Diamond Robot

[Tech]

I'm going to have a villain make a robot out of diamond. What DEF would you give it?

[Barton]

Very high, but remember to apply disadvantage, can burn in oxygen. Diamond is just carbon with some minor trace elements.

[Tech]

19 minutes ago, Barton said:

Very high, but remember to apply disadvantage, can burn in oxygen. Diamond is just carbon with some minor trace elements.

 

Diamonds are superb conductors of heat and burns a little after 1600 degrees; it's not known for it's ability to burn. However, they are subject to being cut by a precise strike. Does anything think a DEF of 18 is too much?

[LoneWolf]

Diamonds are harder than steel, but are very brittle.   I am not sure they would actually have more defense than steel.   You can cut a diamond with a blow from steel.   Diamond should probably not have more defense than steel and might have the ablative limitation.   

 

Don’t forget that it is not that hard to make artificial diamonds.  Despite that they are not used in modern armor.  If they were effective armor the military would use artificial diamonds for protection.   
 

[Doc Democracy]

To be honest, I would give it the DEF it needed.  I would be inclined to make it high with the potential of the heroes discovering that if they use particular wavelengths or frequencies the DEF reduced significantly.

[Duke Bushido]

3 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

To be honest, I would give it the DEF it needed.  I would be inclined to make it high with the potential of the heroes discovering that if they use particular wavelengths or frequencies the DEF reduced significantly.

 

 

That right there.

 

You have seen the conversation:

 

"Well, in reality, steel blag blah diamond blah blah blah crushed blah blah but melts before the other burns blah blah..."

 

(Note:  the 'blah blah's are not condescension; I was recently bitten by a 50's vampire, and it is starting to affect me...  Nah; seriously: it was just faster than both quoting or retyping entire chunks of the conversations above. No offense intended to anyone)

 

Anyway, you have seen this conversation burst out here where you just asked a simple question (there was an early edition villain named Black Diamond, later renamed Diamond.  Use her outrageous defenses if you have access.  If not, visit the HERO store and snag aome access.   ).

 

Anyway, if you do this thing--  Professor Tumanidolers has built a robot entirely from diamonds!  If only he hadn't done this!  He would still have his millions of dollars and have no need to be a super villain!  But hey, he has done it now, so roll dice!

 

You are going to have  this exact conversation at the table, and while it is not without genuine merit, it also isn't going to help the game get moving.

 

So, as Doc suggested, give RoboBux the defense you want it to have, and keep moving.  Justify it as diamond if you want (at your own peril).  Personally, I find that avoiding game-stopping discussions of the in-game values of real-world things leads to the creation of the entire spectrum of plotonium, from simple Bolognium to Collapsium to Bullcrapium.  Probably how Marvel got Vibranium anyway: 

 

"Hypothetically, how thick would armor made of vanadium steel have to be to protect against  an anti-tank rifle?  Really? How about if we add some chrome molybdenum?  What?  Seriously?  Okay, I am making this new guy's armor out of a rare space metal called Vibranium.  How stronf is it?  It is as strong as I say it is, and not one bit less, okay?

 

 

Perhaps the unobtanium of your universe happens to be visually indistinguishable from diamonds.

 

Have fun with it.

 

 

Edited August 1, 2023 by Duke Bushido

[Clonus]

5 hours ago, Barton said:

Very high, but remember to apply disadvantage, can burn in oxygen. Diamond is just carbon with some minor trace elements.

 

Flesh burns a lot easier.  

4 hours ago, Tech said:

 

Diamonds are superb conductors of heat and burns a little after 1600 degrees; it's not known for it's ability to burn. However, they are subject to being cut by a precise strike. Does anything think a DEF of 18 is too much?

 

Nah.  Superheroes and villains are more about the concept of a thing than the thing itself.  For example Spider-Man's powers are not actually those of a spider.  They are just spider-themed even though they work totally differently.  However Find Weakness should be really effective versus diamond armour because having breaking points is part of the the theme of diamonds.  

[Hugh Neilson]

20 hours ago, Tech said:

 

Diamonds are superb conductors of heat and burns a little after 1600 degrees; it's not known for it's ability to burn. However, they are subject to being cut by a precise strike. Does anything think a DEF of 18 is too much?

 

If this is an automaton, your players may find 18 DEF too high.  Seriously, if we limited Superman to the defenses of steel, we wouldn't be close to Champions guidelines.  Like anything else this is SFX for the level of challenge desired.

[DShomshak]

As Duke and others say, forget reality. Comic books don't deal in realism. Go with the *idea* of diamond, the mythology. Give the Diamond Robot as much DEF as necessary to be nigh invulnerable to the PCs' attacks. "Muah ha ha hah! You fools, my Diamond Robot is unstoppable! Soon I will RUUUULE THE WORRRRLD!"

 

But then give it a heft Vulnerability to attacks that are backed by Find Weakness, to represent the equally legendary property of diamond to cleave to a precisely targeted blow. So you have the scene of the villain screaming "NOOOO! THIS CANNOT BE!" as the "invincible" Diamond Robot shatters when the heroes figure out its weakness (that the villain overlooked even though it should be obvious to a well read 10 year old).

 

Dean Shomshak

[Gauntlet]

On 7/31/2023 at 12:17 PM, LoneWolf said:

Diamonds are harder than steel, but are very brittle.   I am not sure they would actually have more defense than steel.   You can cut a diamond with a blow from steel.   Diamond should probably not have more defense than steel and might have the ablative limitation.   

 

Don’t forget that it is not that hard to make artificial diamonds.  Despite that they are not used in modern armor.  If they were effective armor the military would use artificial diamonds for protection.   
 

While I agree diamonds being useless verse Physical Attacks, it is possible that they could give better defense against energy type attacks. And considering that currently in real life the majority of attacks are physical in nature, it may change as direct energy attack become more available. Of course I am not a physics major so this is a guess on my part.

[GDShore]

Actually I would give it a high to very high def. vs. blunt force, energy and heat weapons, but a low def. vs chop, slash and thrust weapons. After all as someone mentioned diamonds are cleaved by a steel wedge tapped be a mallet.

[unclevlad]

People conflate hardness and toughness, when they're quite different.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardness

 

Mostly, scratch hardness...and diamond is still about as hard as they get.  (IIRC there are some exotic materials that might beat it, and some I know come REAL close.)  

 

BUT, a diamond's structure makes it very easy to cleave...separate it along a crystal face.  Diamonds in rings often take damage at the facets due to this.  Not much, not all that fast, but rings don't get knocked around all that much.

 

Toughness is something else.  From the article:

 

Quote

The toughness of a material is the maximum amount of energy it can absorb before fracturing, which is different from the amount of force that can be applied. Toughness tends to be small for brittle materials, because elastic and plastic deformations allow materials to absorb large amounts of energy.

 

The very, very rigid structure of a diamond does not allow deformation, ergo it's brittle.  Toughness and brittleness are generally the 2 sides of the same spectrum;  the opposite of hardness is softness.

 

As noted, tho...we're not doing physics here, we're playing a game.  It doesn't have to be "diamond" in the full sense;  in fact, much like a stone creature...taking it literally?  How would such a critter move?  Well, his power is such that it lets him move!!  

 

Well, fine, in that case, it also gives him more toughness than would be expected.  

 

BTW, the density of diamond is about 3.5, IIRC, so there's justification for some DI there.

Quick digression:  Shrinking with Normal Mass.  Oh dear.  2 levels of Shrinking with Normal Mass means your density is basically 2-3x that of any metal, including the refractory metals that you can beat on all day, and won't show a ding.  So what's the theoretical PD for someone with this ridiculous density?  Similarly, the melting points of all refractory metals are *extremely* high;  the loose definition is a melting point over 2100 C;  the tighter one is even a little higher than that.  So the ED from these is also crazy high.  And 3 levels of Normal Mass shrinking????  Density exceeding 500????  You're not getting into the range of degenerate matter, but you're far beyond anything we know.  From Phys.org:

 

Quote

Being a star, the sun's density varies considerably between its outer layers and its core. On average, it has a density of 1.408 g/cm3, which is roughly one-quarter that of Earth. However, models of the sun estimate that it has a density of 162.2 g/cm3 closer to the core, which is 12.4 times that of Earth.

 

So density of 500 is 3x higher.  Nothing is gonna penetrate.  

But we can't exactly define this in game terms, now, can we?   So if ya wanna do this, ya wing it.

[Duke Bushido]

OP:  just keep following this conversation, and imagine it coming from your players, eating into game time.....

 

Avoid reality; too many people are familiar with it.  As someone said quite nicely a bit upwind:  go with the _idea_ of the thing, id you decide to have any tie in to the real world.

 

 

[LoneWolf]

DEF is not just the ability to stop a blow it is also being able to absorb the kinetic energy.   A person in armor can be beaten to death physically without the armor being penetrated.   That is why actual armor also includes padding underneath to help distribute the kinetic energy of a blow. The outer shell of the armor spreads the force of the blow over as larger area and the inner padding further absorbs the energy.  

 

Diamond by itself would probably transfer the kinetic energy fairly well.   How well it would work vs energy depends on the type of energy.  Diamonds would probably give decent protection vs heat.  But I don’t diamond is going to stop light-based attacks that well.  

 

I agree with Duke about just giving it the defense you think it should have, but still think this is an interesting thread.   
 

[DShomshak]

For a gratuitous digression that would make me swat the head of player who tried it at the game table... The great hardness of diamond makes it indispensible for scientists studying the properties of matter that is under immense pressure. The article I read called it "Diamond Anvil" technology (which sounds like the name of a rock band, or maybe a supervillain). You squeeze a sample of the material you want to study between two diamonds! Not only are the diamonds rigid enough to transfer al the pressure to the sample instead of bending themselves, the transparency means you can also do neat stuff like heat the sample with lasers in order to simulate the heat and pressure of the Earth's core. IIRC scientists have even made metallic hydrogen, like in the depths of Jupiter. You study the compressed material with X-rays, neutron beams, and whatever else you can get to pass through the diamonds as well.

 

So you've got diamonds in your experiment, you've got lasers, you've got otherworldly forms of matter, and maybe subatomic particle beams for good measure. Cue the lab accident for your next Champions adventure!

 

Dean Shomshak

[unclevlad]

Diamond energy defense...it's an electrical insulator, so good there. It transfers heat efficiently, tho, so not so good there.

 

As Duke noted...yeah, avoid reality, at least unqualified.  "Seems like" or some other hedge is a useful escape clause.  One thing that SERIOUSLY annoys me as a reader is when a writer...let's say, says a weapon's made of gold...but then says it's feather light.  The material properties of diamonds...the meaning of things like hardness vs. toughness...those are a tad esoteric.  Forgivable to not get them right.  But the fact that gold is HEAVY, is pretty darn central.

 

Similarly...the biggest common mistake in sci fi is trying to explain too much.  

[Tech]

I've already made up my mind, thanks.