Authority style killing blows

[Eyendasky80]

In The Authority, several characters are EXTREMELY deadly in hand to hand combat. Caving people's heads in, tearing off limbs, etc. How would you stat this? I guess I'd just do HKAs. But, how would you go about the limbs thing? Maybe use the hit location chart? I think with Midnighter, it's more DC levels in his martial arts than strength. Thoughts?

[Guest WhammeWhamme]

Re: Authority style killing blows

 

Originally posted by Eyendasky80

In The Authority, several characters are EXTREMELY deadly in hand to hand combat. Caving people's heads in, tearing off limbs, etc. How would you stat this? I guess I'd just do HKAs. But, how would you go about the limbs thing? Maybe use the hit location chart? I think with Midnighter, it's more DC levels in his martial arts than strength. Thoughts?

 

Option A) Normals are BODY 8 (or less), PD 2 (or 1), supers have mucho dice. Disallow 'good' defenses. Use hit locations, and other optional combat rules.

 

Option 'If a Mace is an HKA, so are these...'; disallow rPD in significant quantities, have supers buy killing damage (or rule that all Super Level Damage is killing), still use hit locations, etc.

[Eyendasky80]

Well, option A doesn't work too well. They dismembered the hell out of many, many "Super" people.

[lemming]

Hmm. Well HKA's are probably the way to deal with it. Could be that the campaign uses hit locations and possibly a cap on resistant defenses.

And if someone gets killed by an attack, they could describe the death in whatever fashion I suppose.

[Eyendasky80]

Cap on resistant defenses wouldn't be applicable either. All the hand to hand fighters are pretty much invulnerable. It's like the Justice League, only they tear people's heads off.

[lemming]

Originally posted by Eyendasky80

Cap on resistant defenses wouldn't be applicable either. All the hand to hand fighters are pretty much invulnerable. It's like the Justice League, only they tear people's heads off.

Ok. So people are invulnarable, but get their heads torn off?

Maybe special attacks to get by resistant:

Pentrating Killing attacks, NND Killing, Find Weakness, Lots of dice?

 

Resistant, except vs head tearing off attacks?

 

I guess I'm not familiar enough with the source.

[Eyendasky80]

That's a good one. It's a good book, Bryan Hitch took the Stormwatch series and changed into THe Authority, then Mark Millar had a run and it's been pretty crappy since he finished. Think of it like this I guess: Superman COULD tear a lot of his enemies' heads off. He just restrains himself, these guys do not.

[Eyendasky80]

Anyone ever run or play in something like this? Over the top action (in scope as well as violence) and an almost fascist world view. The heroes of The Authority had no hesitation in "meddling" with normal affairs. They took out unjust dictators, delivered a stern "We'll whoop you, just like everyone else" warning the PUSA, and other crazy stuff.

[Dino]

The problem you're running into is that the STR and damage rules for Hero System were specifically designed to AVOID this sort of thing. Hero uses a linear damage system paired with an exponential lift system. This allows a character with a 50 ton lift to have a reasonable STR score, and fight non- powered characters without takeing thier heads off.

 

In books like the Authourity, the authors were trying to present a "realistic" view of superpowers. The desighners of Hero and other superhero games were trying to reflect "classic" comics (which are far more playable).

 

The easiest way to get this kind of feel in Hero, without changeing how STR works, is to give everybody (or everybody with superhuman STR) the free ability to convert thier normal STR damage into killing damage. So a brick with 60 STR can do 12d6 normal, or 4d6 K depending on how pissed off he is.

[Eyendasky80]

(nod)

That's a good idea. Are there any super RPGs that do that as a rule?

[Vigil]

I remeber reading in the 5th Edition rulebook just the other day, under the optional combat rules, that if an attack does more than 1/3 of a target's body that it severs a limb. that seems fairly staright forward. In the case of The Authority, if they're fighting a bunch of normals then they're only having to do 3 BODY or so to tear off an arm. Any super can do 3 BODY off hand and, in this case, I think it's just applying the optional Severing Limbs rule. IMHO, if they're tearing off someone's head then I think it's just a matter of SFX for an attack that does 2X BODY. I believe that I read somewhere in Hero's rules that if a single attack does more than 2x a target's BODY then the character is irretrievably dead from the massive damage. Given the fact, again that most normals have 10 BODY, that's just 20 BODY, which a lot of supers can do pretty easily even with non KA's. Check out the Authority write ups in the Great Net Book of Real Heroes if you're interested to see how some people stat them out. What's interesting is that their stats aren't all that high and they don't have any KAs that ican remember. The bloodiness is just the chosen SFX for their style of combat.

 

Vigil

[Eyendasky80]

I think those write-ups are under powered. The Authority did things that were well beyond standard super hero levels and these write-ups seem to be just average power levels.

[TechnoViking]

Originally posted by Vigil

I remeber reading in the 5th Edition rulebook just the other day, under the optional combat rules, that if an attack does more than 1/3 of a target's body that it severs a limb.

 

Sounds like a mix of this, hit locations, and heavy HKA.

 

Also, sound like "Highlander" physics, invulnarable except for head limb removal. Has the comics stated anything like this?

 

Mike

[Eyendasky80]

No, not really, but Jack Hawksmoor once said he'd been "Waiting all day to punch someone in the brains." So someone could infer they enjoy it. It was just a big action series and it was more dynamic to see their fists flying through people's skulls than the standard punch the guy and he falls down. It was a mature reader comic, of course.

[Armitage]

Originally posted by Eyendasky80

I think those write-ups are under powered. The Authority did things that were well beyond standard super hero levels and these write-ups seem to be just average power levels.

 

You mean like when The Doctor destroyed 3/4 of Italy (alternate reality) from orbit by stopping its motion relative to the Earth or Hawksmoor turned the city of Tokyo into a giant suit of battle armor?

[Eyendasky80]

Not to mention when each member of team single handedly defeated a super team from the marvel universe. (Generic version of course, but still impressive) Or when Apollo fought the Evil Doctor IN THE SUN. Or when Jenny Sparks killed God. They were just bad, bad people.

[Jhamin]

Originally posted by Eyendasky80

(nod)

That's a good idea. Are there any super RPGs that do that as a rule?

 

 

Much has been made of the HERO vs. GURPS "universal system contest". As far as I can tell, the general consensus among many gamers is that GURPS does gritty better than hero (IE, if you shoot someone, they die) but HERO does cinematic better than GURPS (IE, if you shoot the hero he grits his teeth, can't take much more of that, then whoops the bad guy anyway).

 

GURPS Supers is infamous for it's overly deadly combat system. If you are strong enough to shatter steel, then a villain with bones softer than steel is in big trouble. This damage scale is terrible for simulating spiderman vs. green goblin showdowns. The goblin's head would come off as soon as spidey socked him in the jaw. There are some optional rules to tone this down, but they really feel out of place in the framework of the game.

 

For this reason HERO and it's fuzzy damage vs. str rules are by far the better of the two for *most* super genre games.

 

 

I hate to pimp other RPGs on the Hero boards (I'm a HERO man all the way), but you may in fact have found one of the few oddball comics that is playing by the GURPS version of superheroics.

[Eyendasky80]

A lot of mature reader titles handle super powers in a realistically violent way. The new Squadron Supreme mini had the Batman rip off (Nighthawk? I think) ripping some dude's ears off and he isn't even super powered. So maybe GURPS is the "mature reader" super RPG. I like Hero better anyway. The one GURPS game I played in was a little confusing and could have easily been played with HERO rules.

[Armitage]

Originally posted by Jhamin

GURPS Supers is infamous for it's overly deadly combat system. If you are strong enough to shatter steel, then a villain with bones softer than steel is in big trouble. This damage scale is terrible for simulating spiderman vs. green goblin showdowns. The goblin's head would come off as soon as spidey socked him in the jaw. There are some optional rules to tone this down, but they really feel out of place in the framework of the game.

 

Or Aberrant.

With 1 dot of Mega-Strength (1 ton lifting capacity) you get 5 automatic successes on damage rolls. Assuming the attacker and target roll equal successes for base Strength and Stamina, a normal human will be put at the Maimed Health Level with one punch.

With 3 dots you can lift 25 tons (fairly average for a strong super in the genre) and get 15 automatic damage successes. That would put a normal human 8 damage levels below Dead. Somewhere in the "fine red mist" category.

[Metaphysician]

Originally posted by Armitage

Or Aberrant.

With 1 dot of Mega-Strength (1 ton lifting capacity) you get 5 automatic successes on damage rolls. Assuming the attacker and target roll equal successes for base Strength and Stamina, a normal human will be put at the Maimed Health Level with one punch.

With 3 dots you can lift 25 tons (fairly average for a strong super in the genre) and get 15 automatic damage successes. That would put a normal human 8 damage levels below Dead. Somewhere in the "fine red mist" category.

 

It would, except by default, even Mega-Strength attacks do Bashing damage.

 

A Mega Strength 3 nova still kills the normal in one shot, though, due to damage conversion ( excess bashing over unconscious wrap around as lethal damage ).

[Grailknight]

Aberrant is definitely the game that models THE AUTHORITY best, in fact THE AUTHORITY almost seems like the reference used to design the game sometimes.

 

In Aberrant, the best defense is taking the other guy out first. Unless you spend roughly 1.5x more on your defenses than your attacks, plan on seeing some hospital time after major battles.

[Guest innominatus]

In the specific case of Midnighter, I'm guessing he's got Find Weakness up the yin-yang. But since it doesn't make sense for EVERY character to have Find Weakness, there must be other ways of allowing characters within a campaign to do lethal amounts of damage to one another. Some thoughts I've had on the subject:

 

1.) Just make it a convention of your campaign that everyone has ENORMOUS quantities of Combat Skill Levels (I'm thinking 10 or more at least!) The "default" setting for these levels is that everyone keeps them more-or-less evenly distributed between OCV and DCV; the attacker's OCV levels cancel out the defender's DCV levels, and everybody continues on almost like the levels were never there. But when an opponent is at a disadvantage (say, they're CON-Stunned or Entangled) the attacker shifts all his levels to do extra damage, and suddenly does an roughly 5 DC's more damage (not including any additional damage he might get from Haymakering or Pushing). The downside of this is, with all those extra levels it makes supers virtually untouchable to normal humans; which you may or may not want to be the case in your campaign. It also might not jibe with the actual history of the Authority: Jenny Sparks mentioned that the Engineer had only been in two combat situations prior to joining, and the Doctor was also fairly inexperienced (although he also has the collective experience of every Doctor who has ever lived.)

 

2.) Players might have an additional +30 pts. or so to their Multipowers or other attack powers, with those extra points being heavily limited (High Increased Endurance, Extra Time or Activation Rolls, etc.) Because tapping into this extra reserve would be very taxing and/or unreliable, they don't use them very often; but when they do, they're able to do 20-50% more damage than their standard attacks. It also makes this extra boost cheap enough that it doesn't stand out as a defining trait of the chracter. Or they might have a separate MP of "power stunts" that are similarly limited for special applications of their powers that aren't often used. See my sample character Charlie Hawthorne at this thread: http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13248&perpage=15&pagenumber=3 . As you can see, he has the POTENTIAL to throw a car for miles, or survive a nuclear blast without even being CON-Stunned, or transport 3/4 of a ton of cargo anywhere in the world in under an hour without burning any Long Term Endurance; but these individual tricks cost only a point or two apiece.

 

3.) Another gimmick I've been experimenting with is the idea of "Inspirations", an idea borrowed from the upcoming MMORPG "City of Heroes". Basically, "Inspirations" are power-ups that you can collect and save, and that you can then activate at will to temporarily boost your strength, hit points, accuracy, and so on. Basically, the Power would be built something like this:

 

7d6 Succor vs. Any One Dramatically Appropriate Power (+1/4), Trigger (Variable, +1/2), 4 Charges (-1), Charges Cost END (-1/2), x4 END (-1 1/2), Self Only (-1/2), Extra Time (5 Minutes, -2)

Active Points: 61 Real Points: 9 END Cost: 24

 

How it works is like this: the character spends about 20 minutes each morning working out in the Danger Room, pushing his powers to their very limit (the Set Up for the Power used all four times). Because he's training so intensely with his powers, he'll be able to push himself even harder and give 110% when the fat's in the fire. In game terms, he decides in advance which powers he'd like to be able to enhance in an emergency situation, and sets the Trigger on his own body. (In an old e-mail to Mr. Long, I learned that this is legal, and there's no upper limit to how many Triggers can be set on a given person/object save for GM approval; I'd recommend 3 to 4 [and make the total number of Charges the same] so a character could have prepared one Succor each for an offensive, defensive, and movement power.) Generally, the Trigger for the Succor is some sort of soliloquy ("I only have one chance to stop him!" or "Can't...pass out now...got to...hold on!" or "I've got to catch him before he gets away!" or something like that.) The downside to this construct is you have to declare in advance what powers are going to be boosted by the Succor, which may not be the ones you actually need when the time comes. The plus side is that since you pay the END cost when you set up the Trigger rather than when you activate it, you're less likely to knock yourself out when you give the power that all-out effort. But using Succor this way means that you'll get somewhere between 4-6 extra DC's for your power when you need it most -- and once you throw in manuevers like Pushing or Haymaker, suddenly your attacks can do 10-12 DC's more than normal! That should be enough to go from "whittling away on the villain with a few STUN getting through" to "good chance of CON-Stunning him, even on the master villains". Or from "able to draw blood on a villain" to "doing Impairing or Disabling wounds to the bad guys" (which is exactly what severing limbs and such amount to). Another variant for some types of characters would to be to let those Charges be Continuing for a certain length of time (probably no more than a Turn to a minute) for situations like the speedster who can hyper-accelerate for short sprints, or the strongman who's able to hold up a collapsing building long enough for the occupants to get out, and so on.

 

Of course, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander; and you could also use this power to allow your villains the potential to kill or K.O. heroes with a single shot. To any GM's considering this I'd advise: (1) make sure your players know ahead of time that the villains also have this ability, so there's no ugly surprises; and (2) make it OBVIOUS that the villain is winding up for his Sunday Punch, so the target has the opportunity to Abort to a defensive action. Beyond that, all's fair in love and war...

[Vigil]

in my humble opinion...

 

...it's much more simple than a lot of the good ideas and opinions posted here. IMHO in the world of The Authority, virtually none of the Auhtority's enemies seem to have any real degree of resistant defenses so KAs cut through them like KAs through butter. Given that, even a pretty standard 3d6 HKA pushed to 6d6 HKA as many of the Authority could would almost obliterate a lot of their foes.

 

This is pretty easy to simulate in Champs with the standard disabling and severing rules which state that if any targeted attack does more than 1/3 BODY to a specific limb that limb is disabled or severed. In light of that the above mentioned 3d6 - 6d6 HKA would achieve exactly the effect we see over and over again in The Authority of NPC's heads and/or limbs being torn off.

 

To me itt's not a matter of extraordinary or specialized rule but merely a matter of applied optional rules, mid range KAs and virtually nonexistent resistant defenses.

 

Vigil

[Guest WhammeWhamme]

Re: in my humble opinion...

 

Originally posted by Vigil

...it's much more simple than a lot of the good ideas and opinions posted here. IMHO in the world of The Authority, virtually none of the Auhtority's enemies seem to have any real degree of resistant defenses so KAs cut through them like KAs through butter. Given that, even a pretty standard 3d6 HKA pushed to 6d6 HKA as many of the Authority could would almost obliterate a lot of their foes.

 

This is pretty easy to simulate in Champs with the standard disabling and severing rules which state that if any targeted attack does more than 1/3 BODY to a specific limb that limb is disabled or severed. In light of that the above mentioned 3d6 - 6d6 HKA would achieve exactly the effect we see over and over again in The Authority of NPC's heads and/or limbs being torn off.

 

To me itt's not a matter of extraordinary or specialized rule but merely a matter of applied optional rules, mid range KAs and virtually nonexistent resistant defenses.

 

Vigil

 

I'd go with this... but isn't 'immune to bullets' fairly common?

(Note: I don't read the Authority [thank god], but I DO read the debates...)

The only way to judge power is relative to Real World Stuff... and from what I remember people saying, they end up strong. Even the ones he get turned into mulch.

[Metaphysician]

I'd say just allowing a Body/3 shot to the head mean that the head has been removed would explain the ultralethality.