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TaxiMan

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For those who are interested in reports produced by people who don't write for gun magazines go here:

 

http://www.firearmstactical.com/wound.htm

 

One of the better articles is here:

 

http://www.firearmstactical.com/hwfe.htm

 

And here:

 

http://www.firearmstactical.com/afte.htm

 

As for the comparison between a .22 Pistol and a .50 BMG. A comparison between a rifle and a handgun cartidge is laughable, let alone bringing a .50 BMG round into the equation:

 

.50 BMG Average @ point blank: 15700 Joules

.22PST Average @ point blank: 248 Joules

 

Yeah, that's three times more powerful (not). It doesn't take into account other major wound factors such as penetration, bullet size, and expansion.

 

You can't use these types of conversions in a role playing game. Damage is an ABSTRACTION. You have to take a general sense of how lethal a weapon is and translate it into play. A BMG that hits center mass will basically be lethal even for uber tough. At 3d6 it will average 10.5 body, which kills a normal man (8 Body) flat out, or takes off a limb if it hits one. I think that does the basic job fairly well. The question is penetration and stun (kinetic transfer). Add on AP [or Pen] and a +1 StunX [average 37.5] and it translates fairly nicely. Its not always about the dice.

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Originally posted by Kristopher

Thank you, again, D-Man. Sincerely. That's a better answer than I was going to provide.

 

I'm not sure that D-man's post supports the views you've been arguing for.

 

What D-man said supports the idea of abstract exponential damage, and contradicts the idea of a linear relationship between power and DCs.

 

He makes the point very clearly that a .50 BMG (at 3d6 RKA) is NOT 3 times as powerful as a 1d6 RKA. Yet he has no difficulty with using 3d6K as an abstraction to represent the 15700 Joules of an HMG.

 

from D-man's Post

.50 BMG Average @ point blank: 15700 Joules

.22PST Average @ point blank: 248 Joules

 

Yeah, that's three times more powerful (not).

 

You, on the other hand, have been saying that 3d6 IS 3 times as powerful as 1d6--that is the point I'm arguing about.

 

Based on your statement (that 3d6 IS 3 times as powerful as 1d6) you have two choices: you can argue that an HMG is actually 3 times as powerful as a pistol, or you can re-write the rules so that a HMG no longer does 3d6 (maybe you could re-write it so that the HMG does 60d6 K damage).

 

IMO you would be better off accepting the idea that 3d6 K is an exponential abstraction that represents weapons of a massive power level (like an HMG). Rather than continuing to hold to the idea of a one-to-one correlation between the Body rolled on the dice and the actual power of the attack.

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Originally posted by Warp9

I'm not sure that D-man's post supports the views you've been arguing for.

 

What D-man said supports the idea of abstract exponential damage, and contradicts the idea of a linear relationship between power and DCs.

 

He makes the point very clearly that a .50 BMG (at 3d6 RKA) is NOT 3 times as powerful as a 1d6 RKA. Yet he has no difficulty with using 3d6K as an abstraction to represent the 15700 Joules of an HMG.

 

You, on the other hand, have been saying that 3d6 IS 3 times as powerful as 1d6--that is the point I'm arguing about.

 

Based on your statement (that 3d6 IS 3 times as powerful as 1d6) you have two choices: you can argue that an HMG is actually 3 times as powerful as a pistol, or you can re-write the rules so that a HMG no longer does 3d6 (maybe you could re-write it so that the HMG does 60d6 K damage).

 

IMO you would be better off accepting the idea that 3d6 K is an exponential abstraction that represents weapons of a massive power level (like an HMG). Rather than continuing to hold to the idea of a one-to-one correlation between the Body rolled on the dice and the actual power of the attack.

 

Actually, I'm not going to do either one. I'm not concerned with any kind of between real-world kinetic energy and HERO Damage Classes. There may be a coincidental relationship, but I honestly don't care and don't think it's at all important.

 

The only thing that's important is approximating the real-world lethality of an attack or weapon, and the real-world lethality isn't a simple matter of kinetic energy. KE is a **factor**, but it's not the only factor by any stretch. KE is only part of what determines the degree of damage done to, well, a chunk of rock. Angle matters, material composition matters, shape and structure matter, etc, etc, etc.

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Originally posted by Kristopher

KE is a **factor**, but it's not the only factor by any stretch. KE is only part of what determines the degree of damage done to, well, a chunk of rock. Angle matters, material composition matters, shape and structure matter, etc, etc, etc.

 

You're missing something there--all those other factors you mentioned relate to (and change with) each specific target. They have nothing to do with the actual attack rating itself. So please list some factors that aren't relative to a specific target.

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Originally posted by Warp9

You're missing something there--all those other factors you mentioned relate to (and change with) each specific target. They have nothing to do with the actual attack rating itself. So please list some factors that aren't relative to a specific target.

 

You're missing the point. Real life damage and lethality are far more complicated than damage, def, and BODY. So much more complicated, in fact, that you're not going to get the kind of clean and simple corelation between KE and dice of damage.

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Originally posted by Kristopher

You're missing the point. Real life damage and lethality are far more complicated than damage, def, and BODY. So much more complicated, in fact, that you're not going to get the kind of clean and simple corelation between KE and dice of damage.

 

We're not talking about the way an attack has effect on a specific target--which might get complicated--depending on the target.

 

We're not talking about a target of any sort here, just the attack itself. We're talking about the general rating of an attack. Specifically we are looking at rating the attack's raw ability to do damage in a general way to all sorts of objects (people, cars, rocks, etc. . . ).

 

Please state your reasons against using KE as an indicator of raw ability to do damage. Please show some example cases where kinetic energy just wouldn't be good enough (even for a game) to estimate general potential ability to do damage.

 

And now I have a specific question for you.

 

Do you really think that a .50 Cal HMG is 3 X as powerful as a 1d6 RKA pistol? (yes or no)

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Originally posted by Warp9

We're not talking about the way an attack has effect on a specific target--which might get complicated--depending on the target.

 

We're not talking about a target of any sort here, just the attack itself. We're talking about the general rating of an attack. Specifically we are looking at rating the attack's raw ability to do damage in a general way to all sorts of objects (people, cars, rocks, etc. . . ).

 

Please state your reasons against using KE as an indicator of raw ability to do damage. Please show some example cases where kinetic energy just wouldn't be good enough (even for a game) to estimate general potential ability to do damage.

 

And now I have a specific question for you.

 

Do you really think that a .50 Cal HMG is 3 X as powerful as a 1d6 RKA pistol? (yes or no)

 

Irrelevent.

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Originally posted by Kristopher

Irrelevent.

 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 

That's a good attempt at a save! I guess I can't get a simple answer to a simple question.

 

But I'll explain to you why you can't answer my question. . . .

 

 

If you say

 

"Yes, a .50 Cal HMG _is_ 3 X as powerful as a 1d6 RKA pistol"

 

you'll risk sounding crazy.

 

 

And if you say

 

"No, a .50 Cal HMG is NOT 3 X as powerful as a 1d6 RKA pistol"

 

then you'll be accepting that the Hero weapon stats, as written, do not support a linear power to damage ratio.

 

 

Hey, please tell me if I'm wrong (and, of course, why I'm wrong).

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Originally posted by Warp9

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 

That's a good attempt at a save! I guess I can't get a simple answer to a simple question.

 

But I'll explain to you why you can't answer my question. . . .

 

If you say

 

"Yes, a .50 Cal HMG _is_ 3 X as powerful as a 1d6 RKA pistol"

 

you'll risk sounding crazy.

 

And if you say

 

"No, a .50 Cal HMG is NOT 3 X as powerful as a 1d6 RKA pistol"

 

then you'll be accepting that the Hero weapon stats, as written, do not support a linear power to damage ratio.

 

Hey, please tell me if I'm wrong (and, of course, why I'm wrong).

 

The answer is, "neither."

 

The idea that a .50BMG is only 3 times as powerful as a 9mm is laughable.

 

The idea that there is a simple, direct, and strict power to damage relationship of any kind in HERO is laughable.

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Originally posted by Kristopher

3d6 really is 3 times as expensive and 3 times as powerful as 1d6. The minimum, average, and maximum damage are all three times greater. The relationship between Active Point cost and each of those numbers is linear, as well.

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Quote #1Originally posted by Kristopher

The idea that there is a simple, direct, and strict power to damage relationship of any kind in HERO is laughable.

 

Quote #2 Originally posted by Kristopher

3d6 really is 3 times as expensive and 3 times as powerful as 1d6.

 

You're saying that Quote #2 is not a statement of a 'power to damage' relationship?

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Originally posted by Warp9

You're saying that Quote #2 is not a statement of a 'power to damage' relationship?

 

As I've already said, that was meant in a strictly in-game, mechanical sense.

 

All I care about is whether 3d6 RKA sufficiently translates the real-world lethality of a .50BMG into game-mechanics lethality.

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Originally posted by Kristopher

As I've already said, that was meant in a strictly in-game, mechanical sense.

 

All I care about is whether 3d6 RKA sufficiently translates the real-world lethality of a .50BMG into game-mechanics lethality.

Quite right. And I'd say 3d6K reasonably represents the effects of a .50 BMG on a human being. Against most people it will produce a mortal wound (10.5 BODY) which will prove fatal in mere seconds, with a head shot it will result in instant death for normals (21 BODY) and even some supers.

 

Numbers like "xd6" and "y BODY" are meant only to represent game mechanics for what are ultimately abstractions at best anyway. While engineers may speak of joules and megajoules of energy to represent kinetic energy, there is no corresponding number for physicians to rate "life energy." ("Quick, Nurse Johnson! Call the Crash Team! He's down to only 21% of his BODY!") Heck, we can't even really define life, much less quantify it. (Are viruses alive?) Without such a real world scale to measure life and/or physical toughness, trying to determine the real world equivalents of damage is utterly pointless. And that brings us back to HERO. In HERO, 3d6 is 3X as much as 1d6 just as 3d6 is 1/3 of 9d6 within the game system. These numbers are relative within that system, not logarithmic. Saying it is anything else is ultimately pointless. It's a nice academic exercise, but nothing more. We have to use self-reference within the game because that's the only scale we have to work with that supplies numbers for damage, resistance to damage, and surviving that damage.

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Originally posted by Kristopher

As I've already said, that was meant in a strictly in-game, mechanical sense.

 

All I care about is whether 3d6 RKA sufficiently translates the real-world lethality of a .50BMG into game-mechanics lethality.

 

The only problem is that, in both quotes, you were referring to "in-game mechanics."

 

Quote #1: "The idea that there is a simple, direct, and strict power to damage relationship of any kind in HERO is laughable. "

 

Your saying this quote is NOT about "in-game mechanics?" How can relationships between power and damage in HERO _not_ be about game mechanics?

 

Or are you saying that your other quote is not about "in-game mechanics?"

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Originally posted by Trebuchet

While engineers may speak of joules and megajoules of energy to represent kinetic energy, there is no corresponding number for physicians to rate "life energy." ("Quick, Nurse Johnson! Call the Crash Team! He's down to only 21% of his BODY!") Heck, we can't even really define life, much less quantify it. (Are viruses alive?) Without such a real world scale to measure life and/or physical toughness, trying to determine the real world equivalents of damage is utterly pointless. And that brings us back to HERO. In HERO, 3d6 is 3X as much as 1d6 just as 3d6 is 1/3 of 9d6 within the game system. These numbers are relative within that system, not logarithmic. Saying it is anything else is ultimately pointless. It's a nice academic exercise, but nothing more. We have to use self-reference within the game because that's the only scale we have to work with that supplies numbers for damage, resistance to damage, and surviving that damage.

 

You seem to be making the assumption that we are talking about damage being applied to a living person. Or are you saying that damage can only be applied to living objects? (I hope not)

 

How do you know that we aren't talking about damage to a wall, or a lump of rock?

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I have heard a number of you guys go on and on about how damage is soooooo complex that there can be no easy way to correlate any measurable factor to Hero damage.

 

Apparently, if we try to use any given factor (such as kinetic energy) to relate to damage we'll come up with results which just won't work. Apparently the results would be too outrageous even for a generic game.

 

If this is true, why does KE used on an exponential scale match up to the fire arms chart so well?

 

Can it be that damage in a generic game like Hero is not so complex after all?

 

And again if no factor can be matched to damage in Hero, why does KE on an exponential scale work so well? Is it all a big coincidence? ---maybe its a conspiracy?

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Originally posted by Warp9

You seem to be making the assumption that we are talking about damage being applied to a living person. Or are you saying that damage can only be applied to living objects? (I hope not)

 

How do you know that we aren't talking about damage to a wall, or a lump of rock?

I was specifically addressing both living and unliving ("Without such a real world scale to measure life and/or physical toughness...'). However, we have no real world way to know exactly how much damage a non-living structure will take to destroy either. That level of knowledge requires either having been the one who created that structure or destroying it in order to analyse it in such detail.
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Originally posted by Warp9

If this is true, why does KE used on an exponential scale match up to the fire arms chart so well?

My guess is that George MacDonald, the original creator of Champions, used firearms tables to correlate damage within his system when he was designing it. He had to use some scale, and charts for kinetic energy are easily found in any reloading book. The system works pretty well at the low levels of energy involved with firearms, but breaks down completely when dealing with the power levels of nuclear weapons and city-leveling energy blasts fired by megavillains. If kinetic energy translated directly into damage on an exponential scale then the military would have developed 5mm antitank rounds travelling 1000000 fps rather than wasting their time with clunky 120mm shells in tanks. (And yes, I know the penetrator in an Abrams round is considerably smaller than 120mm, it's closer to 25mm.)

 

Can it be that damage in a generic game like Hero is not so complex after all?

 

And again if no factor can be matched to damage in Hero, why does KE on an exponential scale work so well? Is it all a big coincidence? ---maybe its a conspiracy?

First of all, you seem to be the one assuming damage in Hero is complex. It's not complex at all, it's a simplified model of a fictional system of physics. All models are simplistic by definition; that's the entire point of working with models be they physical or mathematical: They are simple enough our feeble brains can analyse them. Why do you insist on making this harder than it needs to be?

 

Damage in Hero is quite simple: 1d6 is half as much damage as 2d6; 10d6 is 10 times as much damage as 1d6. What's so hard to grasp here?

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Originally posted by Trebuchet

I was specifically addressing both living and unliving ("Without such a real world scale to measure life and/or physical toughness...'). However, we have no real world way to know exactly how much damage a non-living structure will take to destroy either. That level of knowledge requires either having been the one who created that structure or destroying it in order to analyse it in such detail.

 

Why do you assume that things have to be super exact--isn't a general estimate good enough for a game?

 

Are you saying that physics can't even give a general estimate of the general effect that a projectile of a specific mass, moving at a specific speed, will have on a given wall? Or do you think that I must have created the wall before I could give even a general estimate?

 

If physics can come up with general estimates about such things, then isn't that good enough for rating damage in a game?

 

 

 

And if you think that there are no real world measures of physical toughness, then you are mistaken. Engineers have many measures of the amount of abuse that a given object can stand up to--and IMO an engineer needs to measure with far more exacting standards than a generic game.

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Originally posted by Trebuchet

If kinetic energy translated directly into damage on an exponential scale then the military would have developed 5mm antitank rounds travelling 1000000 fps rather than wasting their time with clunky 120mm shells in tanks.

 

I don't believe that we have the technology to produce something like a shell that could travel at 1 million fps--if you have evidence that we can, then I'd like to see it.

 

And you are confusing the exponential scale of Hero (which would generate an exponential amount of KE as the DCs go higher and higher) with the nature of KE itself.

 

The KE value does go up as a square of velocity, but that has nothing to do with the exponential scale of Hero.

 

30 squared = 900 (the scale of Kinetic Energy to Velocity)

 

2 to the power of 30 = 1 Billion. (the exponential scale of Hero)

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Originally posted by Warp9

If physics can come up with general estimates about such things, then isn't that good enough for rating damage in a game?

No, because there are no physics in a game. That's what we are telling you. Damage and defenses in Hero are relative only to each other. While engineers may well be able to calculate fairly close approximations of structural strength, they cannot look at a blueprint and say "That thing has 17 DEF and 21 BODY, so we need a 38d6 attack to break it." I watched a show earlier this week on the busting of the Rhine dams by the RAF during WW2. Even under carefully controlled conditions and using actual German engineering drawings of those structures, engineers took dozens of attempts to figure out how big an explosive to use and how to place it. It's just not as cut and dried in the real world as you seem to think. It's simple in Champions because this is a game. :rolleyes:
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Originally posted by Warp9

The only problem is that, in both quotes, you were referring to "in-game mechanics."

 

Quote #1: "The idea that there is a simple, direct, and strict power to damage relationship of any kind in HERO is laughable. "

 

Your saying this quote is NOT about "in-game mechanics?" How can relationships between power and damage in HERO _not_ be about game mechanics?

 

Or are you saying that your other quote is not about "in-game mechanics?"

 

Now you're just confused.

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Originally posted by Trebuchet

It's just not as cut and dried in the real world as you seem to think.

 

I'd like to see you back that up with more than something that you saw in a show somewhere.

 

You'll have to give me some lessons in Physics and Mathematics.

 

And maybe I'll have to get my money back for all the math and engineering classes I took in college.

 

BTW--a small 5mm projectile travelling at 1 million fps would burn up in the Earth's atmosphere very quickly--a side-effect of it's tremendous KE interacting with the air particles.

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