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How much damage does my truck do?


digeridork

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A situation came up with my novice GM and myself that I need some clarification on. I wanted my character to ram someone with a handy idling truck, which we figured was a Move Through attack. 

 

We figured Move Through right, but were fuzzy on the vehicle STR. The chart on 6E2, pg 196 says that the STR listed is for figuring it's max lifting Strength. It wasn't clear if it used that STR also for damage when doing attacks like a Move Through.

 

Did I figure it right with my pickup truck's Strength (40 STR) + the Move Through damage or is there another way to figure a vehicle's strength for doing damage? That was our solution and I think I'm worrying overmuch about it being wrong, but it just doesn't seem really clear to me.

 

I've been looking this morning, but either my Google-Fu is really that bad and my ability to search through the PDF is lacking or I'm proving that there really is such a thing as a dumb question.

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Update: It looks like I was, in fact, overthinking this. I was looking through the forums and found a comment about it having a character sheet and someone else mentioned Hero Designer. I remembered there's a vehicle builder for Hero Designer and put it in there. Sure enough the HTH damage was right there.  While I'm not sure why I made so much out of it, I will note that Hero Designer has been a really awesome tool that I should really use more often.

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Yes.  By the system's reasoning STR is STR - if you can lift it,you can hit with the same strength needed to lift it to keep things simple.

 

(I prefer a mass based solution, as anyone following the quirk thread might suspect.  For example a train engine can pull a half a million pounds but shouldn't really hit for 24-30d6 by moving one meter to 'attack' you, even while unloaded.  Instead it should go by the mass of the engine alone - closer to 12-13d6, which will still put a normal person in a hospital and threaten them with death - as it should.  All other damage from a train hitting you should be added from move through)

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I tend to think in the same terms as DasBroot when it comes to things like trains that rely on low coefficients of friction coupled with inertia to move insanely massive loads.  Thankfully there aren't a lot of those types of situations that come up in most campaigns.  The space opera game in which I'm playing, however, is a different animal. :)

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Yes.  By the system's reasoning STR is STR - if you can lift it,you can hit with the same strength needed to lift it to keep things simple.

 

(I prefer a mass based solution, as anyone following the quirk thread might suspect.  For example a train engine can pull a half a million pounds but shouldn't really hit for 24-30d6 by moving one meter to 'attack' you, even while unloaded.  Instead it should go by the mass of the engine alone - closer to 12-13d6, which will still put a normal person in a hospital and threaten them with death - as it should.  All other damage from a train hitting you should be added from move through)

 

I'm more in favor of velocity based with moving vehicles. If a train engine collides with you from a cold start and traveling only 1 meter, it might nudge you. If it is moving at speed, well, we know what kind of damage a train can do.

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Some guy's truck did enough damage to put me in the hospital for a few days.

 

Hi everyone, good to be back.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Back in a palindromedary saddle. Gingerly.

 

Sorry to hear you had the accident Lucius, hope you and the palindromedary are both ok now!!

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Sorry to hear you had the accident Lucius, hope you and the palindromedary are both ok now!!

I am out of hospital and staying with a friend for a few days until I feel well enough to go home and resume my solitary life.

 

I'm well enough to hijack a thread, obviously.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

With a little help from my palindromedary

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I'm more in favor of velocity based with moving vehicles. If a train engine collides with you from a cold start and traveling only 1 meter, it might nudge you. If it is moving at speed, well, we know what kind of damage a train can do.

 

You would think it might nudge you but my ex's father worked in the train-yards - guys getting hospitalised because they got 'bumped' by a barely moving train happened all the time.  

 

Also apparently jumping into a moving train is among the stupidest things you can try - if your speed is off even by a little bit and you get clipped by the boxcar door opening instead of making it inside you don't just get to go 'oof' as it knocks you to the ground: it can, and quite possibly will, break half the bones in your upper body.

 

And cow catchers are called 'hamburger plows'.

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Yes.  By the system's reasoning STR is STR - if you can lift it,you can hit with the same strength needed to lift it to keep things simple.

 

(I prefer a mass based solution, as anyone following the quirk thread might suspect.  For example a train engine can pull a half a million pounds but shouldn't really hit for 24-30d6 by moving one meter to 'attack' you, even while unloaded.  Instead it should go by the mass of the engine alone - closer to 12-13d6, which will still put a normal person in a hospital and threaten them with death - as it should.  All other damage from a train hitting you should be added from move through)

This sounds like a variant of falling damage. Interesting. Basically the "falling Velcoity" is replaced by "Travelling Velocity". And the mass of the Vehicle is used instead of "fallig item mass".

 

Hitting someone with a Truck:

If you plan on using NCM Speeds, you would incur the usual penalties.

On the other hand, by their nature Vehciles tend to be large (a lot of inherent growth). As such they should propably do a AoE attack. And be defended against with Dive for Cover.

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You can be "bumped" by a truck without taking its full Str damage.  Just like I can push someone and not use my full Str.  Me tapping you on the shoulder doesn't mean you take 2D6 damage.  A truck should probably have the Physical Limitation "no arms or legs", so that would limit how it can inflict damage.  The GM could rule that for it to use its full Str, it needs to do more than bump somebody.

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You would think it might nudge you but my ex's father worked in the train-yards - guys getting hospitalised because they got 'bumped' by a barely moving train happened all the time.  

 

Also apparently jumping into a moving train is among the stupidest things you can try - if your speed is off even by a little bit and you get clipped by the boxcar door opening instead of making it inside you don't just get to go 'oof' as it knocks you to the ground: it can, and quite possibly will, break half the bones in your upper body.

 

And cow catchers are called 'hamburger plows'.

 

My uncle worked for Grand Trunk. He lost both legs in an accident.

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Sorry massey, if that was a reference, I don't know it.

 

The calculation for what happens to a standing person falling over has a lot of hidden issues (for a start, the person and the ground are already in contact, and you have to use the height of their centre of gravity, not their full height. Also, does their knee or hip make contact before their head? Are they working to control the impact?)

 

But simply falling over can easily cause concussion or break bones (especially those with low bone density - ask any senior citizen).

 

Back to freight trains where the much larger energies involved make things much simpler.

 

The locomotive alone will mass several hundred tonnes. Even moving at a "gentle" 1m per second getting hit by a 200 t locomotive would be the equivalent of a 2 tonne car hitting you at 10 metres per second, or 36 kilometres per hour. Certainly something you *could* survive if you were clipped and thrown clear, but I'd not be placing any bets, and I'd be expecting multiple fractures, internal injuries, intensive care etc.

 

If that 1 metre per second locomotive were hauling a train of 3000 tonnes, it would be the equivalent of the car hitting you at 40 metres per second, or 144 kph. That's not survivable without superpowers. 

 

And even without a train, if the locomotive sped up to a mere 2 metres per second, it would hit with the same force as a 2 tonne car travelling at 20 mps (72 kph).

 

(If you want to fold that all back into normal HERO terms, the locomotive is STR 65, the train is STR 85. But I'd not push the real world analogy too far in game terms, or bother rolling for damage if a normal was hit by either at speed.)

 

Also, the idea about penalising a vehicle for "not having arms" is just silly. Moving vehicles transmit their kinetic energy to puny pedestrians QUITE efficiently without needing to take a swing and their STR is already in line with their mass. But feel free to build a truck with robot arms that gets some bonus HA damage from a move by attack.

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If you want to work the damage based on mass, just replace the STR score with the STR required to move said mass then use the move-thru calculations.

 

Yeah. 3000 tonne freight train travelling at 100 kph (at SPD 2, 162m per phase) would do 17d6 from STR and 27d6 from movement, for a grand total of 43d6. As I said... I really would not bother rolling in most cases.

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"If that 1 metre per second locomotive were hauling a train of 3000 tonnes, it would be the equivalent of the car hitting you at 40 metres per second, or 144 kph. That's not survivable without superpowers."

 

The issue is more the kinetic energy required to accelerate the impactee to the new combined speed of the impacting object/impactee (and how that is transferred across the body) rather than the inherent kinetic energy of the impacting object. It's not like the train shudders to a halt when it hits you transferring its entire energy. Except when you are Superman and it does, but that is a whole 'nother physics question.

 

Thus the falling issue - me falling 1m and hitting the earth is indistinguishable from the earth moving 1m and hitting me (relativity, right?).*.

So, I'm with massey on this one, a train weighing 2500 tons moving at 1m/s doesn't do the same damage as a 1 ton van at 50m/s.

 

*I suspect (not an expert) that many of the injuries at low speeds are caused by impacts transferring the energy over a low surface area (like a landing on a spike), or running people over, or tearing injuries?

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  • 4 weeks later...

What doccowie said.

 

So the damage you take from a moving object hitting you does not make a lot of sense for very low velocities, as it assumes a perfect transfer of energy.

 

If the locomotive hits you, it does not transfer all of its energy to you, just enough to change your velocity to the same as its (OK, the new velocity will be a fraction less because of physics, but that is a rounding error).  If it is moving at 1m/s all it has done is accelerate you to 1m/s.  It has not transferred its momentum to you, or it would be stationary and you would be approaching mach 3.  You'd calculate the damage using your mass and velocity change, not the mass of the train.  It is as if you have fallen at 1m per second.  When you fall you do not factor the mass of the earth in the calculation of damage, at least not directly.

 

So, generally smaller faster objects are better at transferring their momentum/energy to you because of bullets.

 

Of course if you can not move (your back is to an impenetrable wall, for example) and the same train runs in to you, it does stop, with you between it and the wall, and then you do get a lot of energy transfer.  At that point you are doing a move through on an impenetrable wall with a low velocity and a LOT of mass.

 

There are all kinds of other problems with calculating move based damage in Hero: for example, if two cars have the same velocity, it is better to be hit by the more manoeuverable one as it will do less damage because the SPD will be higher so the velocity per phase will be lower.

 

The Lumberer (SPD 3, move 24m) moves at 13mph but does more velocity based damage from a move through than Slick (SPD 12, move 18) who moves at 40mph.  That can't be right.

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