick wall had 5 body, shouldn't a 1000 mm thick wall by this logic have 5000 body? After all, it should take 1000x as many hits to breach.

that would actually create a linear progression, not an exponential one.

there will be inconsistencies in the system, but yes, dagnabit, it is basically an exponential progression for damage(albeit with some fudging).

how much damage does 10^70 joules of energy do? 10^70 d6, or some rollable number of dice? If it's a rollable number of dice, there's some kind of system of progression at work, and it tracks (loosely or closely, whichever you prefer) to an exponential progression of force/power/energy.

what system in place explains why a tank gun does 3 or 4x as much damage(in dice) as a magnum, instead of hundreds or thousands? It is, at least, quasi-exponential. There is certainly some level of arbitrariness, but the values(heretofore) chosen and assigned for damage and toughness correspond reasonably well to their real-world counterparts.

Except the bleedin' sun.

Trebuchet

Jan 19th, '06, 05:03 PM

The theory is that a doubling of force exerted is required to raise an attack by one damage class. This doesn't hold up under close analysis as defenses and stats affected (BOD, STUN) don't hold up as being exponential themselves.My point exactly. :D

Trebuchet

Jan 19th, '06, 05:11 PM

It is, at least, quasi-exponential. There is certainly some level of arbitrariness, but the values(heretofore) chosen and assigned for damage and toughness correspond reasonably well to their real-world counterparts.I think people worry about this too much. The only accurate answer to "How much bigger is an 11d6 than a 10d6 attack?" is "+1d6" Anything else is speculation. This is a game system, not a simulation.

Vanguard

Jan 19th, '06, 05:27 PM

<snikt>

Note that about 51d6 KA is sufficient to vaporize the Earth instantly.

<snikt>

Does that above number account for the fact that you'd have to destroy each HEX of the earth?

Warp9

Jan 19th, '06, 07:51 PM

I think people worry about this too much. The only accurate answer to "How much bigger is an 11d6 than a 10d6 attack?" is "+1d6" Anything else is speculation. This is a game system, not a simulation.
IMO a game system is a kind of simulation.

It may not be the most advanced, "hyper-realistic" type of simulation, but it is a simulation of a sort.

Warp9

Jan 19th, '06, 08:01 PM

Does that above number account for the fact that you'd have to destroy each HEX of the earth?
It there a specific rule that you can quote me where it says that a planet must be attacked HEX by HEX?

I know that you could attack it in that manner, and in most cases that is probably what you'd want to do anyway, but I want to see were it says that it must be dealt with in this manner.

You could attack a door of an aircraft carrier rather than attacking the whole craft--but the attacker would always have the choice of attacking the object as a whole instead.

If you rule that large objects must be attacked in a "piece by piece" fashion, you would end up throwing out the current rules for breaking objects, and also the rules for breaking walls (you also end up making Area Effect attacks more powerful).

But then again perhaps there is something written in the rules where it says that things must be done in this manner.

megaplayboy

Jan 20th, '06, 05:31 AM

I think people worry about this too much. The only accurate answer to "How much bigger is an 11d6 than a 10d6 attack?" is "+1d6" Anything else is speculation. This is a game system, not a simulation.
dude, why does the core of the sun do 975d6 APx16, Penetrating x 8(or vice versa) KA? It's an attack with an active point cost over 100,000 points!

My point is, it doesn't work, either as a simulation or within the game system.
Bad writeup.

megaplayboy

Jan 20th, '06, 05:34 AM

Does that above number account for the fact that you'd have to destroy each HEX of the earth?
If you want that interpretation, then you take megascale 5 AE 1 hex on the attack. It's still a finite number of dice, and far fewer active points than the alleged damage in each hex at the core of the sun.

A mega-starship which could take zero damage from 100 critical hits with antimatter missiles(i.e., 150 BODY each) would be vaporized in one second.

Mentor

Jan 20th, '06, 07:28 AM

dude, why does the core of the sun do 975d6 APx16, Penetrating x 8(or vice versa) KA? It's an attack with an active point cost over 100,000 points!

My point is, it doesn't work, either as a simulation or within the game system.
Bad writeup.I suspect that the write up was a bit tongue in cheek.
Ultimately it occured, because surviving in the the heart of the sun in most games should require massively appropriate SFX and concept backup and not buying a 45 ED Hardened Force Field and 15 Points of Flash Defense, which are the kinds of values strict exponential doubling could result in.

megaplayboy

Jan 20th, '06, 07:41 AM

I suspect that the write up was a bit tongue in cheek.
Ultimately it occured, because surviving in the the heart of the sun in most games should require massively appropriate SFX and concept backup and not buying a 45 ED Hardened Force Field and 15 Points of Flash Defense, which are the kinds of values strict exponential doubling could result in.
huh, don't see it. we accept 20d6 KA as reasonable nuke damage, so 15-30+ d6 KA (necessitating at least 60-120+ rED, plus enough extra defense to shrug off the stun damage) seems reasonable for per segment Sun damage.
Explosions in Hero actually go up +2 DC per doubling of explosive(+3 DC if you count the explosion advantage), so a 10 MT nuke = 10^7 KG of TNT= about 23 doublings = +46 DC up from a 1 kg TNT block, which is pretty close to 20d6 KA.
using that rule, 10^70 joules is about...450 DC or so(150d6 KA). Seems pretty reasonable to me.
Why do I use that number? That's the mass of the universe, converted fully into energy. Even with +10 in advantages thrown on top, it's still only about a fifth as many points as the "sun damage" writeup Steve did in SH.

Yes, a good concept and sfx should be required--but the character shouldn't have to written up with more points than G-d.

Warp9

Jan 20th, '06, 08:58 AM

I suspect that the write up was a bit tongue in cheek.
Ultimately it occured, because surviving in the the heart of the sun in most games should require massively appropriate SFX and concept backup and not buying a 45 ED Hardened Force Field and 15 Points of Flash Defense, which are the kinds of values strict exponential doubling could result in.
I don't agree.

Note: Actually I believe that it is probably a Life Support issue, but assuming that LS doesn't cover survival in the sun. . . .

For me, your statement above is like saying surviving a 120 mm tank gun in most games should require massively appropriate SFX and concept backup and not buying a large amount of resistant defenses.

The forces you are subjected to at the heart of the sun are of a definable quantity (in physics terms). They should be able to be stated out in the same way that the damage from any other attack would be stated out.

Cancer

Jan 20th, '06, 09:17 AM

I would say that a 2-pt LS should cover any condition (relevant to that LS) that can be found naturally on Earth's surface. If you have to go to artificial or off-world circumstances to get that condition, then you need more than the 2-pt LS. Now, that covers a lot of stuff....

Treb's initial point was that -95 (IIRC) does occur naturally on Earth's surface, and yes, that can kill a lightly-dressed human in a minute or less. That doesn't bother me that much. Maybe the cost is out of whack with the effect you get from it, but it's not so big a deal.

Most of the shouting seems to be coming from corner cases, where you have to go to off-world conditions to get to those extremes. And for a cosmic-power superhero game, this probably matters, and some coherently thought-out number-crunching needs to be done. "Core of sun", "neutronium", "absolute zero", etc., ... make a decision about how to scale the damage into those regimes, stat it out, post something worked out in a coherent way. There'll still be shouting after that, but it'd be a step in the right direction.

Trebuchet

Jan 20th, '06, 03:51 PM

huh, don't see it. we accept 20d6 KA as reasonable nuke damage, so 15-30+ d6 KA (necessitating at least 60-120+ rED, plus enough extra defense to shrug off the stun damage) seems reasonable for per segment Sun damage.
Explosions in Hero actually go up +2 DC per doubling of explosive(+3 DC if you count the explosion advantage), so a 10 MT nuke = 10^7 KG of TNT= about 23 doublings = +46 DC up from a 1 kg TNT block, which is pretty close to 20d6 KA.
using that rule, 10^70 joules is about...450 DC or so(150d6 KA). Seems pretty reasonable to me.
Why do I use that number? That's the mass of the universe, converted fully into energy. Even with +10 in advantages thrown on top, it's still only about a fifth as many points as the "sun damage" writeup Steve did in SH.

Yes, a good concept and sfx should be required--but the character shouldn't have to written up with more points than G-d.Wow. You've never even read the Explosives rules, have you? If you'll look at the Explosives chart on page 487 of 5ER, you'll see:

Dynamite (1 stick) 5d6 EX
Dynamite (2 sticks) 6d6 EX
Dynamite (4 sticks) 8d6 EX

There is absolutely nothing about this list that is exponential. It's simply adding +1d6 for each stick of dynamite. Given this totally arithmetic progression and assuming for the sake of argument that a single stick of dynamite weighs one pound, 100 pounds of dynamite should do 95d6 and a 15kTon nuke (Hiroshima) should do 30,000,000d6; or 10 million d6 K. :eek:

Since that is patently absurd based on Steve Long's writeup of the sun, I think we can finally lay to rest any absurd idea that the damage system in Hero is either exponential or arithmetical. It is neither. It's possible it's some sort of logarithmic scale which climbs sharply at first and then levels out, but nobody can creditably claim it's exponential. And it's rather clearly not arithmetic, at least not above a few score dice.

I do not and never have considered a 20d6 K EX as a creditable simulation of a nuclear weapon.

Vanguard

Jan 20th, '06, 05:02 PM

It there a specific rule that you can quote me where it says that a planet must be attacked HEX by HEX?

I know that you could attack it in that manner, and in most cases that is probably what you'd want to do anyway, but I want to see were it says that it must be dealt with in this manner.

You could attack a door of an aircraft carrier rather than attacking the whole craft--but the attacker would always have the choice of attacking the object as a whole instead.

If you rule that large objects must be attacked in a "piece by piece" fashion, you would end up throwing out the current rules for breaking objects, and also the rules for breaking walls (you also end up making Area Effect attacks more powerful).

But then again perhaps there is something written in the rules where it says that things must be done in this manner.

Ok, pg 304 of Fred (Don't have revised so it might change things) takes about Wall damage (extrapolating here) where it says that a character that exceeds the walls Body has created a human-sized hole in it and the hole doubles for every +1 Body inflicted over the wall's base body.

Page 188 of Ultimate Vehicle says that for large vehicles you might want to consider using appling the rule for damaging walls.

Don't have Star Hero so I can't look up the section on "Target: Earth" but i think it says something similar.

I'm not sure there's a hard and fast rule that says you MUST do it like this, I just think that it would be more realistic (in some sense). And you really wouldn't be making AoE more powerful just increasing the usefulness of it instead of just using it to hit those pesky speedsters and/or the whole group of agents at once.

Vanguard

Jan 20th, '06, 05:06 PM

If you want that interpretation, then you take megascale 5 AE 1 hex on the attack. It's still a finite number of dice, and far fewer active points than the alleged damage in each hex at the core of the sun.

A mega-starship which could take zero damage from 100 critical hits with antimatter missiles(i.e., 150 BODY each) would be vaporized in one second.

Basically was just being nitpicky. :) You're right with the AoE and that was all I really was trying to say. Although, I think that the sun itself would qualify as an AoE attack (especialyl since it could easily engulf the earth) so the point it really moot.

Don't you think a mega-starship should be destroyed when it enters the heart of a star?

Gary

Jan 20th, '06, 05:29 PM

keithcurtis

Jan 20th, '06, 06:42 PM

The definition of the damage is exponential. The mathematical representation of it is linear.

Keith "Yet strangely, I have no problem with this" Curtis

gojira

Jan 20th, '06, 10:39 PM

So damage is logrithmic then?

Trebuchet

Jan 21st, '06, 03:34 AM

With the very noted exception of velocity rules, damage in Hero System mostly seems to follow an Exponential progression.

Here's one way of looking at it:

A 50 Str Man dropping a 25 ton object on a target would do 10d6 damage
A 55 Str Man dropping a 50 ton object on a target would do 11d6 damage
A 60 Str Man dropping a 100 ton object on a target would do 12d6 damage
etc.

By definition, the energy of the impact of the object dropping on the target is doubling with each 5 Str, and +1d6 is being added each time.

And this thought experiment avoids the entire question of whether twice the lift actually means twice the punching power.Yes, that is one simplistic way of looking at it. Another equally valid conclusionis that each doubling of mass becomes marginally less effective at adding damage. You are assuming that a doubling of energy means a doubling of effective damage. Real world attacks tend to dispute that conclusion. Yes, a modern tank round's impact energy is measured in megajoules of energy. But is it really doing hundreds of thousands of times more damage than a rifle bullet with only a few hundred joules? The amount of damage inflicted on any object struck by an attack is affected by many more factors than mere mass: Velocity, material, construction, shape, and hardness as well as similar questions about the object struck. We don't calculate any of those in Hero.

If each 5 STR is doubling effect, then why doesn't each +5 STR double Leaping and Throwing distances? If a normal with 10 STR can jump 2", then why can't a super with 60 STR jump 2048" instead of the mere 12" he does in the system? That's only 10 doublings. After all, energy is energy, right?

The simple fact of the matter is that the Hero system's underlying physics is a complete muddle. It's fitted together in a very ad hoc way to represent the physics of fictional stories, not reality. It would need to be reworked from the ground up to actually represent reality; and I doubt the results would be worth the trouble anyway. So blanket claims that X joules of energy = Yd6 damage simply are not supported by what little internal "logic" the system has. Sometime +1d6 is just +1d6. :)

OddHat

Jan 21st, '06, 06:45 AM

From the rules faq, Equipment, weapons:

Q: How does the damage for various types of explosives scale?

A:

Dynamite: One stick of dynamite causes a 5d6 Normal Damage Explosion. Each additional stick thereafter adds +1d6 Normal Damage Explosion. Thus, five sticks does 9d6 Normal Damage Explosion, and 20 sticks does 24d6 Normal Damage Explosion.

Nitroglycerine: One liter causes a 12d6 Normal Damage Explosion. Each additional liter adds +2d6 Normal Damage Explosion. Thus, four liters does 18d6 Normal Damage Explosion; 10 liters does 30d6 Normal Damage Explosion.

Gas Tank: Gas tanks are assumed to contain three gallons (12 liters) of fuel and cause a 6d6 Normal Damage Explosion when they go boom. For each additional gallon (4 liters) in the tank, add +1d6 Normal Damage Explosion. Thus, a tank with 8 gallons (32 liters) does 11d6 Normal Damage Explosion; a tank with 12 gallons (36 liters) does 15d6 Normal Damage Explosion.

Plastic Explosives: One block of plastic explosives causes a 15d6 Normal Damage Explosion. Each additional block adds +5d6 Normal Damage Explosion. Thus, three blocks does 25d6 Normal Damage Explosion.

So, SuperStrong characters are punching like complete wimps. I may design my next Brick with massive points in MA defined as "Punches Proportionately". ;)

Sean Waters

Jan 21st, '06, 07:20 AM

Damage is exponential in the Hero system.

Having said that....

The issue is clouded enormously by the question of DEFENCE and BODY for people and objects.

Trebuchet asks the question, quite rightly, 'is a tank round really doing hundreds of thousands of times more damage than a rifle round?'

The answer would be YES against a material that converted all energy absorbed into damage, which is why we have those problemati rules about blowing holes in walls.

Of course if you are shooting lead bullets at tank armour, 100 000 of them are not going to make the same dent as one tank shell: we have the concept of threshold damages to consider.

This, to my mind, and far more than anything else, is what most strongly argues for damage being exponential (and, of course, against it)

If you have a FW or a normal wall for that matter with a DEF of 12, no number of 2d6 killing attacks or 12d6 normal attacks are going to hurt you.

THIS MEANS THAT DAMAGE IS NOT SIMPLY ACCUMULATIVE - 2x2d6 KA does not equal 4d6 KA where the targetted material has a positive defence

Now factor in that we measure damage by BODY: even big objects have a relatively small amount of it, which means that ANY BODY DAMAGE IS SIGNIFICANT. So in order to go from an attack that causes no appreciable damage to one that causes significant damage requires (assuming that the damage is not simply hitting a weak spot or critical system) a significant increase in energy delivered: not simply a small and even linear progression.

A second point causes twice as much damage, but then we start getting diminishing returns.

As damage that penetrates increases, if damage is exponential, you would expect the devastation to increase significantly as damage through increases: it doesn't, so this, to my mind, argues AGAINST damage being exponential.

Some of the Hero systems (damage +1 DC per 2x energy potentially delivered and 'blowing holes through walls, for example) argue for exponential damage. Some systems (damage v BODY being linear, damage adding rules, for example) argue against.

Hero does not have a consistent approach, which causes all kinds of confusion. I, personally, would rather think of damage as exponential, hence my comment at the start, bit it is not really, it is a rather odd fusion which, despite its tangled roots, somehow still works :)

OddHat

Jan 21st, '06, 07:30 AM

Damage is exponential in the Hero system.

Not if you look at the explosives chart in the FAQ. Of course, the chart could just be a bad call.

Hero does not have a consistent approach, which causes all kinds of confusion. I, personally, would rather think of damage as exponential, hence my comment at the start, bit it is not really, it is a rather odd fusion which, despite its tangled roots, somehow still works :)

"Should be exponential" does not equal "is exponential", but yes. :)

If it's non-exponential, the whole STR chart ought to be revised with an option for "realistic" campaigns vs "super" campaigns. I may do that anyway.

Sean Waters

Jan 21st, '06, 07:46 AM

On the original topic, I think that LS is a useful construct: it is shorthand for an awful lot of very complicated rules.

Take survival in space: it is cold in the shadow and hot in the glare, there is a vacuum. Humans survive up there with some pretty cunning equipment that nonetheless doesn't provide what you'd call 'defences'...

....a spacesuit would probably HELP if you got caught in a housefire, or fell into a vat of superchilled liquid, but it wouldn't save your life for long even though the (theoretical) temperatures it is exposed to in space are higher and lower. the reason being that heat energy can travel in various ways, and the suit provided excellent insulation against radiation, good insulation against conduction and....well, convection is probably not THAT much of an issue here...

More so than anything ele you need to apply common sense here - not 'how SHOULD this work in reality, but how should it work in the game. I mean, a space suit, if it can protect against solar IR should probably be pretty excellent against even weapon-grade IR lasers, but that is not how it should work in game. A properly constructed character SHOULD have high defences against the stuff that might get through the LS, but if they don't, that is a failure of the character design rather than the system.

Let me take an example: Temporo has an aging ray, built as a 3d6 killing attack - whatever he hits ages and crumbles. He hits Cliff Richard who, as we all know, has LS: Immortal. LOGICALLY the aging ray should have no effect, but it does - it causes 3d6 killing damage.

The problem here is that the aging ray SHOULD have been bought as 1d6 KA NND (LS: longevity 3 or more points or non-organic) and does BODY.

More of a problem is using a fire attack against someone with LS: Heat. Well first off if you are building The Human Torch, I'd expect you to have LS heat, but also significant defences against heat and similar energies. If those defences are missing, that is your lookout. If the fire attack was built as Heatwave (projects IR radiation causing the target to heat up and catch fire) I'd expect you to now that a reflective surface would reduce its effectiveness and take a limtiation appropriately (LS: Heat or reflective surfaces reduce or prevent damage -1/2).

I think that a lot of the problems that arise with LS could be addressed by building characters more carefully, and acknowledging that many opponents will ahve LS - if they do how will that effect your attack?

atlascott

Jan 21st, '06, 08:15 AM

I disagree with the superheroic and heroic dichotomy that is supported by some.

The Life Support should apply and cost out exactly the same in either genre.

The only difference is--no GM worth his salt is going to allow a "Normal" to buy that sort of thing in a regular heroic campaign. Unless maigc or technology is involved, PC's in a gritty, real world game just aren't going to be able to withstand that sort of thing. In a superheroic game, sure, why not? So, the rule works identically, but as a matter of genre, it should not be allowed for purchase by a normal person, just like a normal person in a realistic campaign could not just buy flight.

Further to the example of the evil Thermostat--if his power is defined as "Change Environment: Heat atmosphere to +/- 1000 degrees"--then he will never hurt our hero. If his ability to do the exact same thing is actually an aread effect killing attack witht he specials effect "Im am heating the air all around him to 1000 degrees"--well, thats an attack, and it does damage, period.

Warp9

Jan 21st, '06, 09:23 AM

So blanket claims that X joules of energy = Yd6 damage simply are not supported by what little internal "logic" the system has. Sometime +1d6 is just +1d6. :)

X joules of energy = Yd6 damage is exactly what is supported by the current damage of most fire arms, and it is exactly what is supported by the Optional Velocity Damage Table (althought I admit that it is the Optional Velocity Damage Table).

The simple fact of the matter is that the Hero system's underlying physics is a complete muddle. It's fitted together in a very ad hoc way to represent the physics of fictional stories, not reality. It would need to be reworked from the ground up to actually represent reality; and I doubt the results would be worth the trouble anyway.
Of course it is going to be pretty hard to fully map real world events in a game system; however, I don't think that "ball park" results are too much to ask for. IMO there are some real issues with HERO in the area of exponential vs linear progresssion, but I don't think you'd have to totally redo the system from the ground up in order to fix these problems.

Figuring Force and Kinetic Energy is very simple (and these relate to real world physics). And I'd be willing to go with a simplified model which uses these factors in a game. For game purposes, I'd be willing to say that Energy = Damage. It is you who are saying that "Energy = Damage" is NOT good enough.

If each 5 STR is doubling effect, then why doesn't each +5 STR double Leaping and Throwing distances? If a normal with 10 STR can jump 2", then why can't a super with 60 STR jump 2048" instead of the mere 12" he does in the system? That's only 10 doublings. After all, energy is energy, right?

I agree totally that the standard rules for movement and velocity are linear.

Yes, that is one simplistic way of looking at it. Another equally valid conclusionis that each doubling of mass becomes marginally less effective at adding damage. You are assuming that a doubling of energy means a doubling of effective damage. Real world attacks tend to dispute that conclusion. Yes, a modern tank round's impact energy is measured in megajoules of energy. But is it really doing hundreds of thousands of times more damage than a rifle bullet with only a few hundred joules? The amount of damage inflicted on any object struck by an attack is affected by many more factors than mere mass: Velocity, material, construction, shape, and hardness as well as similar questions about the object struck. We don't calculate any of those in Hero.

I'm not sure that I get your argument here.

You seem to be basing your conclusion of:

"each doubling of mass becomes marginally less effective at adding damage"

on the premise that:

"The amount of damage inflicted on any object struck by an attack is affected by many more factors than mere mass: Velocity, material, construction, shape, and hardness as well as similar questions about the object struck"

This argument presented shows that a heavier object might not do as much damage as a lighter one, due to other relevant factors. However, it does nothing at all to show why just increasing the mass of your projectile would automatically cause these other factors of the attack to decrease. Because, as you say, "We don't calculate any of those in Hero," it seems to me that the logical assumption is to assume they are staying equal.

And, if you are willing to assume "all other things being equal" as the mass of the projectile doubles, then it seems that the reasonable conclusion is that the impact would double too.

Gary

Jan 21st, '06, 09:29 AM

Yes, that is one simplistic way of looking at it. Another equally valid conclusionis that each doubling of mass becomes marginally less effective at adding damage. You are assuming that a doubling of energy means a doubling of effective damage. Real world attacks tend to dispute that conclusion. Yes, a modern tank round's impact energy is measured in megajoules of energy. But is it really doing hundreds of thousands of times more damage than a rifle bullet with only a few hundred joules? The amount of damage inflicted on any object struck by an attack is affected by many more factors than mere mass: Velocity, material, construction, shape, and hardness as well as similar questions about the object struck. We don't calculate any of those in Hero.

If each 5 STR is doubling effect, then why doesn't each +5 STR double Leaping and Throwing distances? If a normal with 10 STR can jump 2", then why can't a super with 60 STR jump 2048" instead of the mere 12" he does in the system? That's only 10 doublings. After all, energy is energy, right?

The simple fact of the matter is that the Hero system's underlying physics is a complete muddle. It's fitted together in a very ad hoc way to represent the physics of fictional stories, not reality. It would need to be reworked from the ground up to actually represent reality; and I doubt the results would be worth the trouble anyway. So blanket claims that X joules of energy = Yd6 damage simply are not supported by what little internal "logic" the system has. Sometime +1d6 is just +1d6. :)

You're right that the system isn't internally consistent due to game balance issues and the fact that the writers never intended it to be.

But I assure you that if a doubled (heavy) weight dropped on me, I'd take double the damage, not +1d6 in real life. If I were wearing some sort of bullet proof vest that would stop bullets but would transmit all the impact damage to me directly, then a .50 cal bullet would do FAR more damage to me than a .45 pistol, which would do FAR more damage to me than a .22 bullet. Far more than what the system's damage progression would suggest.

The Leap and Throw is a complete game balance kludge, but if you want a 'real world' explanation, leap depends on not only Str, but also how long your legs are and the material strength of the surface you're leaping off of. Short (man sized) legs simply don't give you time to accelerate yourself the distance you should be able to based on your strength. Someone with 50" legs might realistically be able to jump 2048" with 60 Str if he jumped off an Adamantium surface. And such a character should logically purchase lots of noncombat multiples with leap to fit his character concept.

But in the end, it's a game balance issue.

Gary

Jan 21st, '06, 09:31 AM

Not if you look at the explosives chart in the FAQ. Of course, the chart could just be a bad call.

"Should be exponential" does not equal "is exponential", but yes. :)

If it's non-exponential, the whole STR chart ought to be revised with an option for "realistic" campaigns vs "super" campaigns. I may do that anyway.

Yeah, the explosion chart is a bad call. A 155 mm tank shell would be about 8d6 killing explosion in Hero terms, or about 24 damage classes plus explosion. And I assure you that a 155 mm tank shell has FAR more explosive power than 20 sticks of dynamite. ;)

Warp9

Jan 21st, '06, 10:18 AM

Ok, pg 304 of Fred (Don't have revised so it might change things) takes about Wall damage (extrapolating here) where it says that a character that exceeds the walls Body has created a human-sized hole in it and the hole doubles for every +1 Body inflicted over the wall's base body.

Page 188 of Ultimate Vehicle says that for large vehicles you might want to consider using appling the rule for damaging walls.

Don't have Star Hero so I can't look up the section on "Target: Earth" but i think it says something similar.

I'm not sure there's a hard and fast rule that says you MUST do it like this, I just think that it would be more realistic (in some sense). And you really wouldn't be making AoE more powerful just increasing the usefulness of it instead of just using it to hit those pesky speedsters and/or the whole group of agents at once.
I must not be understanding your point here.

The rule for making holes in wall would allow a normal (non-area-effect attack) to make a vast hole in a wall just by doing enough BODY.

It sounds to me like you are suggesting applying that "wall rule" to vehicles and planets as well, if so then you could still destroy them with a non-AE high-power attack.

But again, I am probably misunderstanding you here.

As for the "realism" angle, what do you think would happen if you channeled near-infinite energy into a hex of ground? It seems to me that you'd probably get a shock wave which would destroy the planet anyway.

IMO having a 200d6 EB destroy a planet is not un-realistic, saying that you can hit a single target with a 200d6 EB and not have an impact on nearby objects IS unrealistic.

Warp9

Jan 21st, '06, 10:22 AM

Zeropoint

Jan 21st, '06, 10:50 AM

So, SuperStrong characters are punching like complete wimps. I may design my next Brick with massive points in MA defined as "Punches Proportionately".

Actually, I like the fact that lifting capacity is exponential while damage is linear. First and most importantly, it allows characters who can lift prodigous amounts of weight, but do damage that won't reduce other characters to a fine red mist. That was one of the problems with GURPS Supers. From a game balance perspective, HERO's method is much better.

Second, the damage from a punch is more a function of the mass and velocity of the arm at contact than of the maximum contractive force of the muscles behind it, so the disparity between lifting capacity and punching damage makes sense. Just because you can lift a thousand tons doesn't necessarily mean you can move your fist fast enough to do 200d6 punching damage

Zeropoint

OddHat

Jan 21st, '06, 11:06 AM

Actually, I like the fact that lifting capacity is exponential while damage is linear. First and most importantly, it allows characters who can lift prodigous amounts of weight, but do damage that won't reduce other characters to a fine red mist. That was one of the problems with GURPS Supers. From a game balance perspective, HERO's method is much better.

This argument holds some appeal for me, but it works better with exponential damage. Further, while it applies in many Superhero settings, it does not apply in some Iron Age games and in non-Super settings that none the less include inhumanly strong creatures (some sci-fi and fantasy). Inhumanly strong beings in those settings should be reducing normals to a fine red mist. There are ways to build the campaign and characters to allow that; one of the key differences between GURPS and HERO is that GURPS accepts that level of deadliness as the default (and there are ways around it in GURPS as well, if a group wants to play Silver Age style GURPS games).

Second, the damage from a punch is more a function of the mass and velocity of the arm at contact than of the maximum contractive force of the muscles behind it, so the disparity between lifting capacity and punching damage makes sense. Just because you can lift a thousand tons doesn't necessarily mean you can move your fist fast enough to do 200d6 punching damage

This argument will never be settled, but I was never happy with this explanation. There is a problem when you separate the abstract concept of "Strength" from "Mass" and "Reach", but generally speaking a stronger fighter of equal skill and equal mass definitely hits harder.

Warp9

Jan 21st, '06, 11:26 AM

Second, the damage from a punch is more a function of the mass and velocity of the arm at contact than of the maximum contractive force of the muscles behind it, so the disparity between lifting capacity and punching damage makes sense. Just because you can lift a thousand tons doesn't necessarily mean you can move your fist fast enough to do 200d6 punching damage

Force = Mass X Acceleration

And from this same formula:

Acceleration = Force / Mass

The Acceleration of my fist is directly related to the force of my muscles and the mass of my arm.

Also your argument does not explain why throwing a 100 Kton object on somebody's head does not do 2,000,000d6 damage.

Zeropoint

Jan 21st, '06, 12:47 PM

generally speaking a stronger fighter of equal skill and equal mass definitely hits harder.

No one is disputing that. It's a question of how MUCH harder he should hit. And in the real world, there is no convenient "damage" score to measure to get a strength-vs.-damage chart.

Warp9, I'm perfectly familiar with Newton's laws of motion, thank you.

The Acceleration of my fist is directly related to the force of my muscles and the mass of my arm.

Obviously true, but you've neglected a couple of aspects. First, given normal human biology, the only way to increase strength is to increase muscle mass. Thus, both force and mass are greater, and acceleration does not improve as much as it would otherwise.

Second, there are definite mechanical limits to how fast muscle tissue can contract, motors can spin, hydraulic pumps move fluid, etc, regardless of how much load is present. If your arm was massless, would you really be able to move it at infinite speed? Consider, too, the forklift: it can lift several tons, but the fork doesn't come up noticeably faster when it's empty.

Ultimately, this is a game, not reality, and the "proper" relationship between lifting capacity and punching damage is somewhat dependent on setting. Players will have somewhat differing perceptions of reality, different ideas about game balance, and different settings to model. No single set of rules is going to make everyone perfectly happy.

Zeropoint

Warp9

Jan 21st, '06, 01:38 PM

Warp9, I'm perfectly familiar with Newton's laws of motion, thank you.

Obviously true, but you've neglected a couple of aspects. First, given normal human biology, the only way to increase strength is to increase muscle mass. Thus, both force and mass are greater, and acceleration does not improve as much as it would otherwise.

Greater Mass can also help with the damage. An arm that is a bigger and heavier weapon does more damage.

Second, there are definite mechanical limits to how fast muscle tissue can contract, motors can spin, hydraulic pumps move fluid, etc, regardless of how much load is present.

The specifics such things can be very complex, and are more than I think we need to worry about for a game approximation.

I'd just go with :

Acceleration = Force / Mass

If your arm was massless, would you really be able to move it at infinite speed?

Not infinite; but it would move at the speed of light. And if it had negative mass it would exceed light speed (at least that is the theory behind tacheyons, at least as I understand it).

But again, I don't think we need to get too far into things like worrying about the mass of each character's arm.

Consider, too, the forklift: it can lift several tons, but the fork doesn't come up noticeably faster when it's empty.

True, but that has to do with the specific limited design of the forklift rather than the laws of physics. IMO a forklift is not a good model for a super-strong character. A character designed like that would not be able to throw anything, no matter how light the object was.

Ultimately, this is a game, not reality, and the "proper" relationship between lifting capacity and punching damage is somewhat dependent on setting.

You still would have to deal with the question of what happens when a strong character drops a super-heavy object on a target.

Players will have somewhat differing perceptions of reality, different ideas about game balance, and different settings to model. No single set of rules is going to make everyone perfectly happy.

I agree that no game system is perfect, but it is likely that we could come close enough for "ball-park" approximations.

Basic Physics is actually pretty simple.

If you assume that Energy = Damage, and Strength = Power, then IMO you get a system that works well enough for a game.

Sean Waters

Jan 21st, '06, 01:47 PM

...................
IMO having a 200d6 EB destroy a planet is not un-realistic, saying that you can hit a single target with a 200d6 EB and not have an impact on nearby objects IS unrealistic.

Ok, but is this a system problem or a user one?

I mean, should you not be building the 200d6 EB (1000 points) as 80d6 EB (AE (radius) plus 40 d6 EB (so it delivers 120d6 to the target and 80d6 to the environment around it?

There's nothing wrong with building a 200d6 EB - the 'problem' - as you rightly point out - is justifying having it in that form.

Sean Waters

Jan 21st, '06, 01:54 PM

Actually, I like the fact that lifting capacity is exponential while damage is linear. First and most importantly, it allows characters who can lift prodigous amounts of weight, but do damage that won't reduce other characters to a fine red mist. That was one of the problems with GURPS Supers. From a game balance perspective, HERO's method is much better.

Second, the damage from a punch is more a function of the mass and velocity of the arm at contact than of the maximum contractive force of the muscles behind it, so the disparity between lifting capacity and punching damage makes sense. Just because you can lift a thousand tons doesn't necessarily mean you can move your fist fast enough to do 200d6 punching damage

Zeropoint

Yes, but...you SHOULD be able to apply that much crushing force if you got hold of something. :)

You are right about punches - the damage should be a function mainly of monmentum - body mass and how fast you can move your fist - AND the durability of your own flesh - strength in fact plays a relatively minor part.

Then again Hero was originally designed to model super-reality. Even the 'Gods' of superherodom don't routinely kick planets out of orbit: there has to be some recognition of game balance, and taking any one view (linear or exponential) to its logical conclusion would make the game unplayable.

(actually, zeropoint, I agree with what you are saying - no idea why that came over so hostile)

Sean Waters

Jan 21st, '06, 01:56 PM

Here's a formula for you:

Real world physics = a great gaming experience*

*not

OddHat

Jan 21st, '06, 02:05 PM

Obviously true, but you've neglected a couple of aspects. First, given normal human biology, the only way to increase strength is to increase muscle mass. Thus, both force and mass are greater, and acceleration does not improve as much as it would otherwise.

The following has very little to do with the game, but the above is not entirely correct. Strength has a significant neural component. A 220 pound Powerlifter and a 220 pound Bodybuilder may have the same muscle mass (off season), but the Powerlifter will outscore the bodybuilder in every test of absolute strength. However, it gets even further from the way games represent strength, in that the Bodybuilder will out-score the Powerlifter in tests of Strength-Endurance. Olympic Lifters further out perform both Powerlifters and Bodybuilders in tests of explosive strength, but can't match Powerlifters in terms of suspension-strength. Google Mel Sif or Tudor Bompa for citations. All of the above gets greatly simplified when trying to design a game, and it should be.

Hpwever, there are many demonstrable cases of men with far lower muscle mass out-performing men with higher muscle-mass in strength contests. There is a correlation between increased muscle mass and increased strength, all else being equal, but at the far end of the bell curve neural factors make a significant difference.

Just a quick example:
http://www.usapowerlifting.com/records/national/men-deadlift.htm

You will notice that (in this organization) a 114 pound lifter holds a deadlift record of 418 pounds (not actually a great record; the world record is 8 x Bodyweight). Any non-weightlifting 150 pound college student with a bodyfat percentage of 16% or so will have more muscle mass than that 114 pound lifter, but will not be able to match his strength.

On the other side, the 114 pound lifter could almost certainly increase his absolute strength by adding 30 pounds of muscle.

OddHat

Jan 21st, '06, 02:18 PM

Yes, but...you SHOULD be able to apply that much crushing force if you got hold of something. :)

You are right about punches - the damage should be a function mainly of monmentum - body mass and how fast you can move your fist - AND the durability of your own flesh - strength in fact plays a relatively minor part.

Explosive Strength has a direct relationship to how fast you can move your fist. That's why good coaches have their boxers and sprinters lift weights.

Trebuchet

Jan 21st, '06, 03:03 PM

You're right that the system isn't internally consistent due to game balance issues and the fact that the writers never intended it to be.

But I assure you that if a doubled (heavy) weight dropped on me, I'd take double the damage, not +1d6 in real life. If I were wearing some sort of bullet proof vest that would stop bullets but would transmit all the impact damage to me directly, then a .50 cal bullet would do FAR more damage to me than a .45 pistol, which would do FAR more damage to me than a .22 bullet. Far more than what the system's damage progression would suggest.In order to represent firearms to that degree of accuracy you'd need to rework the damage rules in Hero from scratch; and the granularity would have to be far smoother. And the simple fact is that in the real world bullets do not dump all their energy with 100% efficiency. Even the shape and material of the bullets nose can make a significant difference. Armor piercing rounds don't have pointy noses only for ballistic purposes.

The Leap and Throw is a complete game balance kludge, but if you want a 'real world' explanation, leap depends on not only Str, but also how long your legs are and the material strength of the surface you're leaping off of. Short (man sized) legs simply don't give you time to accelerate yourself the distance you should be able to based on your strength. Someone with 50" legs might realistically be able to jump 2048" with 60 Str if he jumped off an Adamantium surface. And such a character should logically purchase lots of noncombat multiples with leap to fit his character concept.But the exact same kinds of issues apply when representing realistic attacks such as explosives. There obviously isn't any more energy in a shaped charge than there is in the explosive used, but that 15-20% of the total energy of a block of C4 used as a shaped charge can blow a nice hole in a piece of armor that the block without the channeling would only smudge.

But in the end, it's a game balance issue.True. But better game balance won't be created by more accurate formulas for weapons. This is a role-playing game, not a tactical wargame. If that's what you want to do, I suggest designing rules so you can use superpowers in Advanced Squad Leader. :)

Warp9

Jan 21st, '06, 06:44 PM

Ok, but is this a system problem or a user one?

I mean, should you not be building the 200d6 EB (1000 points) as 80d6 EB (AE (radius) plus 40 d6 EB (so it delivers 120d6 to the target and 80d6 to the environment around it?

There's nothing wrong with building a 200d6 EB - the 'problem' - as you rightly point out - is justifying having it in that form.
Hmmm. Those are some things to think about :)

It seems like you are saying that it falls upon the person building a character to make sure things are built in a realistic manner, rather than expect the rules to enforce realism directly.

I can definitely get behind that idea.

But going back to targeting the Planet with a high power (non-AE) EB--where does that fit in to your statement?

Warp9

Jan 21st, '06, 06:57 PM

You are right about punches - the damage should be a function mainly of monmentum - body mass and how fast you can move your fist - AND the durability of your own flesh - strength in fact plays a relatively minor part.

Let us assume that strengh relates to Force. And let us assume that the relationship betweeen Force and Mass tells us how quickly you can get your hand moving. Then Strength relates directly to the factors of "body mass and how fast you can move your fist." I would aruge that strength plays a big part in damage.

Then again Hero was originally designed to model super-reality. Even the 'Gods' of superherodom don't routinely kick planets out of orbit: there has to be some recognition of game balance, and taking any one view (linear or exponential) to its logical conclusion would make the game unplayable.

The part I put in bold confuses me a bit.

Trebuchet

Jan 21st, '06, 07:04 PM

It seems like you are saying that it falls upon the person building a character to make sure things are built in a realistic manner, rather than expect the rules to enforce realism directly.If you really think about it, it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense for a "universal" game system to force realism directly. The system needs to be flexible enough to simulate unreal things such as spandex-clad mutants firing cosmic bolts from their eyes, wizards casting spells to summon supernatural creatures, and singularity-powered starships with warp drives. So it's incumbent upon the people using the system to make their simulations only as realistic as the genre requires.

If realism is desired, I'm sure there are systems out there that can simulate real-world weapons and their effects with far more accuracy that Hero ever will. I, however, won't be playing those games myself. :D

OddHat

Jan 21st, '06, 07:20 PM

Gary

Jan 21st, '06, 10:15 PM

In order to represent firearms to that degree of accuracy you'd need to rework the damage rules in Hero from scratch; and the granularity would have to be far smoother. And the simple fact is that in the real world bullets do not dump all their energy with 100% efficiency. Even the shape and material of the bullets nose can make a significant difference. Armor piercing rounds don't have pointy noses only for ballistic purposes.

That was why my example was with a bullet proof vest that stopped the actual bullet, but transmitted its energy to me. To avoid this entire issue and leave just the energy part. And this objection doesn't apply when dropping a 3.2 ton object on me compared to a 1.6 ton object.

But the exact same kinds of issues apply when representing realistic attacks such as explosives. There obviously isn't any more energy in a shaped charge than there is in the explosive used, but that 15-20% of the total energy of a block of C4 used as a shaped charge can blow a nice hole in a piece of armor that the block without the channeling would only smudge.

The shaped charge gets Armor Piercing. The regular explosive gets Explosion. The energy is the same, but the energy applied to the single target is obviously different. Thus more damage is done to that single target with a shaped charge.

True. But better game balance won't be created by more accurate formulas for weapons. This is a role-playing game, not a tactical wargame. If that's what you want to do, I suggest designing rules so you can use superpowers in Advanced Squad Leader. :)

Depends on what you mean by game balance.

Gary

Jan 21st, '06, 10:18 PM

Sean Waters

Jan 22nd, '06, 12:03 AM

Let us assume that strengh relates to Force. And let us assume that the relationship betweeen Force and Mass tells us how quickly you can get your hand moving. Then Strength relates directly to the factors of "body mass and how fast you can move your fist." I would aruge that strength plays a big part in damage.

The part I put in bold confuses me a bit.

I confuse myself sometimes :)

1. Linear: a 1kt tactical nuke has approximately 3 BILLION times the energy of a .44 magnum bullet. I have not got that many dice.

2. Exponential: in order to be realistic, given the relatively tight scale, you wouldn't roll dice at all - a particular attack would have a specific damage: if 1 point of BODY dobles the energy then even 1 point of variation is too much. Bullets always have the same energy, and when hitting a simple object, always have similar effects. When hitting a complex object, like a person, the important factor tends to be 'did you hit something vital'?

On teh one hand you need too many dice, on the other none at all - neither is the game I've been playing all these years - which is why we have this odd fusion that, I maintain, nonetheless works.

As for the 200d6 hitting earth...well, if I allowed a 200d6 non AE, then all it would do is punch a small hole in the planet ('all' he says :)). It would not be enough to destroy the planet - Earth has a lot more than 200 BODY - but it wouldn't cause shock waves and earthquakes either because that is not what the attack is built like. I'd fall back on litral interpretation of the rules. (I wouldn't have a volcano erupt either - a 2m hole would seal long before the magna got to the surface :))

Sean Waters

Jan 22nd, '06, 12:12 AM

Sean Waters

Jan 22nd, '06, 03:03 AM

So we have a .38 Special which does 1d6+1 RKA and we have a dagger which does 1d6+1 HKA (with strength): in theory they cause the same damage in game.

You can use the knife in two ways – slashing or stabbing. Unless the knife actually cuts the surface of the target it is unlikely to do any real damage – minimal stun PERHAPS. If it does penetrate a slash is likely to cause a large wound that bleeds a lot and a stab is likely to cause a small deep wound that may or may not kill, depending on whether it hits a vital organ. If it is not a kill shot it will cause bleeding, but probably not as much as a slash would.

If the .38 fails to penetrate its target then there is a good chance that it will sting a great deal and cause bruising. If it penetrates then it will have effects similar to a knife stab (OK the actual wound will be different, but the effects are similar).

(Of course part of the problem is that real world damage doesn’t divide so neatly into STUN and BODY, but there you go)

So, job one seems to be to determine if it gets through.

Let’s start with the stab/bullet first. We have 4DCs (well, actually 2+2 and 4). How do you determine if it gets through defences? Well, as usual, roll your BODY damage and compare to defences.

Right. Let us assume that the defences beat the bullet. The effect may be pain and bruising at the impact point. Bruising is a long term injury, so should be represented as BODY damage, but we know all the BODY damage was soaked by the defences, so we need to find some more. That’s a bit difficult without adding damage dice. Let us assume that a bullet/stab that does not get BODY through defences is subject to the limitation (has to use standard multiplier of 2: -1/4 or -0*). That way if the defences stop the thing penetrating the consequences will be minor – pain but nothing likely to take you down.

If the thing DOES penetrate defences, how about a limitation: STUN multiplier based on BODY damage done (-1/2*): basically you take the BODY damage after location multipliers, and use that as the die roll for the stun multiplier (with anything over 6 BODY counting as a 6) – so minor wounds won’t be likely to KO you, major ones will. I DO APPRECIATE that this is not necessarily always accurate, but it is generally.

Now the knife slash will bleed (the knife can be used two ways so should be built as a 2 slot multipower) – the only way to simulate that is with extra damage, as there are no powers that affect the application of the bleeding rules. Seems to me that if you build a knife as half immediate damage and half gradual damage (1 minute) that is about right: so you get 1pip +1/2d6 (gradual effect) for the same price, but more active points (which is 1/2d6+1d6(gradual effect) with strength (or maybe it isn’t – can’t recall the damage add rules – damn)

Point is you the get a weapon that causes a shallow bleeding cut that will take you down over time.

NOW I’M NOT SAYING I’M RIGHT in the way I constructed these (and there are other ways: build ballistic armour as 6PD armour, +6 (normal) PD (only if armour not penetrated –1/2)) but the point is to illustrate that we do not simply have to use the unmodified damage rules (well, we do, I'm not modifying the damage rules - just the way the damage causing power is built)– the whole point of Hero is tailoring to what you want, and that can apply to damage application as much as character build.

Sorry to witter on for so long….

*This value will vary with camaign.

OddHat

Jan 22nd, '06, 03:34 AM

None of these objections apply when it comes to the simple case of dropping a weight on a target. By definition, the character who is 5 pts stronger will drop twice the weight on the target, but does only +1d6 damage with that weight.

Nor is either objection entirely correct. The first is not accurate, and the second attempts to apply real world limits to a game where people can run faster than the speed of light.

Trebuchet

Jan 22nd, '06, 04:05 AM

That was why my example was with a bullet proof vest that stopped the actual bullet, but transmitted its energy to me. To avoid this entire issue and leave just the energy part. And this objection doesn't apply when dropping a 3.2 ton object on me compared to a 1.6 ton object.You're missing my main point; which is that you're using a single specific example to gauge damage in Hero when there are countervailing examples within the system itself (such as the Explosives rules). You cannot draw a general conclusion from a specific example; you can only use specific examples to illustrate generalities. You cannot prove objectively that a falling object which masses twice as much actually does twice as much damage to whatever it falls on even in the real world; much less within the pseudo-physics of a role-playing system.

Depends on what you mean by game balance.You perenially seem to think you can properly define game balance solely mathematically within a role-playing system where numbers are only part of game balance. Since you can't accept anyone else's definitions (or even that it may be impossible to even define the term, much less quantify it), why don't you enlighten us as to how you define game balance?

Trebuchet

Jan 22nd, '06, 04:14 AM

Gary, Treb, I know you are enjoying yourselves, and I don't know much about guns, but it seems to me that bullets usually kill by 1. penetrating and 2 hitting something important inside that you need to stay alive (or that holding in the blood you need to stay alive).

If you are doing firearms 'right' then you would have a differnt effect if a bullet penetrated the target than if it did not. Wnergy, or momentum, or whatever, would matter a lot if the bullet did not penetrate.

On penetration it then beceomes a matter of 'did you hit the heart, etc, which is more of a hit location problem than anything else. Energy only matters to determine if the bullet can getdeep enough and even .22s can hit deep organs if they go in the right place.

Further complicated by big rifle bullets - they can casue systemic shock results on penetration...

What I'd say though is that we are applying a system that has a lot of potential variation, but not using it. To say a particular bullet is a 1d6+1 RKA misses the potential for modelling. You could build it very differently within the system. At present a bullet and a knife might look exactly the same damage wise. In reality they are very different - again it comes down to how you build the attack, or your defences.All of that is pretty much correct, which is why Gary's example of dropping blocks on people is so laughably simplistic - it would do more or less damage depending on factors such as whether the target is standing or prone, whether his hands are above his head, how tough he is (If we can postulate someone strong enough to drop multiton blocks, we can certainly postulate someone tough enough to catch it), whether said block hits other objects nearby, what the shape of the block is, etc. As I've said previously (and you've correctly observed in this post), damage is not simply a function of energy. Other factors can and do influence the results.

OddHat

Jan 22nd, '06, 04:36 AM

For me exponential vs linear damage is a question of suspension of disbelief vs playability. I favor the damage is exponential approach mainly because it's playable; I don't want to have to roll hundreds of dice for damage, or to kill Superheroes in every comic book style combat, so I accept the fudge. Damage is exponential (keeping the number of dice down) but somehow being hit by a man who can punch through cinderblocks doesn't instantly kill Joe Normal (unless we use hit locations, disabling and bleeding).

In the end I come down on the "a d6 is only a d6" side of the argument because I don't think strictly accurate modeling of real world physics is possible without a major overhall of HERO, and I'm not convinced it would be more fun.

That said, like every gamer, there are many areas of the system I'd like to tweak, starting with that frickin' explosives chart.

Trebuchet

Jan 22nd, '06, 05:58 AM

Sean Waters

Jan 22nd, '06, 07:43 AM

I think you've hit on something important here - if the system is exponential, then every +1 DC attack is doing twice as much damage and we've created a real granularity problem: 1 point of BODY is twice as much as 2 points, etc. How can we justify having exponentially bigger hits doing 1 or 2 BODY? How is it logical that a perfect 10d6 attack will do 20 BODY, but a worst case will do zero BODY if it's the exact same amount of attack energy? Is a perfect all-6's 10d6 roll really doing 1024 times as much damage as an average roll? That's what advocates of exponential damage would have us believe.

If damage is exponential, then obviously BODY must be too. It's not hard to see where that leads - the man with 10 BODY should theoretically be four times as hard to kill as the man with 8; and someone with 20 BODY should be hundreds of times harder to kill. But it clearly doesn't work that way in Hero. Someone in Hero with 10 BODY is only marginally harder to kill than someone with 8; not exponentially more.

Of course, if "energy = damage" as some here would have you believe, then there shouldn't be any need for a game differentiation between a Killing attack and a Normal attack at all. Both are simply causing damage by impacting a certain amount of mass at a certain velocity.

As to the energy/damage debate my take is this: it isn't the delivered energy that is doing the damage.

I mean, treat a human being as a 100kg bag of water. You need 418700 joules of energy to increase the body's temperature by 1 degree klevin (or celsius). A .44 magnum bullet is carrying, what, 2000 joules? If it transfers all that energy, you are going to need over 200 rounds hitting your target to raise the temperature by 1 degree, and probably over a thousand to raise the temperature of the target to a point where it becomes fatal: it won't destroy the body from heat, just make the body chemistry non-functional. Of course, by that time the corpse will be unrecogniseable anyway.....

By way of comparison, you burn about 2000 calories a day (well, kilocalories) from the food you consume, which is a little over 8 million joules. it's a wonder anyone survices the cheesecake.

Silly, eh?

Bullets cause death by cutting flesh. They have far more energy than they need to FUNCTIONALLY destroy a vital organ: they use if, coupled with momentum and penetration characteristics to GET to the vital organs.

Now I emphasise FUNCTIONALLY becasue a built probably won't destroy your heart if it penetrates your chest: it will still be there, it just has a hole in it that stops it working properly.

Energy IS a more useful measure of damage potential to inanimate materials, but even then does not tell the whole story. It depends on material hardness, flexibility, the area over which the energy is applied, even the time it takes to apply the energy. Apply enough energy you can functionally destroy something. Apply an awful lot more and you can change its chemical state so it really doesn't exist in the same form any more.

Hero uses a convenient conceit: double BODY = destroyed. Again it is a game convention, and not a bad one, but it doesn't mirror reality necessarily.

---

I try to think of damage against defences as exponential (i.e. the potential to actually cause damage is exponential) but actual damage caused (i.e. BODY damage) is linear. It is best not to think about it too much: it is never going to make true sense, but it keeps me going....:)

ghost-angel

Jan 22nd, '06, 12:13 PM

Note that about 51d6 KA is sufficient to vaporize the Earth instantly.
Under the laws of Dramatic And Common Sense and that build specifically I would say...

No, no it doesn't.

Warp9

Jan 22nd, '06, 01:39 PM

If you really think about it, it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense for a "universal" game system to force realism directly.

I can agree with this concept.

And I'd add that there is nothing in HERO which keeps you from creating the following power:

Chocolate Cream Pie Throwing: 10d6 RKA AP

The system needs to be flexible enough to simulate unreal things such as spandex-clad mutants firing cosmic bolts from their eyes, wizards casting spells to summon supernatural creatures, and singularity-powered starships with warp drives. So it's incumbent upon the people using the system to make their simulations only as realistic as the genre requires.

Are you saying that these things can not exist within reality, or are you saying that they do not exist within your experience of reality?

To me that is a big difference.

I can still apply basic laws of physics to many hypothetical situations. Although I'll agree that trying to apply physics to a wizard's rules of summoning is useless.

A sci-fi gun that fires 100 gram metal spikes at 1000 m/sec by using magnetic acceleration may not currently exist on Earth. But we can still make a fairly good educated guess at what it would be like damage wise. I can give you specifics about the projectiles energy and momentum.

There are better and worse guesses. There are guesses are not perfect but that are good enough for a game (ball park estimates), and there are IMO guesses which are not good enough, even for a game.

Trebuchet

Jan 22nd, '06, 01:54 PM

I can agree with this concept.

And I'd add that there is nothing in HERO which keeps you from creating the following power:

Chocolate Cream Pie Throwing: 10d6 RKA API don't have a clue what point you were trying to make here. Is it that sfx don't have to make sense?

Are you saying that these things can not exist within reality, or are you saying that they do not exist within your experience of reality?

To me that is a big difference.

I can still apply basic laws of physics to many hypothetical situations. Although I'll agree that trying to apply physics to a wizard's rules of summoning is useless.

A sci-fi gun that fires 100 gram metal spikes at 1000 m/sec by using magnetic acceleration may not currently exist on Earth. But we can still make a fairly good educated guess at what it would be like damage wise. I can give you specifics about the projectiles energy and momentum.

There are better and worse guesses. There are guesses are not perfect but that are good enough for a game (ball park estimates), and there are IMO guesses which are not good enough, even for a game.My point is that these things don't exist, and while it's certainly possible we'll someday see singularity powered starships with warp drives logic tells us that spandex-clad mutants firing cosmic bolts from their eyes are extremely unlikely and wizards casting spells to summon supernatural creatures are simply not going to happen ever. So a game system which has to enforce reality within the system itself (as opposed to the GM enforcing it by genre) simply won't be able to simulate things that are not phyically possible (or incredibly unlikely), which severely restricts its utility as a universal system. I don't know about you, but I like being able to play things that are impossible. :D

Warp9

Jan 22nd, '06, 02:15 PM

I confuse myself sometimes :)

1. Linear: a 1kt tactical nuke has approximately 3 BILLION times the energy of a .44 magnum bullet. I have not got that many dice.

2. Exponential: in order to be realistic, given the relatively tight scale, you wouldn't roll dice at all - a particular attack would have a specific damage: if 1 point of BODY dobles the energy then even 1 point of variation is too much. Bullets always have the same energy, and when hitting a simple object, always have similar effects. When hitting a complex object, like a person, the important factor tends to be 'did you hit something vital'?

On teh one hand you need too many dice, on the other none at all - neither is the game I've been playing all these years - which is why we have this odd fusion that, I maintain, nonetheless works.

I believe that you'd change the specific play experience by going fully linear or exponential, but I don't think it'd be unplayable.

If you were to go linear, you'd probably keep bricks to a smaller scale of power. At 80 STR you'd be ten times stronger than Joe Average, and as long as everything else fit to this same scale, everything would be fine for many gamers.

IMO, the gamers who'd have an issue with this limited scale would be those who want their character to be able to preform specific feats--like having a Mega-Blast which hits like 1,000 sticks of dynamite. Of course, you can't really do that very easily with the current system anyway. :sneaky:

If you wanted a linear game with high power characters you could always just have really high stats like 10,000 STR. You have pointed out that the resulting 2,000d6 damage would be too much, but there are alternatives. You could roll 10d6 and multiply that by 200 for the damage.

A fully exponential game would require the gamers to always remember that they are dealing an exponential scale. However, I think it would still be playable. And you would have to get rid of dice, but you might want to limit the range of randomness.

Instead of:
10d6 (range 10 - 60 : Avg 35)

You might have:
28 + 2d6 (range 30 - 40 : Avg 35)

Or, if this is still to random, you could just limit the randomness to the "to hit" action. That way your damage could be based on how good a hit you got.

You could also bring BODY in line with STR. Instead of doubling every point BODY could double every 5 points (like STR does).

As for the 200d6 hitting earth...well, if I allowed a 200d6 non AE, then all it would do is punch a small hole in the planet ('all' he says :)). It would not be enough to destroy the planet - Earth has a lot more than 200 BODY - but it wouldn't cause shock waves and earthquakes either because that is not what the attack is built like. I'd fall back on litral interpretation of the rules. (I wouldn't have a volcano erupt either - a 2m hole would seal long before the magna got to the surface :))

My issue here is that this is not a literal interpretation of the rules.

A non AE attack can hit one target. To my knowledge, the rules do not say how big a single target can be.

As far as I know, there is nothing in the rules that allows a galaxy sized character/object to ignore non-AE powers.

If you wanted to impose limits on what you can hit with a non-AE power, where would you start?

Area Effect:1 Hex is an existing power. So I assume that an non-AE power would not be able to impact a whole hex; it would then have to be limited to a much smaller space than 1 hex.

Maybe you should only be able to make a tiny "bullet hole" in an object if you don't have AE on your power? But that would really limit a non AE power from doing much damage in many cases.

Warp9

Jan 22nd, '06, 02:31 PM

I don't have a clue what point you were trying to make here. Is it that sfx don't have to make sense?

Yes, basically.

The idea is that I agree that HERO allows you to buy things that are totally unrealistic (assuming that the GM will let you get away with it).

My point is that these things don't exist,

They don't exist in your experience--that doesn't meant that they do not exist somewhere.

and while it's certainly possible we'll someday see singularity powered starships with warp drives logic tells us that spandex-clad mutants firing cosmic bolts from their eyes are extremely unlikely and wizards casting spells to summon supernatural creatures are simply not going to happen ever.

Can you prove that magic doesn't exist? I'm not saying that it does, simply that I can't prove it does not.

So a game system which has to enforce reality within the system itself (as opposed to the GM enforcing it by genre) simply won't be able to simulate things that are not phyically possible (or incredibly unlikely), which severely restricts its utility as a universal system.

I'll have to give that one some more consideration. . . .

But for now I'll say the following:

IMO there is no reason why a purely effect based game system should link the abilities of lifting, throwing, punching, and jumping. If your character can lift a great mass, then buy "lifting." If your character can punch really hard, then buy a no-range attack to represent this ability. If your character can jump high, then buy "leaping."

Currently the system does link these abilities together for you. Therefore I do think that there is a legitimate question about the relationship between each ability: does lifting power currently match to punching power?

I don't know about you, but I like being able to play things that are impossible. :D

I'm just not as sure as to what is "impossible" as you are :nya:

megaplayboy

Jan 22nd, '06, 04:09 PM

Wow. You've never even read the Explosives rules, have you? If you'll look at the Explosives chart on page 487 of 5ER, you'll see:

Dynamite (1 stick) 5d6 EX
Dynamite (2 sticks) 6d6 EX
Dynamite (4 sticks) 8d6 EX

There is absolutely nothing about this list that is exponential. It's simply adding +1d6 for each stick of dynamite. Given this totally arithmetic progression and assuming for the sake of argument that a single stick of dynamite weighs one pound, 100 pounds of dynamite should do 95d6 and a 15kTon nuke (Hiroshima) should do 30,000,000d6; or 10 million d6 K. :eek:

Since that is patently absurd based on Steve Long's writeup of the sun, I think we can finally lay to rest any absurd idea that the damage system in Hero is either exponential or arithmetical. It is neither. It's possible it's some sort of logarithmic scale which climbs sharply at first and then levels out, but nobody can creditably claim it's exponential. And it's rather clearly not arithmetic, at least not above a few score dice.

I do not and never have considered a 20d6 K EX as a creditable simulation of a nuclear weapon.

How much does it do, then?
And do you think that giving the Sun more active points than are even possible to cram into Hero Designer is a good build?
I mean, Galactus could totally sit in the sun for centuries, and merely emerge with a good tan;) And he's not built on 1.5 million points.

Trebuchet

Jan 22nd, '06, 04:37 PM

How much does it do, then?
And do you think that giving the Sun more active points than are even possible to cram into Hero Designer is a good build?I must point out that the Sun wasn't built in Hero Designer 2.42, but rather in Universe Designer 1.0. So whether the Sun can be built in Hero Designer or not is really immaterial to the discussion at hand. :)

That having been said, I don't think Steve Long's build of Sol in Star Hero is the definitive word on the topic. I think it was just his tongue-in-cheek method of answering all those constant "How many points of ED does my PC need to survive in the Sun?" by pedants who feel the need to quantify everything. The answer, of course, is "More than you can afford." ;)

In any case, even his sun design shows that a strategic nuke is going to be far more than 20d6 EX. And that's not to even consider that a semi-realistic writeup of a nuke would have to include shockwave, flash, heat, radiation, and other effects; not just a simple big EX attack. For a strategic nuke in the 100kTon+ range I wouldn't even start below 100d6 K EX; megaton range weapons might well exceed 1000d6 K EX if we were trying to do accurate representations. Since I consider any nuke to be a plot device and not a Power; I see no need to define it past "You can't survive it, and neither will Birmingham." :eek:

Trebuchet

Jan 22nd, '06, 04:44 PM

They don't exist in your experience--that doesn't meant that they do not exist somewhere.

[snip]

Can you prove that magic doesn't exist? I'm not saying that it does, simply that I can't prove it does not.Those are metaphysical discussions and not relevant to the discussion at hand. In any case, it is not possible to prove negatives. It is up to supporters of magic to prove its existence; not up to non-believers to disprove it.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

OddHat

Jan 22nd, '06, 05:00 PM

Since I consider any nuke to be a plot device and not a Power; I see no need to define it past "You can't survive it, and neither will Birmingham." :eek:

Superman could survive it. So could The Master from the Circle and Mete.

Of course, I handle that with Desolidification, but plenty of people hate that power when used as a defense as well. ;)

megaplayboy

Jan 22nd, '06, 05:03 PM

I must point out that the Sun wasn't built in Hero Designer 2.42, but rather in Universe Designer 1.0. So whether the Sun can be built in Hero Designer or not is really immaterial to the discussion at hand. :)

That having been said, I don't think Steve Long's build of Sol in Star Hero is the definitive word on the topic. I think it was just his tongue-in-cheek method of answering all those constant "How many points of ED does my PC need to survive in the Sun?" by pedants who feel the need to quantify everything. The answer, of course, is "More than you can afford." ;)

In any case, even his sun design shows that a strategic nuke is going to be far more than 20d6 EX. And that's not to even consider that a semi-realistic writeup of a nuke would have to include shockwave, flash, heat, radiation, and other effects; not just a simple big EX attack. For a strategic nuke in the 100kTon+ range I wouldn't even start below 100d6 K EX; megaton range weapons might well exceed 1000d6 K EX if we were trying to do accurate representations. Since I consider any nuke to be a plot device and not a Power; I see no need to define it past "You can't survive it, and neither will Birmingham." :eek:

But there's more than a handful of comic book superheroes who, to put it quite bluntly, can withstand a direct hit from a strat nuke. Do we build them on half a million points? DBZ characters can throw planet-vaping attacks--do we build them on millions of points?

Why is the world so worried about Dr. Destroyer when a mini-nuke will kill him straight dead, according to your scaling?

If the progression isn't linear, then it's either exponential or logarithmic, with some fudge factor thrown in.
Reasoning from effects here is pretty simple--can 20d6 KA vaporize a 100-ton main battle tank instantly? yes. It's an open question whether it should be able to vaporize completely a 100,000 ton aircraft carrier, but then again, only the biggest nukes would do that to carriers anyway(too much mass to vaporize).
I should note that the space nukes and antimatter missiles(which destroy stuff on a scale exceeding the biggest real world nukes) still only clock in at 20d6 KA and 25d6 KA, respectively. And those writeups were done, or at least approved by, the same Steve Long who did the sun damage writeup.:nonp:

Zeropoint

Jan 22nd, '06, 05:23 PM

I think you're overestimating the level of damage that a nuclear weapon does. Yes, it creates a huge swath of destruction, and yes, it does more damage than most things can withstand.

However, objects have been known to withstand a nuclear explosion. Several bank vaults were discovered intact in the rubble of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During the early conceptual phases of the Orion project, an experiment was performed in which two graphite-coated solid steel spheres were placed near a small nuclear device. When recovered, not only were the spheres intact, but the graphite was not completely removed from the side facing the explosion.

A strategic nuclear weapon, as I understand them, would be adequate represented by something like a 20d6 RKA, Mega-Area: One Hex = 100 meters, Explosion. Almost nothing will withstand the damage of ground zero, few things that aren't heavily armored with survive within a kilometer of the blast, and most buildings within two kilometers of the ground zero should be left with "no brick on top of another".

If those radii aren't big enough, you can bump the megascale up to 150m or 200m per hex. In any case, you don't need to have millions of dice of damage to reflect the effects of a nuclear weapon.

Zeropoint

Warp9

Jan 22nd, '06, 07:21 PM

Those are metaphysical discussions and not relevant to the discussion at hand. In any case, it is not possible to prove negatives. It is up to supporters of magic to prove its existence; not up to non-believers to disprove it.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
All that is true. However, just because nobody has proven the existance of a thing doesn't mean that you can say it is not possible for it to exist. And my problem is that you were throwing around the term "impossible."

If I want to make the assertion that intelligent life exists elsewhere beyond Earth, it is up to me to prove it.

Yet, even if I can't prove that such life exists, that does not mean you can assume that it definitely does not exist.

Trebuchet

Jan 23rd, '06, 03:39 AM

Superman could survive it. So could The Master from the Circle and Mete.

Of course, I handle that with Desolidification, but plenty of people hate that power when used as a defense as well. ;)Superman isn't a Champions character; so I'd handle his survival of a nuke as a matter of concept and sfx. It's it's not like he survives them unscathed; they seem to beat him up pretty good.

I can't address the Master since I've never seen his writeup; but if he doesn't have Desolidification then I rather doubt he can survive a realistic nuke. YMMV, of course.

Trebuchet

Jan 23rd, '06, 03:48 AM

All that is true. However, just because nobody has proven the existance of a thing doesn't mean that you can say it is not possible for it to exist. And my problem is that you were throwing around the term "impossible."

If I want to make the assertion that intelligent life exists elsewhere beyond Earth, it is up to me to prove it.

Yet, even if I can't prove that such life exists, that does not mean you can assume that it definitely does not exist.I used "impossible" as meaning "so improbable as to defy description other than as impossible." Yes, it's possible we'll all wake up in a world of unicorns, superheroes, and starships tomorrow. But the odds remain pretty good that none of us who play Champions have or will ever see such things; and I'd say only the possibility of starships in the future are a realistic expectation.

Would you be happier if I'd used "Hero must be able to model statistically extremely improbable events and items in order to work"? "Impossible" sure cuts down on the verbage; and is probably quite accurate to boot.

OddHat

Jan 23rd, '06, 04:43 AM

Superman isn't a Champions character; so I'd handle his survival of a nuke as a matter of concept and sfx. It's it's not like he survives them unscathed; they seem to beat him up pretty good.

Champions is meant to be a Superhero RPG. We ought to be able to write up any superhero, let alone ones as popular and important to the genre as Superman, Supergirl, and Mon El. That doesn't mean that they need to be playable characters in every campaign, but they absolutely need to be possible in high level games.
I don't think that claiming that Superman, one of the characters that defines the Superhero genre, can't be written up as a Champions character is a defensible position.

megaplayboy

Jan 23rd, '06, 05:06 AM

Sean Waters

Jan 23rd, '06, 05:25 AM

I think it is going to come down to this at the end of the day:

What do you want in your game?

If you want some characters to be able to survive ground zero nuclear strikes, then you really need to be looking at an exponential damage progression.

If you want a SAM to be able to take down your version of Superman then you need a linear progression.

I am beginning to suspect that the reason that these questions are either not answered or are answered in a way that does not clearly define the underlying mechanic is SO that you can play the game the way way YOU want.

That is a GOOD thing :)

OddHat

Jan 23rd, '06, 05:25 AM

More to the point, in the same Star Hero book (and in Terran Empire)that writes up the Sun damage so gratuitously, a "space nuke" and "antimatter missile" are statted out at 20d6 KA and 25d6 KA respectively. And there's a sidebar about how much damage it takes to destroy the earth, which is meticulously calculated to be about 51d6 KA, with AoE advantages to cover an eart-sized object. So, if 51d6 KA is planet-vaporizing damage, why does the sun even need to do 975d6 KA? According to that writeup, if you put an object with the same mass/body as the Sun(about 120-150 BODY) inside the sun, it would be vaporized instantly.
I could research the actual temperature, pressure and energy output of the sun, and compare it to nukes and the estimated energy necessary to destroy the earth instantly, but I'm pretty sure it can be readily demonstrated that the damage is way excessive. For example, an uber-starship with about 180 DEF force field or force wall(able to be hit continuously with antimatter missiles without taking any damage ever) should be able to withstand the temperature and pressure levels which exist at the core of the sun.

I think that Trebuchet's position is that Steve was joking when he gave the Sun that (absurd) level of damage, and that things like sundiving and surviving a Nuke should be purely story driven rather than statted out.

Personally, I'd prefer to go with a nuke as a 20-25d6 KA as per Star Hero, and allow the most powerful Supers in a setting to have the combination of very high rED, Damage Reduction, and BODY (or Desolidification based Invulnerabiity) needed to survive such an attack. Story is more important to me than mechanics, but the mechanics should help me tell the story.

OddHat

Jan 23rd, '06, 05:28 AM

Sean Waters

Jan 23rd, '06, 05:29 AM

Funny that you don't feel that way about the PRE attack rules. ;)

Ah, that's different: they are just wrong :)

OddHat

Jan 23rd, '06, 05:40 AM

Ah, that's different: they are just wrong :)

I see. Fair enough then. ;)

megaplayboy

Jan 23rd, '06, 05:42 AM

I suppose it always comes down to "what do you want in your game?"

But sometimes I think there's just a few bad writeups in published material, and there's nothing wrong with pointing them out when they happen.

Gary

Jan 23rd, '06, 05:50 AM

You're missing my main point; which is that you're using a single specific example to gauge damage in Hero when there are countervailing examples within the system itself (such as the Explosives rules). You cannot draw a general conclusion from a specific example; you can only use specific examples to illustrate generalities. You cannot prove objectively that a falling object which masses twice as much actually does twice as much damage to whatever it falls on even in the real world; much less within the pseudo-physics of a role-playing system.

It's pretty obvious that the system is FAR closer to exponential damage than to linear damage (with the noted exceptions of the velocity rules and apparently explosion rules). The fact that we roll dozens of dice for large attacks rather than millions or billions of dice prove it.

Damage generally seems to be +1 DC per doubling, or perhaps +X DC per doubling depending on the attack, where X is some single digit number. This is entirely consistent with the time chart where each step is theoretically 5 times as much time, but in practice it's anywhere from 3-7X as much time per step on the chart.

This may or may not have been the designer's intent, but it's the reality that the game system has left us.

You perenially seem to think you can properly define game balance solely mathematically within a role-playing system where numbers are only part of game balance. Since you can't accept anyone else's definitions (or even that it may be impossible to even define the term, much less quantify it), why don't you enlighten us as to how you define game balance?

Where did I say 'solely mathematically'?

Game balance in a comic book universe is where a character like Superman can survive ground zero at a nuclear bomb. That would be impossible under your system where a nuke starts at 100d6 killing and can reach 1000d6 killing.

I think I prefer a game system that models what happens in the actual source material unlike you.

ghost-angel

Jan 23rd, '06, 05:54 AM

HERO damage is addative. When you want to do more damage you add on dice.

Damage in your Game should take into account the average DEF you have, the Average Damage you want to get through and Dramatic Sense. Not some forced in convoluted formula.

If you want to play Fine Red Mist HERO you simply make all your guns start at 3D6 Killing and all your DEF Stop at 3 Resistant.

Gary

Jan 23rd, '06, 06:01 AM

All of that is pretty much correct, which is why Gary's example of dropping blocks on people is so laughably simplistic - it would do more or less damage depending on factors such as whether the target is standing or prone, whether his hands are above his head, how tough he is (If we can postulate someone strong enough to drop multiton blocks, we can certainly postulate someone tough enough to catch it), whether said block hits other objects nearby, what the shape of the block is, etc. As I've said previously (and you've correctly observed in this post), damage is not simply a function of energy. Other factors can and do influence the results.

When it comes to large weights dropping on people, energy is the primary determinant of damage for 'normal' average targets. Toughness is already reflected in the target's PD. When it comes to large numbers, pretty much all factors other than weight dwarf to insignificance. No amount of leverage, standing vs prone, etc is going to make up for a 16 fold increase in weight, yet that's only 4d6 difference from 20d6 to 24d6.

And even if position, shape, etc are significant enough to matter, they are just as likely to help the larger weight as the smaller weight.

Gary

Jan 23rd, '06, 06:08 AM

IMO, the gamers who'd have an issue with this limited scale would be those who want their character to be able to preform specific feats--like having a Mega-Blast which hits like 1,000 sticks of dynamite. Of course, you can't really do that very easily with the current system anyway. :sneaky:

1000 sticks of dynamite would be a 1004d6 explosion under FAQ rules. That would be enough to kill the Justice League, the Legion of Superheroes, the Avengers, the Defenders, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, the Justice Society, the Teen Titans, etc and still have enough damage on the side to wipe out Galactus and Darkseid.

Who needs heroes when you can simply throw dynamite at any would be world beater... :p

OddHat

Jan 23rd, '06, 06:17 AM

1000 sticks of dynamite would be a 1004d6 explosion under FAQ rules. That would be enough to kill the Justice League, the Legion of Superheroes, the Avengers, the Defenders, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, the Justice Society, the Teen Titans, etc and still have enough damage on the side to wipe out Galactus and Darkseid.

Who needs heroes when you can simply throw dynamite at any would be world beater... :p

Really, this is such an obviously bad ruling I can't see how it can be defended. Doctor Destroyer has a shot at surviving an official Star Hero tactical nuke but can by dynamited to death.

Sean Waters

Jan 23rd, '06, 06:17 AM

Mentor

Jan 23rd, '06, 06:46 AM

How much does it do, then?
And do you think that giving the Sun more active points than are even possible to cram into Hero Designer is a good build?
I mean, Galactus could totally sit in the sun for centuries, and merely emerge with a good tan;) And he's not built on 1.5 million points.
While I could build a character which would survive Steve Long's (facetious, IMO) version of the sun, I don't think Galactus would be built on points at all. Galactus has typically been a plot device which forces Reed Richards to make the maximum effort with his INT to stymie or trick, rather than physically defeat. Maybe he does have 1.5 million points.

OddHat

Jan 23rd, '06, 06:52 AM

megaplayboy

Jan 23rd, '06, 07:01 AM

While I could build a character which would survive Steve Long's (facetious, IMO) version of the sun, I don't think Galactus would be built on points at all. Galactus has typically been a plot device which forces Reed Richards to make the maximum effort with his INT to stymie or trick, rather than physically defeat. Maybe he does have 1.5 million points.
well, Mechanon 3000, who can shrug off multiple space nukes, has a STR of 310 and is the size of a moon, is built on less than 5000 points, as is the Examiner as well, IIRC, so I'm pretty sure he can be written up in Hero Designer, probably in the 6-12K point range. His defenses at peak power should be enough to shrug off nukes, and at his weakest, high-end hero attacks will get significant damage through. The planet-eating always seems to take several minutes, if not longer. He is capable of blowing a large space fleet to smithereens pretty quickly, so I'd say his VPP and Multipowers are in the hundreds of points.:) What he probably has is an END reserve which only recovers via planet-eating. When he starts to deplete the reserve below half, his defenses and related stats start to drop.

Warp9

Jan 23rd, '06, 09:40 AM

I used "impossible" as meaning "so improbable as to defy description other than as impossible." Yes, it's possible we'll all wake up in a world of unicorns, superheroes, and starships tomorrow. But the odds remain pretty good that none of us who play Champions have or will ever see such things; and I'd say only the possibility of starships in the future are a realistic expectation.

Would you be happier if I'd used "Hero must be able to model statistically extremely improbable events and items in order to work"? "Impossible" sure cuts down on the verbage; and is probably quite accurate to boot.

I guess that this point is important to me because to be the term "impossible" implies that it simply can't happen, or at least it contradicts things which we specifically know to be true.

There are many strange things in Star Trek which I consider unlikely. But having sound effects in space actually contradicts my understanding of how things work.

You can use basic physics to model strange and totally hypothetical events with no problem. For example, I can give you very specific data on the functioning of a Rail Gun from my sci-fi game.

IMO we can model improbable events with results which are reasonable considering the situation.

It may be improbable that a person could bounce a a neutron star off of his skin, but if he could do that, then it seems reasonable that he'd be able to survive a a large number of sticks of dynamite.

Warp9

Jan 23rd, '06, 09:45 AM

When it comes to large weights dropping on people, energy is the primary determinant of damage for 'normal' average targets. Toughness is already reflected in the target's PD. When it comes to large numbers, pretty much all factors other than weight dwarf to insignificance. No amount of leverage, standing vs prone, etc is going to make up for a 16 fold increase in weight, yet that's only 4d6 difference from 20d6 to 24d6.

And even if position, shape, etc are significant enough to matter, they are just as likely to help the larger weight as the smaller weight.
I agree.

It seems to me that, if we don't track these factors, then the only fair assumption is that they remain equal between cases.

Warp9

Jan 23rd, '06, 09:53 AM

After reading some of these statements I am left with the following question: why wouldn't you want to stat things out if possible?

I can see that you might not care about minor factors, like how much damage it takes to crush a plastic cup.

But I'd kind of like to know if my character can survive a nuke, or the inside of the sun. That could be of major importance to me. In many cases the answer might be an obvious "NO," but in a cosmic-power Super-Hero game, I believe that it could become a legitimate question.

OddHat

Jan 23rd, '06, 10:23 AM

But I'd kind of like to know if my character can survive a nuke, or the inside of the sun. That could be of major importance to me. In many cases the answer might be an obvious "NO," but in a cosmic-power Super-Hero game, I believe that it could become a legitimate question.

It's not just a question in Superhero games. Some Science Fiction settings feature vehicles that can survive direct hits from nuclear weapons and even ships able to explore the interior of a star. Anime settings as well, those these border on Superhero games. If I were playing a Lensman game, I'd want to be able to design an attack on the scale of a planet buster bomb, and a shield able to block it. I'm OK with doing it by GM's fiat, but you should be able to stat out both.

Trebuchet

Jan 23rd, '06, 03:30 PM

But I'd kind of like to know if my character can survive a nuke, or the inside of the sun. That could be of major importance to me. In many cases the answer might be an obvious "NO," but in a cosmic-power Super-Hero game, I believe that it could become a legitimate question.Those are certainly legitimate questions in certain games. But in most Champions (and probably any heroic level) they are moot questions.

What I don't understand is why people seem bound and determined to fix "nuke capable" defenses at 2 digits when it might well be a 3 or even a 4 digit number. Who is to say Superman would be built on 1500 or even 5000 points? He might cost over 10K points to properly represent within Hero. Since we have a system without absolutes in most categories (Life Support being a notable exemption), becoming "anything-proof" is difficult at best. (Note that the Invulnerability Power I proposed a few months back would have solved this problem rather handily.)

Trebuchet

Jan 23rd, '06, 03:50 PM

But there's more than a handful of comic book superheroes who, to put it quite bluntly, can withstand a direct hit from a strat nuke. Do we build them on half a million points? DBZ characters can throw planet-vaping attacks--do we build them on millions of points?Why not? Who says Goku has to cost only 5000 or 10000 points. What do we use as a scale?

Why is the world so worried about Dr. Destroyer when a mini-nuke will kill him straight dead, according to your scaling?Actually, this poinnt would fit in well with the "Ridiculous things in comics that you don't mind." thread. Why assume Dr. Destroyer can survive a nuclear attack at all? If the US Government had known DD was hiding out in Detroit, do you really think they would have nuked Detroit to get at him? Being near major cities would be his greatest protection (and we can probably assume his more remote locations are deep underground and have better-than-bleeding-edge anti-missile defenses). If anyone on Earth could make "Star Wars" work it would be Doctor Destroyer.

If the progression isn't linear, then it's either exponential or logarithmic, with some fudge factor thrown in.In other words, it's totally inconsistent. So how can you arbitrarily decide which approach is valid, if any?

Reasoning from effects here is pretty simple--can 20d6 KA vaporize a 100-ton main battle tank instantly? yes. It's an open question whether it should be able to vaporize completely a 100,000 ton aircraft carrier, but then again, only the biggest nukes would do that to carriers anyway(too much mass to vaporize).

I should note that the space nukes and antimatter missiles(which destroy stuff on a scale exceeding the biggest real world nukes) still only clock in at 20d6 KA and 25d6 KA, respectively. And those writeups were done, or at least approved by, the same Steve Long who did the sun damage writeup.:nonp:Let's see here - we've both agreed the Sun writeup in Star Hero is totally ludicrous. We both think the Explosives table is just plain bizarre. So why should we think Steve Long's writeup for nuclear weapons is any more plausible? What makes that particular one better than the ones we've agreed are silly? Wouldn't it make more sense to assume they're all suspect? :nonp:

BTW, I said strategic (100 kiloton) nukes would start at 100d6 RKA EX and go up from there. Small tactical nukes, such as a nuclear artillery shell, could well be down in the 20d6 RKA EX range. I'd personally put a Hiroshima-class weapon at around 30 - 35d6 RKA EX. I've seen Champions characters that could survive that with just a little distance from Ground Zero.

OddHat

Jan 23rd, '06, 05:19 PM

Those are certainly legitimate questions in certain games. But in most Champions (and probably any heroic level) they are moot questions.

What I don't understand is why people seem bound and determined to fix "nuke capable" defenses at 2 digits when it might well be a 3 or even a 4 digit number. Who is to say Superman would be built on 1500 or even 5000 points? He might cost over 10K points to properly represent within Hero. Since we have a system without absolutes in most categories (Life Support being a notable exemption), becoming "anything-proof" is difficult at best. (Note that the Invulnerability Power I proposed a few months back would have solved this problem rather handily.)

Galactic Champions, in theory the High Power version of Champions, has player characters starting at 700 points. The two most obvious official Superman homages with write-ups in HERO 5th are Viperia (a Supergirl tribute) at 1,359 points and Supernova at 1,760. Supernova is specifically described as using desolidification to explore the interiors of stars. Based on the examples and guidelines we have, it's reasonable enough to assume that Superman should be possible on under 5000 points. Son Goku as well.

Trebuchet

Jan 23rd, '06, 06:00 PM

Galactic Champions, in theory the High Power version of Champions, has player characters starting at 800 points. The two most obvious official Superman homages with write-ups in HERO 5th are Viperia (a Supergirl tribute) at 1,359 points and Supernova at 1,760. Supernova is specifically described as using desolidification to explore the interiors of stars. Based on the examples and guidelines we have, it's reasonable enough to assume that Superman should be possible on under 5000 points. Son Goku as well.Galactic Champions actually starts PCs at 700 points, not 800. So even a Supergirl homage is nearly twice as many points as a basic Galactic Champions character.

One of the reasons I dislike the whole "cram any concievable attack into a few hundred character points" is that it creates compression; especially at the lower ends where most PCs exist. I can't see any logical advantage to making a typical PC with 60 - 75 Active Point attacks a significant any threat to the likes of Superman. Why shouldn't Big Blue have 250 or even 500 PD? I've seen writeups for him with 300 and even 400 STR. Notwithstanding bad crossover comics and the fact I'm a big Spidey fan, Spider-Man shouldn't be able to do more than muss Superman's hair. Batman is not taking out Thor either.

Same problem with nuclear weapons - very very few superheroes can survive a nuke at point blank range. Those few who can are not 350 point characters. Having nukes as 20, 30, 50, even 100d6 RKA EX attacks makes those few characters who can survive such attacks special. (I'll save my observations that IMO tanks and battleships in Hero have too low DEF for another day.) ;)

OddHat

Jan 23rd, '06, 06:16 PM

Galactic Champions actually starts PCs at 700 points, not 800. So even a Supergirl homage is nearly twice as many points as a basic Galactic Champions character.

Yup, my bad. The high cost of a Supergirl homage also calls into question the idea of 700 points as "high powered."

One of the reasons I dislike the whole "cram any concievable attack into a few hundred character points" is that it creates compression; especially at the lower ends where most PCs exist. I can't see any logical advantage to making a typical PC with 60 - 75 Active Point attacks a significant any threat to the likes of Superman. Why shouldn't Big Blue have 250 or even 500 PD? I've seen writeups for him with 300 and even 400 STR. Notwithstanding bad crossover comics and the fact I'm a big Spidey fan, Spider-Man shouldn't be able to do more than muss Superman's hair. Batman is not taking out Thor either.

Compression can be a problem with HERO. A 75 active point attack (that's not exploiting a vulnerability) on average wouldn't be much of a threat to Viperea or Supernova, but it could affect them. I'd tweak them in my games to avoid that, but it wouldn't take much.

Spiderman isn't that great an example though. He can beat Firelord. :D

Warp9

Jan 23rd, '06, 09:01 PM

Those are certainly legitimate questions in certain games. But in most Champions (and probably any heroic level) they are moot questions.

It seems that we agree on this point.

Since we have a system without absolutes in most categories (Life Support being a notable exemption), becoming "anything-proof" is difficult at best. (Note that the Invulnerability Power I proposed a few months back would have solved this problem rather handily.)

I'm not sure why we are getting into "absolutes" here.

For me there is a huge difference between talking about "being immune to ALL heat based attacks" and being immune to a specific finite physical attack (like being able to always bounce the bullets from a .38 special).

A 100 megaton nuke is not infinite, and compared to many other events in the Cosmos, it is actually a pretty minor manifestation.

What I don't understand is why people seem bound and determined to fix "nuke capable" defenses at 2 digits when it might well be a 3 or even a 4 digit number.

The real question here is: how much damage will a nuke do?

If HERO damage follows an exponential pattern, then 2 digit defenses should be fine, at least for the BODY (but not for the STUN) . If it follows a linear pattern, like the Expolsives in the FAQ, then you'd need 6 digit defenses.

If it follows some other pattern, I'd sure like to know what that is.

Obviously you can proceed without any pattern, and just make numbers up as you go along. However you are likely to run into inconsistencies if you do things this way. You may even end up with a bunch of sticks of dynamite do more damage than a nuke :D

Who is to say Superman would be built on 1500 or even 5000 points? He might cost over 10K points to properly represent within Hero.

Well, considering the linear explosives in the weapons FAQ you'd need more than 1,000,000 points to build Superman. Assuming an exponential damage progression, you'd be able to do it on much fewer points (probably 1500 or less).

Here's a question that, for me, comes to the heart of the issue:

Lets say I want to run DBZ style game (with DBZ characters that can throw planet-vaping attacks). Lets say that I'm considering running it in HERO. And lets say that I go to you for advice on how to set that up. What would you tell me?

Would you really suggest that I allocate 50,000+ points for each PC? Or would you just suggest that HERO can't handle those power levels?

Trebuchet

Jan 24th, '06, 03:19 AM

Spiderman isn't that great an example though. He can beat Firelord. :D:rofl:

You are an evil man. :D

Trebuchet

Jan 24th, '06, 03:45 AM

It seems that we agree on this point.I knew we'd find something eventually. :)

I'm not sure why we are getting into "absolutes" here.

For me there is a huge difference between talking about "being immune to ALL heat based attacks" and being immune to a specific finite physical attack (like being able to always bounce the bullets from a .38 special).

A 100 megaton nuke is not infinite, and compared to many other events in the Cosmos, it is actually a pretty minor manifestation.

The real question here is: how much damage will a nuke do?

If HERO damage follows an exponential pattern, then 2 digit defenses should be fine, at least for the BODY (but not for the STUN) . If it follows a linear pattern, like the Expolsives in the FAQ, then you'd need 6 digit defenses.

If it follows some other pattern, I'd sure like to know what that is.

Obviously you can proceed without any pattern, and just make numbers up as you go along. However you are likely to run into inconsistencies if you do things this way. You may even end up with a bunch of sticks of dynamite do more damage than a nuke :DI'm sure we both agree that's absurd simply based on the fact that the real world effects of nuclear weapons are based on tons of TNT, not individual sticks. This goes to the heart of my argument: That the Hero system's damage system is not internally consistent; and some parts are in fact outright contradictory.

I have never claimed the system is linear; nor do I think it's exponential. What I have said is that 1 Damage Class has no meaning beyond 1 Damage Class. It is not quantifiable; but is useful only as a measure of relative ability to inflict damage within the system. If there's any internal logic to the system at all; it's some sort of logarithmic system which ramps up slowly in the beginning so we can differentiate between a .38 Special and a tank round and then increases sharply at higher levels so we might plausibly build nuke-proof characters.

The strongest argument against it being exponential is the incredible variation possible for attacks. If each 1 BODY of damage done is exponentially higher than the preceding number, and assuming it actually does any damage at all, a 10d6 attack can inflict between 1 and 20 BODY. Assuming for the sake of argument we accept the "damage is exponential" meme, that means a best case (all 6's on 10d6) does 524,288 times as much damage as near-worst case (all 0's with a single 2 - 5 rolled). Is that logical?

Well, considering the linear explosives in the weapons FAQ you'd need more than 1,000,000 points to build Superman. Assuming an exponential damage progression, you'd be able to do it on much fewer points (probably 1500 or less).True. But would that make it a better representation; or merely more convenient? Comic book characters aren't built on a point system; they're built on whatever strikes the writers' fancy. The early Superman from the 1930's and 40's wasn't nuke proof; he was only bullet proof ("Nothing less than an exploding shell could penetrate his skin!"). Decades of character inflation and bad writing have morphed Superman into a character I doubt his own creators would recognize if it weren't for the big "S" on his chest.

Here's a question that, for me, comes to the heart of the issue:

Lets say I want to run DBZ style game (with DBZ characters that can throw planet-vaping attacks). Lets say that I'm considering running it in HERO. And lets say that I go to you for advice on how to set that up. What would you tell me?

Would you really suggest that I allocate 50,000+ points for each PC? Or would you just suggest that HERO can't handle those power levels?Frankly, that might be the best way to put it. I think Hero works best at runnng characters with 20d6 or lower attacks; the system starts to break down much beyond that (Remember the original Champions in 1981 had characters start with only 250 CP.) I certainly wouldn't try to run DBZ in Hero. YMMV. :)

megaplayboy

Jan 24th, '06, 05:31 AM

Superman--500 point starting character, about 3000 comic book appearances--if he gets 2xp every time he shows up, that's about 6500 total points.
For a gamer, playing twice a week, gaining 250 xp per year for 20 years, that's still only 5000 xp.
Pretty obviously Treb's approach would preclude playing approximately 10-20% of the characters who appear in comic books. After all, some of them are pretty much invulnerable to conventional weaponry up to daisy cutters, and can almost survive a direct hit from nukes(Hulk).

I don't buy this "Hero breaks down at higher levels" stuff. That just seems like a dodge to me.

there is some consistency on damage. STR damage, for example, goes up +1 DC per x2 lift capacity.
STR 10 = 1000 joules of kinetic energy(roughly), 2 DC
STR 60 = 1 million joules of kinetic energy, 12 DC
STR 110 = 1 billion joules of kinetic energy, 22 DC
STR 160 = 1 trillion joules , 32 DC
STR 210 = 1 quadrillion, 42 DC
STR 260 = 1 quintillion, 52 DC
STR 310 = 1 sextillion, 62 DC

now, a 20 megaton nuke is the conversion of 1 kg of matter into energy,
E=mc^2, so that works out to 9x10^16 joules, or 90 quadrillion joules.

We can handwave the differences by saying there's some inherent inefficiencies in transferring the kinetic energy of STR, but the basic point is that there is some correlation evident here.
A straight exponential conversion going from 12.7 mm to 120 mm guns would give us 6d6+1 KA for the 120mm. We can assume a higher muzzle velocity adding a couple DC, making the fudge factor about +3 DC. That's not too bad. The fudge factor for the nuke is about +12 DC.
I should note for the record, that there's not a whole lot of difference between being at point blank of a 300 KT H-bomb and a 30 MT H-bomb. The core temperature will be similar, and the pressure will be a bit higher, but otherwise the lethality level at point blank is not dramatically greater.

Gary

Jan 24th, '06, 05:37 AM

The thing is that Superman has taken Stun numerous times from foes that he'd be immune to if he had mid to high triple digit defenses. Based on the foes he's taken damage from, he probably has mid to high double digits with some degree of damage reduction.

OddHat

Jan 24th, '06, 08:05 AM

True. But would that make it a better representation; or merely more convenient? Comic book characters aren't built on a point system; they're built on whatever strikes the writers' fancy.

This much is absolutely true. However, there are ways to represent that sort of character fluxuation and rapid inflation in HERO, if the GM wishes to do so. The Power Skill, VPPs, Multipowers, high XP campaigns, etc.

Frankly, that might be the best way to put it. I think Hero works best at runnng characters with 20d6 or lower attacks; the system starts to break down much beyond that (Remember the original Champions in 1981 had characters start with only 250 CP.) I certainly wouldn't try to run DBZ in Hero. YMMV. :)

You can run a DBZ HERO campaign complete with miles of knockback and smashing people through mountains, all with minimal rules adjustment, using 350-450 point characters. ;)

megaplayboy

Jan 24th, '06, 08:09 AM

Well, if you just switch out Dr. Destroyer's psych lims and hunteds, he's a perfectly viable silver age solo hero, with all kinds of perks, skills, and a mean 30 DC set of attacks. Doesn't seem too broken at that level. One could imagine a suitable level of challenges for such a powerful hero--or even a group of such heroes.

OddHat

Jan 24th, '06, 08:10 AM

Superman--500 point starting character, about 3000 comic book appearances--if he gets 2xp every time he shows up, that's about 6500 total points.
For a gamer, playing twice a week, gaining 250 xp per year for 20 years, that's still only 5000 xp.

Check the link in my sig and you will find a 250 point Superman who can do everything that Superman did in Action Comics #1. The full power sun diving Silver Age Superman can be built on under 2000 points, even with Steve's absurd interior of the Sun write up. I also have a 350 point Superman homage that can comfortably play in Steve's Sun.

megaplayboy

Jan 24th, '06, 08:25 AM

Check the link in my sig and you will find a 250 point Superman who can do everything that Superman did in Action Comics #1. The full power sun diving Silver Age Superman can be built on under 2000 points, even with Steve's absurd interior of the Sun write up. I also have a 350 point Superman homage that can comfortably play in Steve's Sun.
I'm sure you're probably right. OTOH, sometimes it's more satisfying to stat out a "brute force" approximation rather than "working the system" to find a way to simulate a more poweful effect.

OddHat

Jan 24th, '06, 08:42 AM

I'm sure you're probably right. OTOH, sometimes it's more satisfying to stat out a "brute force" approximation rather than "working the system" to find a way to simulate a more poweful effect.

I always go back and forth on that. :)

I agree that using Desolidification as Invulnerability is a bit of a fudge (my answer to Sun-diving). Still, it's an "official" fudge that shows up in the 5thER and the USPD I and II in one form or another. If we take the official 20d6K tac nuke as the damage done by a nuclear weapon (adding megascale for larger weapons trather than more damage at ground zero), a Superman with 50rPD/50rED, plus a 40+ BODY score and 3/4 Damage Reduction PD and ED is going to survive. This build (along with most of Silver Age Supes other powers) is doable on under 1,500 points and is conveniently close to what Supernova from Galactic Champions (under 2000 points) can achieve with a few tweaks of his VPP.

If you start estimating Nuke damage in the 1000+d6 range, no build without Desolidification will work; a GM taking that position is saying that he doesn't want such a character in his game, and he'll just pump up the damage accordingly. It's not the official approach to nuclear weapons in HERO so far as I know.

Dr. Anomaly

Jan 24th, '06, 11:37 AM

megaplayboy

Jan 24th, '06, 12:02 PM

Maybe I've just missed it (I haven't read every post in the thread; sorry) but when talking about total energy of a shell (say, 120mm) and then total energy of a nuke (size doesn't matter for this, really) and then scaling up from one to another, has anyone pointed out or tried to take into account that with a shell or similar-sized or smaller projectile, a very larger percentage of the energy will be transfered to a man-sized target if hit, but with a nuke, the total energy is spread out over a very large spherical volume, and a man-sized target will intercept only a tiny portion of that total energy? Yes, the closer to ground zero you are, the more you intercept because your surface area (facing the blast point) is a larger percentage of the area of the expanding wavefront at that point, and thus every square inch will get hit with more energy...but still...

well, I don't think that's been addressed. Let's say the target is standing 1 meter from the impact point of the bomb. The total surface area of a sphere of 1 m radius is about 12 square meters. A person 2m tall and .6m wide has a surface area of 1.2 square meters. So, at a distance of 1 meter, they get exposed to 10 % of the total energy of the blast. If they threw themself on top of the bomb, they might be hit by 25-75% of the energy. If they stood 10 meters away, they'd be exposed to .1% of the energy of the bomb. At a kilometer, one ten-millionth of the energy. For the aforementioned 20 megaton bomb, that's about 10 gigajoules.
But, of course, the other complication is that the bomb is dispersing its energy volumetrically as well, into the air, by transferring heat energy into objects, etc. So what reaches the human sized target at 1km distance is likely to be much less than 10 gigajoules of energy.

OddHat

Jan 24th, '06, 12:26 PM

well, I don't think that's been addressed. Let's say the target is standing 1 meter from the impact point of the bomb. The total surface area of a sphere of 1 m radius is about 12 square meters. A person 2m tall and .6m wide has a surface area of 1.2 square meters. So, at a distance of 1 meter, they get exposed to 10 % of the total energy of the blast. If they threw themself on top of the bomb, they might be hit by 25-75% of the energy. If they stood 10 meters away, they'd be exposed to .1% of the energy of the bomb. At a kilometer, one ten-millionth of the energy. For the aforementioned 20 megaton bomb, that's about 10 gigajoules.
But, of course, the other complication is that the bomb is dispersing its energy volumetrically as well, into the air, by transferring heat energy into objects, etc. So what reaches the human sized target at 1km distance is likely to be much less than 10 gigajoules of energy.

This is built into the abstractions that make up the Explosion and Area of Effect rules anyway; there's not much point in worrying about it past the "Xd6 of damage in an Explosion that fades Y dice per Z meters" level.

Warp9

Jan 24th, '06, 01:51 PM

Maybe I've just missed it (I haven't read every post in the thread; sorry) but when talking about total energy of a shell (say, 120mm) and then total energy of a nuke (size doesn't matter for this, really) and then scaling up from one to another, has anyone pointed out or tried to take into account that with a shell or similar-sized or smaller projectile, a very larger percentage of the energy will be transfered to a man-sized target if hit, but with a nuke, the total energy is spread out over a very large spherical volume, and a man-sized target will intercept only a tiny portion of that total energy? Yes, the closer to ground zero you are, the more you intercept because your surface area (facing the blast point) is a larger percentage of the area of the expanding wavefront at that point, and thus every square inch will get hit with more energy...but still...
A few points about "Energy = Damage" concept.

I like the concept, but I admit that there are some problems with it.

Yet I still think it works OK for a game.

Going back to your example above, I agree that a shell would function differently than a nuke. The Energy/Damage concept would be made much more precise if "Focus" was also taken into account: Focus would be how big an area is the Energy applied over.

The focus of the energy could be handled by assuming that Energy = Active Points in the attack, and from there the attack could be built as needed.

The following could all be examples of an attack of the same energy, but that energy is focused in different ways:

6d6 Normal
2d6 Killing
4d6 Normal AP
1d6+1 Killing AP
4d6 Normal Expolsion

Or focus could me made into a more flexible term, it could be a number as per the following example: Energy Blast (Energy : 50, Focus : 15, End Cost : 5)

If things were done in this manner, a wave front (or even a shotgun blast) would lose focus as it continues to expand.

Warp9

Jan 24th, '06, 01:54 PM

I knew we'd find something eventually. :)

I'm sure we both agree that's absurd simply based on the fact that the real world effects of nuclear weapons are based on tons of TNT, not individual sticks. This goes to the heart of my argument: That the Hero system's damage system is not internally consistent; and some parts are in fact outright contradictory.

I have never claimed the system is linear; nor do I think it's exponential. What I have said is that 1 Damage Class has no meaning beyond 1 Damage Class. It is not quantifiable; but is useful only as a measure of relative ability to inflict damage within the system. If there's any internal logic to the system at all; it's some sort of logarithmic system which ramps up slowly in the beginning so we can differentiate between a .38 Special and a tank round and then increases sharply at higher levels so we might plausibly build nuke-proof characters.

The strongest argument against it being exponential is the incredible variation possible for attacks. If each 1 BODY of damage done is exponentially higher than the preceding number, and assuming it actually does any damage at all, a 10d6 attack can inflict between 1 and 20 BODY. Assuming for the sake of argument we accept the "damage is exponential" meme, that means a best case (all 6's on 10d6) does 524,288 times as much damage as near-worst case (all 0's with a single 2 - 5 rolled). Is that logical?

True. But would that make it a better representation; or merely more convenient? Comic book characters aren't built on a point system; they're built on whatever strikes the writers' fancy. The early Superman from the 1930's and 40's wasn't nuke proof; he was only bullet proof ("Nothing less than an exploding shell could penetrate his skin!"). Decades of character inflation and bad writing have morphed Superman into a character I doubt his own creators would recognize if it weren't for the big "S" on his chest.

Frankly, that might be the best way to put it. I think Hero works best at runnng characters with 20d6 or lower attacks; the system starts to break down much beyond that (Remember the original Champions in 1981 had characters start with only 250 CP.) I certainly wouldn't try to run DBZ in Hero. YMMV. :)
Good Points! :)

I'd like to see a HERO system which can really handle even things like BBZ, but I can definitely respect your position on the matter.

Trebuchet

Jan 24th, '06, 02:57 PM

Good Points! :)Thanks. I'm not saying I have the answer (or even that there is "an" answer); but I do think I've demonstrated fairly conclusively that whatever else Hero system damage may be, it ain't exponential.

I'd like to see a HERO system which can really handle even things like BBZ, but I can definitely respect your position on the matter.Perhaps it's high time to pressure Steve Long for Anime Hero. :D

OddHat

Jan 24th, '06, 03:04 PM

Good Points! :)

I'd like to see a HERO system which can really handle even things like BBZ, but I can definitely respect your position on the matter.

HERO can handle Anime, including DBZ, just fine. Try it. :)

Warp9

Jan 24th, '06, 07:36 PM

As to the energy/damage debate my take is this: it isn't the delivered energy that is doing the damage.

I mean, treat a human being as a 100kg bag of water. You need 418700 joules of energy to increase the body's temperature by 1 degree klevin (or celsius). A .44 magnum bullet is carrying, what, 2000 joules? If it transfers all that energy, you are going to need over 200 rounds hitting your target to raise the temperature by 1 degree, and probably over a thousand to raise the temperature of the target to a point where it becomes fatal: it won't destroy the body from heat, just make the body chemistry non-functional. Of course, by that time the corpse will be unrecogniseable anyway.....

By way of comparison, you burn about 2000 calories a day (well, kilocalories) from the food you consume, which is a little over 8 million joules. it's a wonder anyone survices the cheesecake.

Silly, eh?

Bullets cause death by cutting flesh. They have far more energy than they need to FUNCTIONALLY destroy a vital organ: they use if, coupled with momentum and penetration characteristics to GET to the vital organs.

Now I emphasise FUNCTIONALLY becasue a built probably won't destroy your heart if it penetrates your chest: it will still be there, it just has a hole in it that stops it working properly.

Energy IS a more useful measure of damage potential to inanimate materials, but even then does not tell the whole story. It depends on material hardness, flexibility, the area over which the energy is applied, even the time it takes to apply the energy. Apply enough energy you can functionally destroy something. Apply an awful lot more and you can change its chemical state so it really doesn't exist in the same form any more.

Those are some good points. :thumbup:

Of course, the idea of spreading the energy over every cubic centimeter of your BODY is about as "unfocused" an attack as you can get. Applied in a more focused manner, that same energy can have a much greater impact.

But again, your example shows that using energy as an indicator of damage has some serious flaws. And it is likely that you'd be unable match the energy in a 2d6 RKA "Heat Ray" to the energy in a 2d6 RKA ".44 magnum" .

Still, given a very generic game (where you are trying to damage a wide range of different types of objects), I think that "energy = damage" can work--especially if you take into account the area over which the energy is applied.

Warp9

Jan 24th, '06, 07:39 PM

HERO can handle Anime, including DBZ, just fine. Try it. :)
I don't have a problem with it, but again I can respect why Treb looks at things in the way he does.

We can have an argument about what the "goals of a Universal System should be," but that is a discussion best left to a different thread.

OddHat

Jan 24th, '06, 07:54 PM

I don't have a problem with it, but again I can respect why Treb looks at things in the way he does.

We can have an argument about what the "goals of a Universal System should be," but that is a discussion best left to a different thread.

I agree with Treb that sometimes a d6 is just a d6; HERO is a series of rough approximations. OTOH, I don't think HERO has a problem simulating high power Superhero and Sci Fi settings, so long as the GM goes into the campaign willing to adjust things as needed to make the story work. I see my campaigns as collaborative story telling; if the math gets in the way, the story takes precedence.

All of that said, I've seen bits and pieces of Trebuchet's campaigns as he's posted them, and I'd be proud to play in any one of them. :)

Trebuchet

Jan 25th, '06, 03:37 AM

I agree with Treb that sometimes a d6 is just a d6; HERO is a series of rough approximations. OTOH, I don't think HERO has a problem simulating high power Superhero and Sci Fi settings, so long as the GM goes into the campaign willing to adjust things as needed to make the story work. I see my campaigns as collaborative story telling; if the math gets in the way, the story takes precedence.Exactly! :thumbup:

All of that said, I've seen bits and pieces of Trebuchet's campaigns as he's posted them, and I'd be proud to play in any one of them. :)Well, we'd be proud to have you in them. Why don't you and your charming wife relocate to El Paso? ;)

megaplayboy

Jan 25th, '06, 05:11 AM

Those are some good points. :thumbup:

Of course, the idea of spreading the energy over every cubic centimeter of your BODY is about as "unfocused" an attack as you can get. Applied in a more focused manner, that same energy can have a much greater impact.

But again, your example shows that using energy as an indicator of damage has some serious flaws. And it is likely that you'd be unable match the energy in a 2d6 RKA "Heat Ray" to the energy in a 2d6 RKA ".44 magnum" .

Still, given a very generic game (where you are trying to damage a wide range of different types of objects), I think that "energy = damage" can work--especially if you take into account the area over which the energy is applied.
well, basically, when it comes to damage, there are three sciences loosely involved in the considerations: physics(for calculating the energy/force/psi of a given attack), chemistry(for calculating the effect on a non-biological object), and biology(for calculating the effect on a biological organism).

So, we take the baseline energy of an attack and modify it by the nature of the attack(heat energy, cold, kinetic energy(focused or diffuse), explosive energy, electricity, etc.). Then we consider its effect on, say, a human being, based on our knowledge of humans and their ability to withstand various kinds of trauma.

Which is why arrows and knives and lasers can be as deadly as bullets. ;)

Warp9

Jan 25th, '06, 11:32 AM

well, basically, when it comes to damage, there are three sciences loosely involved in the considerations: physics(for calculating the energy/force/psi of a given attack), chemistry(for calculating the effect on a non-biological object), and biology(for calculating the effect on a biological organism).

I once had a teacher who proposed that Physics was superior to things like Biology and Chemistry, because everything comes down to physics (even the functions of organisms and chemicals follow the "Laws of Physics"). Although breaking everything in a biological system down to physics can become very complex.

IMO we should not be getting too concerned with specifics of Biology or Chemistry. I believe that things should be fairly generic for a game like HERO. This need for a generic simplicity is one of the reasons that I try to approach things from the perspective of Energy, Force, and the like.

megaplayboy

Jan 25th, '06, 12:03 PM

I once had a teacher who proposed that Physics was superior to things like Biology and Chemistry, because everything comes down to physics (even the functions of organisms and chemicals follow the "Laws of Physics"). Although breaking everything in a biological system down to physics can become very complex.

IMO we should not be getting too concerned with specifics of Biology or Chemistry. I believe that things should be fairly generic for a game like HERO. This need for a generic simplicity is one of the reasons that I try to approach things from the perspective of Energy, Force, and the like.
that's fine, I'm just pointing out that human biology, and the chemical and architectural properties of objects can go a ways toward explaining why attacks with different "energy" levels can do similar damage.

Warp9

Jan 25th, '06, 12:26 PM

that's fine, I'm just pointing out that human biology, and the chemical and architectural properties of objects can go a ways toward explaining why attacks with different "energy" levels can do similar damage.
Maybe it only seems like "similar damage" because we don't know what damage is. :D

OK, just kidding.

Hugh Neilson

Jan 25th, '06, 05:52 PM

[QUOTE=Warp9] I once had a teacher who proposed that Physics was superior to things like Biology and Chemistry, because everything comes down to physics (even the functions of organisms and chemicals follow the "Laws of Physics"). Although breaking everything in a biological system down to physics can become very complex.
[\QUOTE]

I had a high school physics teacher who was fond of noting that "Chemistry and biology are very important branches of physics." I prefer the definition of:

- if it bites you, it's biology
- if it burns you, it's chemistry
- if it just fails to work, it's physics

Lucius

Jan 25th, '06, 09:31 PM

I always go back and forth on that. :)

I agree that using Desolidification as Invulnerability is a bit of a fudge (my answer to Sun-diving). Still, it's an "official" fudge that shows up in the 5thER and the USPD I and II in one form or another..

I can't understand that. A power whose main game effect is invulnerability, and using it for that is a "kludge?"

Of course, the real problem is that Desolidification is really two powers - a defense power of Invulnerability (equivalent to taking Damge Reduction at 100%) and a movement power that should be defined as Tunneling, No Normal Defense.

Lucius Alexander

The palindromedary reiterates that Hero System is not just Champions

OddHat

Jan 25th, '06, 11:18 PM

I can't understand that. A power whose main game effect is invulnerability, and using it for that is a "kludge?"

Of course, the real problem is that Desolidification is really two powers - a defense power of Invulnerability (equivalent to taking Damge Reduction at 100%) and a movement power that should be defined as Tunneling, No Normal Defense.

I've made the same point many times. As I understand them, the counter arguments include:

1) Desolidification as a defense potentially gives you too much value for its cost.
2) There must never, ever be absolutes in HERO.
3) The SFX of "Invulnerability" is not acceptable for the mechanical effect of "Desolidification".
4) The Affects Solid World advantage applies to attack powers when it should apply to Desolidification itself.
5) ADSO powers interact in strange ways with Desolidification as Invulnerability from an SFX POV.

From my POV,
1) In some games it might; when a 40 point defense stops a 1000 point attack, that's a great deal. Still, Block and Missile Deflection give similar very cost effective defenses, and like Desolidification interfere with your attacks when in use and can be overcome in a number of ways. It doesn't bug me.
2) Hogwash.
3) That's up to individual GM's to decide. I have no problem with it.
4) Probably true, and it's much simpler. On the other hand, it makes attacking while Desolidified potentially much cheaper. I might allow it.
5) Maybe, but then that's how things sometimes go with SFX.

It's another of those arguments that never ends.

Dr. Anomaly

Jan 26th, '06, 01:05 AM

Trebuchet

Jan 26th, '06, 03:16 AM

I can't understand that. A power whose main game effect is invulnerability, and using it for that is a "kludge?"

Of course, the real problem is that Desolidification is really two powers - a defense power of Invulnerability (equivalent to taking Damage Reduction at 100%) and a movement power that should be defined as Tunneling, No Normal Defense.I disagree that Desolidification's "main game effect" is invulnerability. That is certainly one of it's most common uses, but I think the "pass through walls" aspect is just as significant (In our campaign, our only PC with Desolidification - our brick - uses it far more to sneak around than she does to avoid damage.). Besides, Affect Desolid attacks are fairly common and make Desolidification a poor method to simulate invulnerability. Additionally, Desolidification doesn't really equate to invulnerability because few characters can interact with the physical world while Desolid. That required +2 Advantage makes Desolidification a very expensive and inefficient way to build "invulnerability." Superman can certainly still punch the bad guys while flying through the sun.

I proposed a new Power called Invulnerability last fall precisely because of this dichotomy. It renders the possessor immune to damage (BODY) from an attack of any size, though not from Stun or other attacks that do BODY such as Drains.

megaplayboy

Jan 26th, '06, 04:53 AM

Let's see, 40 points for base desol, zero end persistent, fully invisible--120 active points. With the only to protect against attack form x= 60 points.

So, base "invulnerability" would be 60 points, and would protect you against one uncommon SFX/set of attacks, say. For a common SFX/set of attacks, maybe a +1 advantage, 120 points. For a very common SFX(all physical attacks, all energy attacks, etc), 180 points.
Awfully effective, but the base power is equivalent to 40 points of armor, and if you factor in the narrow effect, it's more like 80 points of armor with a limitation. The broadest version is equivalent to 120 points of armor(enough to take zero body from a 20d6 KA).
One would assume a GM would require various limitations and vulnerabilities to balance out such a formidable ability.

Warp9

Jan 26th, '06, 07:03 AM

megaplayboy

Jan 26th, '06, 07:09 AM

OddHat

Jan 26th, '06, 07:10 AM

Lets say that it costs Y points to be immune to energy attacks. Why would I want to spend greater than Y points to buy Energy Defense?

Maybe because the immunity has limitations that Energy Defense does not. That's the case with Desolidification unless the GM handwaves those limits.

And there is no reason to keep on increasing the points in an attack beyond a certain level because you can be pretty sure that beyond a given point your target will stop increasing its defenses and simply become "absolutely immune."

I don't see that as a problem, and even so, you can always apply an advantage to get around desolid invulnerability.

megaplayboy

Jan 26th, '06, 07:13 AM

Hugh Neilson

Jan 26th, '06, 07:15 AM

Lets say that it costs Y points to be immune to energy attacks. Why would I want to spend greater than Y points to buy Energy Defense?

You wouldn't, of course. If you assume you would have made that ED Resistant, the point break is a lottle lower. Same for Hardened - and how many times would you have hardened it?

And there is no reason to keep on increasing the points in an attack beyond a certain level because you can be pretty sure that beyond a given point your target will stop increasing its defenses and simply become "absolutely immune."

True - one of those ripple effects that arises from any change to the rules.

I'm not happy with absolutes because IMO you tend to put a cap on the system at what ever point they apply.

There are two types of Absolute. One is "always effective", which Invulnerability would be. The second is "no way around it", which I expect Invulnerability would be, unless we allow an advantage on attacks to "Avoid Invulnerability", in which case we may need to allow multiple purchases of Invulnerability to stack, and so forth.

This is a good point about broad based absolutes. I'm OK with "need not breathe" or "immune to extreme cold" because they don't protect against things other characters paid points for (other than NND's, where they made that choice as part of the purchase). Whatever level we set an "Invulnerable" power at, it will be too expensive for some games, and too cheap for others.

If we set the cost at "X points to ignore Y DC's", we don't really have "invulnerability" and we're back to square one.

OddHat

Jan 26th, '06, 07:23 AM

This is a good point about broad based absolutes. I'm OK with "need not breathe" or "immune to extreme cold" because they don't protect against things other characters paid points for (other than NND's, where they made that choice as part of the purchase). Whatever level we set an "Invulnerable" power at, it will be too expensive for some games, and too cheap for others.

If we set the cost at "X points to ignore Y DC's", we don't really have "invulnerability" and we're back to square one.

There are already multiple forms of limited absolute defenses in the system. Block, Missile Deflection, Dive for Cover, Flying Dodge and Desolidification. We can and do argue about all of them, but there they are. Extending one of them to a full "Invulnerability" power is mostly a matter of working out price. Yes, such a power won't be appropriate for all campaigns, but that's true of most effects.

Warp9

Jan 26th, '06, 07:27 AM

Well, the alternative is to just buy a bunch of extra defense which only applies against attack x, or only against body damage, or whatever, and let the GM hand wave any attacks which happen to exceed the threshold on the ground that your concept allows you to do it.

I'm not sure I like the idea of this "Absolute Stuff" at all.

I mean I've seen a lot of it in AD&D, but it didn't really make that much sense there either.

It says in one place that Magni, the God of Strength, has unlimited strength, and can put his fist through any thing. It also says that the Invulernable Coat of Arnd is indestructable and will not be harmed by any amount of force.

So what happens if Magni tries to destroy the Coat of Arnd?

At least one of these "absolutes" must not actually be absolute.

Hugh Neilson

Jan 26th, '06, 07:30 AM

There are already multiple forms of limited absolute defenses in the system. Block, Missile Deflection, Dive for Cover, Flying Dodge and Desolidification. We can and do argue about all of them, but there they are. Extending one of them to a full "Invulnerability" power is mostly a matter of working out price. Yes, such a power won't be appropriate for all campaigns, but that's true of most effects.

May I be two faced? I agree, and I don't. The existing approaches all have limiting factors which render them at least somewhat less than absolute:

Block, Missile Deflection Each requires an action, and must succeed at an OCV vs OCV roll. As OCV's go up, the cost of a block or deflection one can be confident in rises. As well, each has fairly common attack types it will fail against.

Dive for Cover, Flying Dodge I'm not as familiar with Flying Dodge. DFC leaves you prone, requires an action and requires a roll. The roll is a minimal impediment as it's not opposed. Flying Dodge requires an action and, I believe, Steve has indicated an abort to FD gets you the DCV bonus, but not the "automiss" provided by DFC.

Desolidification In addition to a fairly common attack that gets around it, and some attacks it fails against (which I suppose each variant of Invulnerable has - Energy Invulnerability remains vulnerable to physical attacks), desolid impacts your ability to affect the solid world and can be circumvented as a defense with "affects desolid".

An Invulnerability power which requires a roll to succeed, takes up your phase or can be overcome with an advantage on an attack, seems not to be "invulnerability" at all, making it much tougher to balance out.

Warp9

Jan 26th, '06, 07:32 AM

well, yeah, even for the 180 point version of invulnerability, the GM could require that an exception be specified(since that's the way it works with desol, which it's based on). Also, one could purchase "bypasses invulnerability" on the attack. So there could be circumstances under which some normal defense would be needed.

If we are going to have exceptions, lets make it so that the "exception to invulnerbity" is that the attacker has more points in his attack than the defender has in his "invulnerability" defense.

That kind of "invulnerability" works fine for me.

megaplayboy

Jan 26th, '06, 07:37 AM

If we are going to have exceptions, lets make it so that the "exception to invulnerbity" is that the attacker has more points in his attack than the defender has in his "invulnerability" defense.

That kind of "invulnerability" works fine for me.
well, usually the cost of defense = about half the cost of the attack. I could see that, though.

I kinda like "invulnerability to small arms fire", myself. If you rate "small arms fire" as anything under 20mm, then it makes the person invulnerable to damage from 3d+1, +1 STN mult KA, max 19 BODY and 114 STUN, but standard effect 10 BODY, 40 STUN.

OddHat

Jan 26th, '06, 07:50 AM

May I be two faced? I agree, and I don't. The existing approaches all have limiting factors which render them at least somewhat less than absolute:

An "Invulnerability" power based on Desolidification, Missile Deflection, etc would have limiting factors. That's the point of building it that way.

megaplayboy

Jan 26th, '06, 07:55 AM

fully invisible DCV levels--perhaps limited to only vs. a specific type of attack--could work pretty well. After all, if the attack doesn't hit you, it doesn't do any damage to you. You'd need a couple other powers to fill in the gaps, though.

Warp9

Jan 26th, '06, 10:02 AM

If we set the cost at "X points to ignore Y DC's", we don't really have "invulnerability" and we're back to square one.
IMO as long as no attack/force in the campaign exceeds your "invulnerability" rating then we have achieved the result we were after.

megaplayboy

Jan 26th, '06, 10:09 AM

hmm, the simplest thing might be just to set "levels", and the number of active points in defense to achieve a given level of effect.
basically, a 1-10 or 1-5 scale of ascending damage of a given type, with the highest number representing the highest level of resistance allowed in the game.

Warp9

Jan 26th, '06, 10:12 AM

One more comment in the "invulnerability" thing:

I am concerned that the use of an absolute invulnerability can result in a more "vanilla" campaign. I'm concerned that it could lead to a game where are the characters beyond a specific level tend to look more the same.

Q: How tough is Superman?
A: invulnerable

Q: How tough is Galactus?
A: invulnerable

Q: How tough is Hyperion?
A: invulnerable

Q: How tough is Mon-el?
A: invulnerable

Q: How tough is Supergirl?
A: invulnerable

Q: How tough is Capt Marvel?
A: invulnerable

I doubt that many of these characters would actually be on the level of Galactus in terms of resistance to physical force.

I'd rather see a system where you can actually put a number to each of these characters' defense level.

OddHat

Jan 26th, '06, 10:15 AM

IMO as long as no attack/force in the campaign exceeds your "invulnerability" rating then we have achieved the result we were after.

True enough as it goes, but then there's no point to a "more points equals wins" exception.

I'd rather have Desolid based Invulnerability with the limits "May not defend against one fairly common SFX" and "Bypassed by Affects Invulnerable Objects Advantage". Make it 0 End Persistant for +1 and May Attack While Invulnerable for +2 and you have a 160 active point power. For that number of active points in defenses you can build a very tough character anyway; it's not all that unbalancing in any campaign where the GM adjusts for it.

OddHat

Jan 26th, '06, 10:20 AM

Lucius

Jan 26th, '06, 11:06 AM

Y'know, if 100% Damage Reduction existed and required a reasonably common SFX to which the character was still vulnerable (pre-Crisis Superman was still vulnerable to magic, K, and red-sun based stuff, so he had more than enough) there would probably be a lot less objecting to the idea.

You do realize that you’ve just described Desolidification?

Let's see, 40 points for base desol, zero end persistent, fully invisible--120 active points. With the only to protect against attack form x= 60 points.

So, base "invulnerability" would be 60 points, and would protect you against one uncommon SFX/set of attacks, say. For a common SFX/set of attacks, maybe a +1 advantage, 120 points. For a very common SFX(all physical attacks, all energy attacks, etc), 180 points.
Awfully effective, but the base power is equivalent to 40 points of armor, and if you factor in the narrow effect, it's more like 80 points of armor with a limitation. The broadest version is equivalent to 120 points of armor(enough to take zero body from a 20d6 KA).
One would assume a GM would require various limitations and vulnerabilities to balance out such a formidable ability.

You’re going at it the wrong way – see below.

Lets say that it costs Y points to be immune to energy attacks. Why would I want to spend greater than Y points to buy Energy Defense?

And there is no reason to keep on increasing the points in an attack beyond a certain level because you can be pretty sure that beyond a given point your target will stop increasing its defenses and simply become "absolutely immune."

I'm not happy with absolutes because IMO you tend to put a cap on the system at what ever point they apply.
.

Ah, I take it that if you’re running the game, you don’t allow Desolidification?

I'm not sure I like the idea of this "Absolute Stuff" at all.

I mean I've seen a lot of it in AD&D, but it didn't really make that much sense there either.

It says in one place that Magni, the God of Strength, has unlimited strength, and can put his fist through any thing. It also says that the Invulernable Coat of Arnd is indestructable and will not be harmed by any amount of force.

So what happens if Magni tries to destroy the Coat of Arnd?

At least one of these "absolutes" must not actually be absolute.

Well, in Greek Myth, one God (I forget which) gave a king a fox that could not be caught, and another God gave another king a hound that could catch anything, and when the two kings got together to try out their gifts, the chase went on for a while and then Zeus resolved the problem by turning both hound and fox into stone.

The thing is, we already HAVE a couple of absolutes in Hero – No Normal Defense attacks, and Desolidification. Unless you’ve objected to either or both of those (“Why would I spend more points on dice of attack, if I can just take No Normal Defense and always do damage? Why should I spend points on defense, if someone can just take No Normal Defense and bypass them?”) I’m sorry, but I can’t take you too seriously if you say you object to absolutes. If you HAVE objected to either or both of those, then you’re obviously sincere but a little late to keep them out of Hero system – they’re already here. Oh.

I’ve said this before, but I can’t seem to find the thread….

First of all, Desolidification as it currently exists, shouldn’t. Exist that is. If you want to walk through walls, buy Tunneling with No Normal Defense, the “Fill in” adder, and whatever other modifiers it needs to tweak it. If you want Invulnerability, just take Damage Reduction, follow the pattern already set by the first 3 levels, and take it up to the 4th, 100% Damage Reduction. Then apply the limitations needed to a) make it anywhere near affordable, and b) bring it into some kind of balance. A couple of years ago I painstakingly did all the math and showed that if it works like desolidification (costs END, etc.) the price came out to the same as Desolidification – although with a higher END cost (much higher active points) I wish I could find that thread again!!

With no Desolidification, of course there’s no “Affects Desolid” advantage. What there would be, would be an “Irreducible Damage” advantage for attacks. Each level of Irreducible Damage would negate a level of Damage Reduction. So if you bought it twice for your attack, you would ignore 50% Damage Reduction, and do half damage to an “invulnerable” character with 100% Damage Reduction. It would work a lot like Armor Piercing and Hardened. Possibly there should also be a “Hardened” advantage on Damage Reduction to ignore Irreducible Damage.

Lucius Alexander

Absolute Palindromedary

Hugh Neilson

Jan 26th, '06, 11:09 AM

IMO as long as no attack/force in the campaign exceeds your "invulnerability" rating then we have achieved the result we were after.

True. The desire for "invulnerability" often seems, under examination, to be a desire for "invulnerability at a less expensive level" or "invulnerability my GM will let my character have".

Let's assume the "Invulnerable to small arms fire" example. 3d6+1KA w/ +1 SM is what we want to defend against. We can build this as:

(a) 114 pd, 20 Resistant (cost 124 points)

(b) 19 PD Force Wall, +1 Hex Transparent (+1/2), 0 END (+1/2), Persistent (+1/2), Fully Invisible (+1), Self Only (-1/2), no range (-1/2), Always On (-1/2) Cost 70 points

There are issues, of course. Both grant immunity to bullets. Both also grant immunity to an average 19 DC normal physical attack (the Wall could be breached). Either may fail if the smalll arms are AP or Penetrating. The Wall needs to be reset, and likelyneeds an autoreset trigger, bringing the prices closer. Neither would be permitted in most games.

But then, would Invulnerability be permitted in most games?

It's interesting everyone points to the Desolid kludge when Fantasy Hero also suggests that a GM could allow a character to buy enough defenses to be invulnerable to the likely campaign max, and be handwaved Invulnerable. Why isn't that kludge equally acceptable?

Dr. Anomaly

Jan 26th, '06, 11:19 AM

You do realize that you’ve just described Desolidification?
No, I haven't...not at all...which was the whole point of my phrasing it that way. For one thing, there's no mention of being able to pass through barriers without interacting with them, nor is there mention of not being able to interact with the physical world (especially in the form of making attacks) unless you buy the rather pricey "Affects Solid World" advantage on your attacks.

My point was that there might be less kicking about such a construct (100% DR) if it required a "vulnerable to" definition, like the way Desolid does.

You managed to not only miss my point entirely, but take it backwards.

Warp9

Jan 26th, '06, 02:19 PM

Ah, I take it that if you’re running the game, you don’t allow Desolidification?

If you use desolidification you also remove yourself from being able to have any impact on the physical world. So I don't really see it as being the same thing as "invulnerability."

Well, in Greek Myth, one God (I forget which) gave a king a fox that could not be caught, and another God gave another king a hound that could catch anything, and when the two kings got together to try out their gifts, the chase went on for a while and then Zeus resolved the problem by turning both hound and fox into stone.

Well, the chase went on for a while and the fox did not get caught, and even in the end the fox never got caught by the hound, so I'd say that the fox won the day. :D

The thing is, we already HAVE a couple of absolutes in Hero – No Normal Defense attacks, and Desolidification.

In some ways you might consider these absolutes, but I don't have the same problems with them that I would have for "invulnerability."

(see below)

Why would I spend more points on dice of attack, if I can just take No Normal Defense and always do damage?

Easy answer: Point for point, an NND will have less dice than a normal attack. If you hit a target with low defenses then you are better off with the standard attack.

Example: 4d6 NND VS 8d6 EB (both are 40 active points)

If you apply each attack to Joe Normal (with 2 points of defenses) you'll do (on average) 14 STUN and 0 BODY with the NND, but you'll do an average of 6 BODY and 26 STUN with the standard 8d6 EB. The 40 active point NND will not even KO Joe Normal; but he 8d6 EB WILL.

Thus, even if the target does not have the specific "NND defense" there are still lots of times when the NND attack will be the less effective choice.

In order to be really be an absolute, you'd have to show me an attack which would destroy anything it hits.

Why should I spend points on defense, if someone can just take No Normal Defense and bypass them?

Easy answer: Unless everybody in that game is going to be using NND attacks then having defenses will still be REALLY useful.

Warp9

Jan 26th, '06, 02:37 PM

True. The desire for "invulnerability" often seems, under examination, to be a desire for "invulnerability at a less expensive level" or "invulnerability my GM will let my character have".

Let's assume the "Invulnerable to small arms fire" example. 3d6+1KA w/ +1 SM is what we want to defend against. We can build this as:

(a) 114 pd, 20 Resistant (cost 124 points)

(b) 19 PD Force Wall, +1 Hex Transparent (+1/2), 0 END (+1/2), Persistent (+1/2), Fully Invisible (+1), Self Only (-1/2), no range (-1/2), Always On (-1/2) Cost 70 points

There are issues, of course. Both grant immunity to bullets. Both also grant immunity to an average 19 DC normal physical attack (the Wall could be breached). Either may fail if the smalll arms are AP or Penetrating. The Wall needs to be reset, and likelyneeds an autoreset trigger, bringing the prices closer. Neither would be permitted in most games.

But then, would Invulnerability be permitted in most games?

It's interesting everyone points to the Desolid kludge when Fantasy Hero also suggests that a GM could allow a character to buy enough defenses to be invulnerable to the likely campaign max, and be handwaved Invulnerable. Why isn't that kludge equally acceptable?
Probably the Force Wall option is the way I'd go for my game. :)

Trebuchet

Jan 26th, '06, 03:27 PM

Lets say that it costs Y points to be immune to energy attacks. Why would I want to spend greater than Y points to buy Energy Defense?

And there is no reason to keep on increasing the points in an attack beyond a certain level because you can be pretty sure that beyond a given point your target will stop increasing its defenses and simply become "absolutely immune."

I'm not happy with absolutes because IMO you tend to put a cap on the system at what ever point they apply.

That is another reason why I favor an exponential progression. If we assume that damage progresses at an exponential rate, then it is possible to simply buy enough defenses to survive at the heart of the sun (or even the center of a Super-Nova) without worrrying about this "absolute immunity" stuff.My version of Invulnerability protected only against BODY damage; so there would still be ample justification to buy up other defenses; and it needed to be bought separately for both Energy and Physical attacks. It was a Stop Sign Power precisely because it warrants extra GM attention (I'm sure there would be players who would by Invulnerability and then try to buy Armor Only vs Stun -1).

And based on the "official" damage for a mere G Class star, nobody can afford to buy enough defenses to survive in a supernova even if one accepts the flawed "damage is exponential" argument. (It clearly isn't, as I've already demonstrated, but I'll understand if you treat it as such for convenience. The Hero system simply isn't that integrated.)

The thread on my proposed Invulnerability power is http://herogame.dans.cust.servlets.net/forums/showthread.php?t=35184&page=1

OddHat

Jan 26th, '06, 05:46 PM

It's interesting everyone points to the Desolid kludge when Fantasy Hero also suggests that a GM could allow a character to buy enough defenses to be invulnerable to the likely campaign max, and be handwaved Invulnerable. Why isn't that kludge equally acceptable?

Personally, I've never claimed that one was more (un)acceptable than the other. I do think the Desolid example is more useful in a Universal system. Max DC varies from campaign to campaign, but Desolid is always Desolid unless house ruled away.

OddHat

Jan 26th, '06, 05:54 PM

If you use desolidification you also remove yourself from being able to have any impact on the physical world. So I don't really see it as being the same thing as "invulnerability."

"Invulnerability" as I use it is a special effect. The mechanic can be Desolidification, high defenses, damage reduction, massive DCV levels, or anything else that could reasonably be described as "Invulnerability".

Also, Desolidification the Mechanic does not require the Special Effect of removing one's self from the physical world. It's SFX can officially be anything from a Dodge that always works to Super Escape Artist Skill to Luck to Shape Changing to Invulnerability(USPDs, 5thER, PH and DC).

Warp9

Jan 26th, '06, 07:10 PM

And based on the "official" damage for a mere G Class star, nobody can afford to buy enough defenses to survive in a supernova even if one accepts the flawed "damage is exponential" argument.
My only issue here is that the "official damage for a mere G Class star" does not fall into line with exponential damage progression, it contradicts such a pattern.

If one was to base the damage of a supernova on the progression of +1DC per X2 energy, then survival in a supernova would become affordable (at least to high power characters).

Warp9

Jan 26th, '06, 07:29 PM

"Invulnerability" as I use it is a special effect. The mechanic can be Desolidification, high defenses, damage reduction, massive DCV levels, or anything else that could reasonably be described as "Invulnerability".

Also, Desolidification the Mechanic does not require the Special Effect of removing one's self from the physical world. It's SFX can officially be anything from a Dodge that always works to Super Escape Artist Skill to Luck to Shape Changing to Invulnerability(USPDs, 5thER, PH and DC).
I was thinking more of the idea that desolid characters are limited by default in how they can impact the solid world.

It is understood that there is an option in the books for a character to have a limited form of desolidification that removes the need to take advantages on powers that affect the solid world, but it was also my understanding that this concept was optional.

My statement was made in reaction to a pervious assertion. This assertion was that allowing Desolidification into my game was the same thing as allowing "Invulnerability." I question that concept--although I do agree that Desolidification is a kind of absolute.

OddHat

Jan 26th, '06, 08:10 PM

I was thinking more of the idea that desolid characters are limited by default in how they can impact the solid world.

It is understood that there is an option in the books for a character to have a limited form of desolidification that removes the need to take advantages on powers that affect the solid world, but it was also my understanding that this concept was optional.

My statement was made in reaction to a pervious assertion. This assertion was that allowing Desolidification into my game was the same thing as allowing "Invulnerability." I question that concept--although I do agree that Desolidification is a kind of absolute.

Fair enough, and the waving of the need for ASW is optional. The few characters I've given Desolidification-as-Invulnerability to have not taken that option. They could attack, or they could (conceptually) put all of their energies into defense and become "invulnerable", but not at the same time. In play it worked well, giving a nicely Silver Age feel as the characters stood unflinchingly before Mighty Blows while not striking back.

Very 70s Superman; one was invulnerable only so long as he put his fists on his hips and stuck his chest out. ;)

Lucius

Jan 26th, '06, 10:11 PM

My statement was made in reaction to a pervious assertion. This assertion was that allowing Desolidification into my game was the same thing as allowing "Invulnerability." I question that concept--although I do agree that Desolidification is a kind of absolute.

Desolidification means being immune to attacks. It means you can't hurt me with your fist. Or knife. Or gun. Or cannon. Or flamethrower. It means you can drop a blockbuster bomb on me and I take not one point of damage. In my dictionary, that's "invulnerability."

And it's also true that Hero System allows "absolutes" ONLY with exceptions. No Normal Defense requires some Not Normal Defense. Desolid requires something that still affects you.

Lucius Alexander

The palindromedary is vulnerable to the crab cannon.

SteveZilla

Jan 27th, '06, 01:18 AM

This is a role-playing game, not a tactical wargame. If that's what you want to do, I suggest designing rules so you can use superpowers in Advanced Squad Leader. :)

That statement reminds me of how D&D got started... :winkgrin:

SteveZilla

Jan 27th, '06, 02:22 AM

Lets say I want to run DBZ style game (with DBZ characters that can throw planet-vaping attacks). Lets say that I'm considering running it in HERO. And lets say that I go to you for advice on how to set that up. What would you tell me?

Would you really suggest that I allocate 50,000+ points for each PC? Or would you just suggest that HERO can't handle those power levels?

IMO DBZ is a bit extreme (from what little I've seen), but not totally undoable. If you make a minor adjustment to the "game world", it becomes much easier:

Dirt: 0 DEF, 2 Body
Rock: 1 DEF, 4 Body.
(or just take *all* scenery and divide the DEF and Body by 5)

--and--

All Attacks by characters have (for free) Does Double Knockback Distance.

The values of the environment aren't written in 5 DEF 19 Body stone. ;-)

At least, that's my take on modeling a DBZ game-world. :-)

OddHat

Jan 27th, '06, 02:48 AM

I'd do something close to a DBZ adventure by building the primary characters with 24DC+ attacks, High Con, 60+ PD, Damage Reduction at around the 50% level or better, and possibly allowing the mega knockback rules. Maxed out special attacks might go as high as 36DC. The result would be characters treating the landscape, buildings and ordinary weapons as an inconvenient fog, but still requiring some time to subdue one-another. You'd need characters in the 600 point range or higher.

It's not that much of a system stretch.

megaplayboy

Jan 27th, '06, 05:15 AM

An army teed off on Perfect Cell with tanks, artillery, missiles and bombs, all with no discernible effect. He then wiped them all out in one blast.
He also survived(well, regenerated from) a blast from Goku that was judged to be of planet-busting magnitude. When DBZ fighters fight at full speed, they become invisible to normal human perception, just detectable by the periodic moving shockwaves they generate when they clash.
If dude can ignore all damage from conventional weapons, give them the rhPD to do it.
If dude can blow up a planet, figure out how much damage that is, apply the appropriate limits, and give him the points to do it.

If Goku's a 5000+ point character, oh well, that's DBZ. He has his weaknesses, too.

Trebuchet

Jan 27th, '06, 05:16 AM

My only issue here is that the "official damage for a mere G Class star" does not fall into line with exponential damage progression, it contradicts such a pattern.You've constructed a tautology here - "Damage in Hero is exponential, and it has to be because it's exponential." The internal evidence does not support that conclusion. The official definition of a star only provides additional evidence the system isn't exponential. The only direct evidence of any exponential increase in Hero is with regard to Lifting. Not Leaping, Throwing, Explosives, nothing else. There is, in fact, no consistent basis for damage within the Hero system. It's neither arithmetic nor exponential; neither fish nor fowl. It just is. +1d6 is just +1d6.

If one was to base the damage of a supernova on the progression of +1DC per X2 energy, then survival in a supernova would become affordable (at least to high power characters).That's arguing backwards. If you want a character to plausibly survive a supernova, then there are two ways to go about it - lower the damage done by a supernova, or increase the character's defenses until he can survive it. You're trying to do both.

Considering that a supernova is so powerful it will destroy even nearby stars lightyears away, I don't have a problem with asserting that any character that can survive one is no more than a plot device.

Trebuchet

Jan 27th, '06, 05:26 AM

Desolidification means being immune to attacks. It means you can't hurt me with your fist. Or knife. Or gun. Or cannon. Or flamethrower. It means you can drop a blockbuster bomb on me and I take not one point of damage. In my dictionary, that's "invulnerability."Desolidification does not confer invulnerability; it only provides a means of evading the attack. I've seen it used more often by speedsters and MAs to construct "super-dodging" than I have by bricks to simulate invulnerability. If a character with Desolidification is 100% immune to a 10d6 AP attack; then a 10d6 Affects Desolid attack of precisely the same Active Points which flattens him didn't just become bazillions of times more powerful. It merely countered the avoidance.

Trebuchet

Jan 27th, '06, 05:33 AM

That statement reminds me of how D&D got started... :winkgrin:Well, to be sure Squad Leader is a much better game than Chainmail was. I gave my copy of Chainmail to a gaming buddy who was more into miniatures than I was around 1979.

A real tactical wargame which included superpowers might be fun. Imagine the battle of Stalingrad with Iron Man as a regimental asset. :D

megaplayboy

Jan 27th, '06, 05:33 AM

Desolidification does not confer invulnerability; it only provides a means of evading the attack. I've seen it used more often by speedsters and MAs to construct "super-dodging" than I have by bricks to simulate invulnerability. If a character with Desolidification is 100% immune to a 10d6 AP attack; then a 10d6 Affects Desolid attack of precisely the same Active Points which flattens him didn't just become bazillions of times more powerful. It merely countered the avoidance.
well, by definition, if you can't be hit by the attack, you are in effect invulnerable to it.
In fact, I've written invulnerability up before as levels of fully invisible DCV(sometimes accompanied Damage reduction and extra armor vs. AoE attacks).

Warp9

Jan 27th, '06, 05:43 AM

You've constructed a tautology here - "Damage in Hero is exponential, and it has to be because it's exponential." The internal evidence does not support that conclusion. The official definition of a star only provides additional evidence the system isn't exponential. The only direct evidence of any exponential increase in Hero is with regard to Lifting. Not Leaping, Throwing, Explosives, nothing else. There is, in fact, no consistent basis for damage within the Hero system. It's neither arithmetic nor exponential; neither fish nor fowl. It just is. +1d6 is just +1d6.

That's arguing backwards. If you want a character to plausibly survive a supernova, then there are two ways to go about it - lower the damage done by a supernova, or increase the character's defenses until he can survive it. You're trying to do both.

Considering that a supernova is so powerful it will destroy even nearby stars lightyears away, I don't have a problem with asserting that any character that can survive one is no more than a plot device.

I think you've misunderstood my point here. My statement was a specific reaction to your previous quote:

nobody can afford to buy enough defenses to survive in a supernova even if one accepts the flawed "damage is exponential" argument.

Note the part I put in bold.

I'm not saying that HERO damage has to be exponential. However, IF one does believe the argument that HERO damage is exponential, then the damage from the supernova should be relatively low.

Hugh Neilson

Jan 27th, '06, 05:47 AM

well, by definition, if you can't be hit by the attack, you are in effect invulnerable to it.

Are we getting back to the "armor class includes hard to hit and hard to hurt" structure?

to me, DCV avoids the attack and defenses reduce the damage. Your DCV construct is, to me, "unhittable". "Invulnerable" is high defenses. I note that your "invulnerability" construct still needs extra defenses due to AoE attacks, acknowledging that DCV alone won't do it. And, no matter what your DCV, 1 in 216 attacks can still hit, so you're not fully invulnerable.

"I have a DCV 7, plus my +50 DCV Invulnerability power - your Photon Blast cannot harm me."

roll roll "a 3"

"Ouch!"

Not really so invulnerable after all...

Warp9

Jan 27th, '06, 05:52 AM

megaplayboy

Jan 27th, '06, 05:57 AM

Are we getting back to the "armor class includes hard to hit and hard to hurt" structure?

to me, DCV avoids the attack and defenses reduce the damage. Your DCV construct is, to me, "unhittable". "Invulnerable" is high defenses. I note that your "invulnerability" construct still needs extra defenses due to AoE attacks, acknowledging that DCV alone won't do it. And, no matter what your DCV, 1 in 216 attacks can still hit, so you're not fully invulnerable.

"I have a DCV 7, plus my +50 DCV Invulnerability power - your Photon Blast cannot harm me."

roll roll "a 3"

"Ouch!"

Not really so invulnerable after all...

nope, that's just the effect of hitting just the right place at the right time(the one weak spot). Even Superman can be cold-clocked once in a while :D
with a fully invisible DCV effect, any attack which would hit the "normal" DCV but miss the adjusted DCV will appear to hit the character solidly, but with no discernible effect.
215/216 invulnerable ain't too shabby.

Warp9

Jan 27th, '06, 05:58 AM

IMO DBZ is a bit extreme (from what little I've seen), but not totally undoable. If you make a minor adjustment to the "game world", it becomes much easier:

Dirt: 0 DEF, 2 Body
Rock: 1 DEF, 4 Body.
(or just take *all* scenery and divide the DEF and Body by 5)

--and--

All Attacks by characters have (for free) Does Double Knockback Distance.

The values of the environment aren't written in 5 DEF 19 Body stone. ;-)

At least, that's my take on modeling a DBZ game-world. :-)
Changing the world to match the characters is an interesting approach. :)

My only problem with this idea is that I'd like to be able to export characters from world to world and still have them function as expected (IMO that is one of the benefits of a Universal system).

Trebuchet

Jan 27th, '06, 06:14 AM

I'm not saying that HERO damage has to be exponential. However, IF one does believe the argument that HERO damage is exponential, then the damage from the supernova should be relatively low.Ah. Then I misunderstood your point. My bad. :o

Of course, "relatively low" when we're talking about hyper-exploding stars could plausibly still be multiple digits even if we were assuming an exponential progression within Hero. How much energy does an explosion need to have with typical -1d6/1" fade rate to still destroy nearby star systems? Even going to Megascaled EX we're still talking some serious dice. :eek:

OddHat

Jan 27th, '06, 06:25 AM

An army teed off on Perfect Cell with tanks, artillery, missiles and bombs, all with no discernible effect. He then wiped them all out in one blast.

60 PD and ED + a High CON and 3/4 Damage reduction is invulnerable to all conventional weapons for all practical purposes. Even max damage Stun Lotto winners aren't going to do much more than annoy you. Add on double hardened and some regen maybe if you're feeling extra cautious.

He also survived(well, regenerated from) a blast from Goku that was judged to be of planet-busting magnitude.

Define planet busting in DC and work from there.

When DBZ fighters fight at full speed, they become invisible to normal human perception, just detectable by the periodic moving shockwaves they generate when they clash.

20 points.

If Goku's a 5000+ point character, oh well, that's DBZ. He has his weaknesses, too.

Goku is probably a 3000 point character or less with a good build, just IMO.

megaplayboy

Jan 27th, '06, 06:29 AM

Ah. Then I misunderstood your point. My bad. :o

Of course, "relatively low" when we're talking about hyper-exploding stars could plausibly still be 3 or 4 digits even if we were assuming an exponential progression within Hero. How much energy does an explosion need to have with typical -1d6/1" fade rate to still destroy nearby star systems? :eek:
well, in 5th, we do have this nifty little advantage called "Megascale".:)
I'd be comfy with a 100d6 KA, -1 DC/bln km(or trillion, which would give you a planet-busting level of effect up to 15 LY away).
I don't think there's any humanoid character in a Hero published product who could survive that without recourse to desol. there are some starships that wouldn't be completely destroyed, but one could always rule the attack is an AVLD which is only protected against via force field/walls.
two galactic core supermassive black holes colliding? 200d6 KA, -1 DC/100 trillion km(planet busting effect out to 4500 LY)
I think 3000d6 KA or so could be a plausible upper limit, given the restrictions of Hero Designer(3 digit ceiling for most stats, so max defense is 999 + Dam. Red., max Body is 999, max stun(?)), 9000 Body damage (applying standard effect--I don't want to roll 3000 dice and count the pips) should be enough to kill anything in Hero system.

OddHat

Jan 27th, '06, 06:53 AM

I think 3000d6 KA or so could be a plausible upper limit, given the restrictions of Hero Designer(3 digit ceiling for most stats, so max defense is 999 + Dam. Red., max Body is 999, max stun(?)), 9000 Body damage (applying standard effect--I don't want to roll 3000 dice and count the pips) should be enough to kill anything in Hero system.

Steve has stated (paraphrased) that Hero Designer follows the rules, the rules don't follow Hero Designer. Besides, you could aways buy a few hundreds of points of extra BODY and DEF only to prevent actual destruction of your body so that Resurection could kick in. ;)

megaplayboy

Jan 27th, '06, 07:04 AM

Steve has stated (paraphrased) that Hero Designer follows the rules, the rules don't follow Hero Designer. Besides, you could aways buy a few hundreds of points of extra BODY and DEF only to prevent actual destruction of your body so that Resurection could kick in. ;)
yeah, that's nice and all of Steve to say that, but HD "breaks" at high enough point levels, so from a practical standpoint, the limit of what you can do in HD is the limit of what you can do in Hero:)
And I'm the guy who did a "beatable" 17000 point NPC writeup :D

Trebuchet

Jan 27th, '06, 07:18 AM

well, in 5th, we do have this nifty little advantage called "Megascale".:)I already mentioned Megascale in my original post. (See above unedited post #200) You inadvertantly failed to quote me fully. :)

I'd be comfy with a 100d6 KA, -1 DC/bln km(or trillion, which would give you a planet-busting level of effect up to 15 LY away).If one accepts that Earth would be destroyed by only 90d6K (I don't!) then a supernova is going to have to be a hell of a lot bigger than 100d6K even with Megascale and Delayed Fade Rate to blow away neighboring systems. Supernovas can destroy nearby stars, not just planets. Since a star is not just an attack but a physical object with a finite amount of DEF and BODY, we have to include that into our calculations. A single lightyear is approximately 9,460,528,000,000 kilometers. I read that as 9.46 trillion kilometers, meaning Alpha Centauri is about 40,680,270,400,000 kilometers away from Sol. Even at a -1DC/trillion kilometers Fade Rate it'll lose 40 DCs between Alpha Centauri and Earth. That's nowhere near enough to destroy Earth.

megaplayboy

Jan 27th, '06, 07:24 AM

I already mentioned Megascale in my original post. (See above unedited post) You inadvertantly failed to quote me fully. :)

If one accepts that Earth would be destroyed by only 90d6K (I don't!) then a supernova is going to have to be a hell of a lot bigger than 100d6K even with Megascale and Delayed Fade Rateto blow away neighboring systems. Supernovas destroy nearby stars, not just planets. Since a star is not just an attack but a physical object with a finite amount of DEF and BODY, we have to include that into our calculations. A single lightyear is approximately 9,460,528,000,000 kilometers. I read that as 9.46 trillion kilometers, meaning Alpha Centauri is about 40,680,270,400,000 kilometers away from Sol. Even at a -1DC/trillion kilometers Fade Rate it'll lose 40 DCs between Alpha Centauri and Earth. That's nowhere near enough to destroy Earth.
Well, I'm going off the "official" how to destroy Earth blurb Steve-el put in SH, which put the damage required at 51d6 KA(and, I should note, quite clearly relied on exponential progression in doing so). A star has about a million times more mass than the earth, but in an exponential interpretation, that only means about 20-40 more points of BODY. So, about 75d6 KA will destroy a typical star. So, the example I used would still destroy stars out to 7 or 8 LY, and planets out to twice that range.

OddHat

Jan 27th, '06, 07:35 AM

megaplayboy

Jan 27th, '06, 07:40 AM

Perhaps you've heard of the products known as Pencils and Notebooks? ;)
yes, well, the easiest method of interchange is via HD. Since you can't do a balanced writeup of anything >29,997 points (9999 base, plus 9999 disads, plus 9999 xp), that is the practical upper limit of "highest portability".

Not that I go around coming up with 30,000+ point writeup ideas all the time;)

Trebuchet

Jan 27th, '06, 07:45 AM

Well, I'm going off the "official" how to destroy Earth blurb Steve-el put in SH, which put the damage required at 51d6 KA(and, I should note, quite clearly relied on exponential progression in doing so).Or, according to the official 5ER rules, 148 sticks of dynamite. :think:

Personally, I think the Earth should have between 10000 and 100000 BODY; and that is how it is treated in my campaign. A 51d6K EX nuke will put a nice dent in Nevada; but destroy the Earth? Hardly. Adherents of the exponential school of damage would have us believe that Wile E Coyote could inadvertantly blow up Earth with a dropped crate of Acme™ dynamite. :rofl:

A star has about a million times more mass than the earth, but in an exponential interpretation, that only means about 20-40 more points of BODY. So, about 75d6 KA will destroy a typical star. So, the example I used would still destroy stars out to 7 or 8 LY, and planets out to twice that range.Mr. Long was put into the unenviable position of having to portray a rational system of damage for a pseudoscience-based genre in a gaming system which is not internally consistent in the first place. I think it was an enormous mistake on his part, but that was his call. Fortunately, I don't have to use those rules. :cheers:

megaplayboy

Jan 27th, '06, 07:55 AM

Or, according to the official 5ER rules, 148 sticks of dynamite. :rofl:

Personally, I think the Earth should have between 10000 and 100000 BODY; and that is how it is treated in my campaign. 51d6K EX will put a nice dent in Nevada; but destroy the Earth? Hardly. Wile E Coyote is not going to inadvertantly blow up Earth with a dropped crate of Acme™ dynamite; which is what adherents of the exponential school of damage would have us believe.

Mr. Long was put into the unenviable position of having to portray a rational system of damage for a pseudoscience-based genre in a gaming system which is not internally consistent in the first place. I think it was an enormous mistake on his part, but that was his call. Fortunately, I don't have to use those rules. :cheers:
well, basically, what's more manageable, assigning 1000 hexes of dirt 26 or 36 Body, or 16,000 Body?
If Mr. "I can juggle the universe with Casual Str"(ca. 1750 STR) picks up the Moon and slams it down on the firmest point of Earth's foundation, it's going to leave more than a scratch. But according to the rules, he can't do dramatically more damage than his STR permits. So, the objects in question must have some degree of correlation of BODY, which increases in direct proportion to an increasing level of STR damage.
Basically, we go from "Hulk smash rock" to "Hulk smash mountain" to "Bizzarro like asteroid so Bizarro smash it".
I guess what I'm saying is, if those benchmarks work for you, great. But I think you'll find that they generate equally implausible results in some situations.:)

Trebuchet

Jan 27th, '06, 08:11 AM

well, basically, what's more manageable, assigning 1000 hexes of dirt 26 or 36 Body, or 16,000 Body?A typical football staduim has about 1000 square hexes. What's so unmanageable about 30 BODY for that small an area?

If Mr. "I can juggle the universe with Casual Str"(ca. 1750 STR) picks up the Moon and slams it down on the firmest point of Earth's foundation, it's going to leave more than a scratch. But according to the rules, he can't do dramatically more damage than his STR permits. So, the objects in question must have some degree of correlation of BODY, which increases in direct proportion to an increasing level of STR damage.1750 STR would do 350d6 with a punch. That would shatter any mountain on Earth into powder. So what's your point? The moon crashing into the Earth won't destroy it (since the moon was probably created by a similar collision with the primordial Earth by another large body); although that'll be moot since it would destroy the biosphere. Why do we need to assign number values to these kinds of cinematic situations? Is it really relevant how many d6 it took to blow up Krypton; or simply enough to know they sent us their Last Son?

Basically, we go from "Hulk smash rock" to "Hulk smash mountain" to "Bizzarro like asteroid so Bizarro smash it".
I guess what I'm saying is, if those benchmarks work for you, great. But I think you'll find that they generate equally implausible results in some situations. :)Hero is a game of implausible heroes overcoming improbable situations. I'll be just fine; thank you for your concern. ;)

OddHat

Jan 27th, '06, 09:13 AM

yes, well, the easiest method of interchange is via HD.

A character written on any word procesor and saved in Rich Text Format can be read by any hero gamer with access to a computer. No limits on points either. ;)

Since you can't do a balanced writeup of anything >29,997 points (9999 base, plus 9999 disads, plus 9999 xp), that is the practical upper limit of "highest portability".

Well, he could be balanced against other 30,000 point characters.

I'll stop now. :)

megaplayboy

Jan 27th, '06, 09:27 AM

A character written on any word procesor and saved in Rich Text Format can be read by any hero gamer with access to a computer. No limits on points either. ;)

Well, he could be balanced against other 30,000 point characters.

I'll stop now. :)
My multidimensional overlord writeup thanks you:)
I know some of this seems silly, but there are references in various places to greater gods being built on 7500+ points, and space gods with cosmic VPPs of up to 1000 points. (BTW, it seems silly to me to write up environmental effects which can't be duplicated by space gods with 1000 point VPPs).

Hugh Neilson

Jan 27th, '06, 09:59 AM

yeah, that's nice and all of Steve to say that, but HD "breaks" at high enough point levels, so from a practical standpoint, the limit of what you can do in HD is the limit of what you can do in Hero:)

HORK CHOKE KOFF

If hero Designer can't do it, don't use hero designer. Pencil and paper, as Oddhat said, works. An Excel spreadsheet doesn't have point limits either. Hero Designer is not Hero.

BTW, if shareability is your concern, there is a suite of freeware which is very similar to Microsoft Office at www.openoffice.org. I've never used it myself, but I understand it's compatable with Word, Excel, etc. Which I have and use. UNLIKE Hero Designer.

megaplayboy

Jan 27th, '06, 10:05 AM

HORK CHOKE KOFF

If hero Designer can't do it, don't use hero designer. Pencil and paper, as Oddhat said, works. An Excel spreadsheet doesn't have point limits either. Hero Designer is not Hero.
I do often work out writeups in longhand before putting them into HD, but...

It's in common usage by players and GMs, it makes nice, neat looking character sheets and does your calculations for you, and it exports nicely to HTML. If I'm sending a writeup to another GM, the most useful format to put it in is HD(if he happens to use it). Not everyone has excel or knows how to use it.
HD can actually do writeups in excess of 30,000 points, but it's a little "hinky" for that. I wouldn't mind an extra digit being available in several fields, though.

ghost-angel

Jan 27th, '06, 10:20 AM

Why do we need to assign number values to these kinds of cinematic situations? Is it really relevant how many d6 it took to blow up Krypton; or simply enough to know they sent us their Last Son?
I'm so happy you said that it hurts...

Seriously I've read through this discussion and my sole and only thought was .."Who cares, does this actually come up in game? Do you really need to assign dice to that?"

Warp9

Jan 27th, '06, 10:36 AM

Ah. Then I misunderstood your point. My bad. :o

No problem, it can happen to any of us.

Of course, "relatively low" when we're talking about hyper-exploding stars could plausibly still be multiple digits even if we were assuming an exponential progression within Hero.

Based on the data given at the site below (I can't say for sure that it is correct) I can come up with a number.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/astro/snovcn.html

A supernova is an explosion of a massive supergiant star. It may shine with the brightness of 10 billion suns! The total energy output may be 10^44 joules

Assuming the above data is correct, and based on a progression of X2 Energy per +1 DC, then the total energy output (if you focused it into one place) would be 143 DCs or a 47.5 d6 RKA

I know that 47 1/2 d6 K sounds low compared to the 51d6 K needed to fully destroy the planet. My explainiation is that, in a truely exponential system, you should not need to double the BODY of an object to destroy it. If a Planet takes 86 points of BODY (and thus reduced to 0 BODY) from a given attack, an attack 10 DCs higer (and 1024 times more powerful) should destroy it completely. In other words, in a truely exponential system, IMO it should take much less than 51d6 K to destroy a planet. But YMMV

Warp9

Jan 27th, '06, 10:37 AM

I'm so happy you said that it hurts...

Seriously I've read through this discussion and my sole and only thought was .."Who cares, does this actually come up in game? Do you really need to assign dice to that?"
I guess you aren't happy with my previous post then? :D

Lucius

Jan 27th, '06, 11:28 AM

I do often work out writeups in longhand before putting them into HD, but...

It's in common usage by players and GMs, it makes nice, neat looking character sheets and does your calculations for you, and it exports nicely to HTML. If I'm sending a writeup to another GM, the most useful format to put it in is HD(if he happens to use it). Not everyone has excel or knows how to use it.

Not everyone has Hero Designer or knows how to use it. Or cares.

Lucius Alexander

Palindromedary Enterprises

Dr. Anomaly

Jan 27th, '06, 11:30 AM

Based on the data given at the site below (I can't say for sure that it is correct) I can come up with a number.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/astro/snovcn.html

Assuming the above data is correct, and based on a progression of X2 Energy per +1 DC, then the total energy output (if you focused it into one place) would be 143 DCs or a 47.5 d6 RKA
So how are you arriving at the energy of a 1DC attack to use as a baseline to work from?

megaplayboy

Jan 27th, '06, 11:33 AM

Not everyone has Hero Designer or knows how to use it. Or cares.

Lucius Alexander

Palindromedary Enterprises
Don't really understand the hostility to HD.

Trebuchet

Jan 27th, '06, 11:39 AM

No problem, it can happen to any of us.

Based on the data given at the site below (I can't say for sure that it is correct) I can come up with a number.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/astro/snovcn.html

Assuming the above data is correct, and based on a progression of X2 Energy per +1 DC, then the total energy output (if you focused it into one place) would be 143 DCs or a 47.5 d6 RKA

I know that 47 1/2 d6 K sounds low compared to the 51d6 K needed to fully destroy the planet. My explainiation is that, in a truely exponential system, you should not need to double the BODY of an object to destroy it. If a Planet takes 86 points of BODY (and thus reduced to 0 BODY) from a given attack, an attack 10 DCs higer (and 1024 times more powerful) should destroy it completely. In other words, in a truely exponential system, IMO it should take much less than 51d6 K to destroy a planet. But YMMVWould you kindly explain how you derived those numbers? What was your baseline for 1 Damage Class? Math has never been my strong suit. :confused:

And of course the energy from a spherical explosion would hit a nearby star with far less than 1% of it's total energy. In a truly exponential system, we wouldn't roll for BODY at all. It would just be however many Damage Classes and the die rolls would be used only to figure Stun. And you're right, if damage were exponential then if doing 10 BODY breaks something, 11 BODY should destroy/kill it. The universe may use exponentials, but I don't think Hero does. :)

Gary

Jan 27th, '06, 11:45 AM

Personally, I think the Earth should have between 10000 and 100000 BODY; and that is how it is treated in my campaign. A 51d6K EX nuke will put a nice dent in Nevada; but destroy the Earth? Hardly. Adherents of the exponential school of damage would have us believe that Wile E Coyote could inadvertantly blow up Earth with a dropped crate of Acme™ dynamite. :rofl:

No, adherents of the linear school of damage would have us believe that a crate of dynamite could destroy the Earth. Adherents of the exponential school of damage recognize that for the most part, defenses, body, and damage scales up accordingly.

It seems extremely silly to me that dropping a chunk of dwarf star matter on a target would do a tiny fraction of the damage that a similar amount of energy would do in an explosion.

Lucius

Jan 27th, '06, 12:25 PM

Don't really understand the hostility to HD.

And I don't understand your hostility to XL. Or Word processing programs. Or paper and pencil.

Megaplayboy, I don't think I'm really "hostile" to Hero Designer. I admit, however, I AM kind of hostile to statements like "The limit of what you can do in Hero Designer is the limit of what you can do in Hero" or other statements you have made that seem to equate this particular computer tool with Hero System itself, or to assume that "Everybody MUST have and use Hero Designer!"

You point out that not everyone has or uses Excell - I point out that the same can be said of Hero Designer. And no one else is implying that you have to use Excel to play Hero, or that Excell somehow defines Hero, or something.

I do use a word processing program and some custom tables I cobbled up to record characters. For one thing, my handwriting is atrocious.

But the day I NEED anything but paper, pencils, dice, the books, and maybe a hex sheet and some kind of counters, to play Hero, is the day I quit playing. If I want a computer game, I'll play a computer game.

Lucius Alexander

Asking the palindromedary, "I didn't come off as too hostile, did I?"

megaplayboy

Jan 27th, '06, 12:47 PM

And I don't understand your hostility to XL. Or Word processing programs. Or paper and pencil.

Megaplayboy, I don't think I'm really "hostile" to Hero Designer. I admit, however, I AM kind of hostile to statements like "The limit of what you can do in Hero Designer is the limit of what you can do in Hero" or other statements you have made that seem to equate this particular computer tool with Hero System itself, or to assume that "Everybody MUST have and use Hero Designer!"

You point out that not everyone has or uses Excell - I point out that the same can be said of Hero Designer. And no one else is implying that you have to use Excel to play Hero, or that Excell somehow defines Hero, or something.

I do use a word processing program and some custom tables I cobbled up to record characters. For one thing, my handwriting is atrocious.

But the day I NEED anything but paper, pencils, dice, the books, and maybe a hex sheet and some kind of counters, to play Hero, is the day I quit playing. If I want a computer game, I'll play a computer game.

Lucius Alexander

Asking the palindromedary, "I didn't come off as too hostile, did I?"

I'm not hostile to paper and pencil any more than using email makes me hostile to the postal service. It's a simple matter of convenience and commonality. If I'm corresponding with another gamer via email, and we both have HD, it's just darn convenient to be able to send a character writeup, receive it, make changes to it and send it back, all without ever breaking out a calculator, a word processing program or a spreadsheet set up to accomodate various calculations and formulae. And there are hundreds, even thousands of gamers with this tool available to them.
From a practical standpoint, after 4 iterations of Hero software, if a character writeup can't be done in HD, it's going to limit the ways in which that sheet can be presented and replicated. Whereas, if it can be done in HD, not only can it be presented and replicated in HD, it can be presented and replicated in HTML, in Word, on paper, in long hand, etc..

Speaking as a GM, it's nice when the players have HD, and email me character updates in that format. That way, I don't have to convert those writeups into HD manually.
If I can't do a writeup in HD, it means I have to either cobble together something in a spreadsheet or work out the math longhand and type it into word. Kind of a pain in the butt imo. Some folks love doing that. not one of them. I do writeups by hand to work out concepts, but the final work winds up being done in HD.
I will amend my statement to read: the limit of what you can do in Hero Designer is the limit of what you can do with maximum convenience and efficiency in Hero System, because if you have to do it outside of HD, it will involve extra work.
If you want to do that extra work, more power to you.
I never implied that use of HD was mandatory, just that writeups which were beyond its scope were likely to be hard to generalize(giving earth 100,000 body, for example).

Lucius

Jan 27th, '06, 08:49 PM

I'm not hostile to paper and pencil any more than using email makes me hostile to the postal service. .

I wouldn't assume a person is hostile to the postal service just because they use email. But if they make statements implying that email is the only worthwhile text-based form of communication, yes, I'm apt to think they're hostile to the postal service, or perhaps somehow ignorant of it. And certainly I'll wonder if they even realize that not everyone HAS email, or wants it.

However, we seem to have wandered very far off topic.

Luciuse Alexander

The palindromedary asks, what was the topic again?

Warp9

Jan 27th, '06, 11:17 PM

So how are you arriving at the energy of a 1DC attack to use as a baseline to work from?

That is a resonable question, and I see that Treb has also requested the same info (in a later post).

In the past, my Joules to DCs conversions have been based on charting the known values of existing attacks (mostly guns and bullets) in terms of HERO damage and kinetic energy. Looking at these attacks it is possible to see a relationship between energy and damage. It is from this relationship that I drew my baseline for the Joules of 1 DC.

Here is some data on the energy and damage values of a number of firearms in HERO.

2 DCs or 1d6-1 K (from 75 Joules to 150 Joules)
.22 LR Pistol 103 J

3 DCs or 1d6 K (150 Joules to 300 Joules)
PPK/S 199 J
380 ACP 269

4 DCs or 1d6+1 K (300 Joules to 600 Joules)
38 Special 322 J
Browning HP 500 J
MP 5 570 J
9mm Makarov 382
9mm Parabellum 476

5 DCs or 1 1/2d6 K (600 Joules to 1200 Joules)
357 Mag 725 J

6 DCs or 2d6 K (1200 Joules to 2400 Joules)
.44 Mag 1530 J
AK-47 2004 J
M-16A1 1847 J

7 DCs or 2d6+1 K (2400 Joules to 4800 Joules)
SVD Sniper Rifle 3113 J
FN-FAL 3313 J
M-60 3553 J

8 DCs or 2.5d6 K (4800 Joules to 9600 Joules)

9 DCs or 3d6 K (9600 Joules to 19,200 Joules)
.50 Cal HMG 18000 J

Warp9

Jan 28th, '06, 12:05 AM

I'd like to add to the above post that knowing exactly how many Joules relate to 1 DC is not an exact science.

So I also went with a different example: dynamite.

The following site gives information that relates to the joules of a stick of dynamite.

http://www.geocities.com/angolano/Engineering/WTC.pdf

on page 3 of the pdf file it says that 3 sticks of dynamite = 1 MegaJoule.

According to that information 5 DC = 1/3 Million Joules. That is definitely not the Joule level of a 5 DC bullet. This difference makes it hard to find a common energy baseline for both bullets and dynamite.

However, the energy released in an explosion of dynamite is probably a much better match to a supernova event (more so than a bullet anyway).

And based on the information that 5 DC (1 stick of dynamite) = 1/3 Million Joules then a 10^44 supernova would be rated at 126 DCs or 42d6 K

added on edit: this all assumes that we are considering an exponential scale--the official progression of dynamite in HERO is clearly not exponential.

Dr. Anomaly

Jan 28th, '06, 02:38 AM

added on edit: this all assumes that we are considering an exponential scale--the official progression of dynamite in HERO is clearly not exponential.
Thank you; it's good to know where baseline numbers come from, and how they are derived.

I'm also glad you added that edit, because when you started talking about dynamite, I have admit I was thinking "Oh, no...he didn't just do what I think he did, did he? Not after all the debate there's been recently about the way sticks of dynamite scale...!"

:)

Trebuchet

Jan 28th, '06, 03:42 AM

That is a resonable question, and I see that Treb has also requested the same info (in a later post).

In the past, my Joules to DCs conversions have been based on charting the known values of existing attacks (mostly guns and bullets) in terms of HERO damage and kinetic energy. Looking at these attacks it is possible to see a relationship between energy and damage. It is from this relationship that I drew my baseline for the Joules of 1 DC.

Here is some data on the energy and damage values of a number of firearms in HERO.

[snip]Thanks for the info on your baseline. It is interesting how the DCs in Hero don't seem to much agree with real world mortality rates from firearms. Certainly these are not doing exponentially greater damage to their target. Of course, a considerable amount of the energy from a firearm impact upon a human being seems to be wasted if it just zips straight through; something Hero doesn't simulate very well. Even a .22 LR can kill in the real world if it hits the head. Even the classic .45 ACP manstopper doesn't always work. Noted firearms expert Mossad Ayoob had an example years ago of two men in an apartment building who decided to kill each other. One had a .45 semiauto; the other a .22 LR revolver. They exchanged shots in a hallway at point blank range. The man with the .45 was struck once in the chest and died almost instantly; the guy with the .22 was hit several times in the chest and torso by .45 slugs and still survived. In fact, he took a bus to the nearest hospital!

Extra BODY, I guess. :)

OddHat

Jan 28th, '06, 04:38 AM

Noted firearms expert Mossad Ayoob had an example years ago of two men in an apartment building who decided to kill each other. One had a .45 semiauto; the other a .22 LR revolver. They exchanged shots in a hallway at point blank range. The man with the .45 was struck once in the chest and died almost instantly; the guy with the .22 was hit several times in the chest and torso by .45 slugs and still survived. In fact, he took a bus to the nearest hospital!

Extra BODY, I guess. :)

Joeseph Greenstein (real world strength performer) was once shot in the forehead by a .38 Caliber revolver. The impact knocked him out, but the bullet didn't penetrate his skull. He was out of the hospital the next day. It's amazing what people survive.

Even in the real world, sometimes people roll low. :)

Sean Waters

Jan 28th, '06, 07:21 AM

The two bits of body that tend to allow an instant (or near instant) kill if damaged are the heart and the brain, both of which are protected by bone.

If you are a detail freak, it might be wise to consider both as 1 DEF armour that reduces damage before location modifiers, meaning that, whilst hits to the head and vitals usually do more damage, on particularly low rolls they might well do less BODY.

You could even up the bone protection (2 or even 3 DEF) and give it activation roll - sometimes a bullet or knife slips between the ribs, or hits a weakspot on the skull.

Probably too much effort for most, but not an unreasonable solution, I'd suggest.

OddHat

Jan 28th, '06, 08:02 AM

Hugh Neilson

Jan 28th, '06, 08:41 AM

Don't really understand the hostility to HD.

I don't believe I'm "hostile" to Hero Designer. I just don't accept it as the One True Way of writing up character sheets. Pen and paper, word processors, spreadsheet software and Hero Designer are all means one can use to write up a character. There is no basis, in my opinion, for ascribing any "superior" status to HD, or to any of these other options.

I'm not hostile to paper and pencil any more than using email makes me hostile to the postal service. It's a simple matter of convenience and commonality. If I'm corresponding with another gamer via email, and we both have HD, it's just darn convenient to be able to send a character writeup, receive it, make changes to it and send it back, all without ever breaking out a calculator, a word processing program or a spreadsheet set up to accomodate various calculations and formulae. And there are hundreds, even thousands of gamers with this tool available to them.

So long as HD is applying all the rules in the same manner we both interpret them, including any house rules.

And I suspect that a significant percentage of gamers also have word processing and/or spreadsheet software which is compatible, if not the same SW. If not, openoffice.org has free software (so the gamer need not shell out $$ for HD) which, I understand, very closely mimics the MS Office package. HD is compatible with, to my knowledge, no other software package.

From a practical standpoint, after 4 iterations of Hero software, if a character writeup can't be done in HD, it's going to limit the ways in which that sheet can be presented and replicated. Whereas, if it can be done in HD, not only can it be presented and replicated in HD, it can be presented and replicated in HTML, in Word, on paper, in long hand, etc..

Until, of course, a new book introduces a new rule. How much trouble did HD designers have using Turakian Age magic when it first came out? Now, HD will be updated (eventually) to handle official Hero constructs. It's unlikely to be updated to handle house rules, however.