Can Worldbeaters beat the military?

[Guest WhammeWhamme]

Originally posted by Agent X

This is one of those areas where the game breaks down. The structural nature of the tank itself makes me think that it would not have its full defensive capacity for such a fall, WhammeWhame

 

Why should it matter? That much force, applied ANY which way should do SOMETHING!

 

AAARGH.

 

That does it. I will implement the 'I don't care, dammit' ruleset:

Any superpower used on any military hardware will automatically destroy it. I don't care if it's a 1 pip playing card... BOOOM!

No military hardware or personnel can hit any superpowered being. Rolls will not be made. Even if they're unconscious, tied to a table, and have a huge bullseye stapled on them.

Area Effect Attacks cannot affect any hex a PC or statted NPC is in. They will miss sufficently for that. Even if they're megascale.

 

Or I could just play 1000 point games. Yeah, I like that option better.

Hrm. Better make that 1500. And require all PC's pass the 'Nuke Test'.

[Metaphysician]

Okay, US tanks use two types of ammo in real life: depleted uranium sabot, and HEAT ( shaped charge ).

 

8d6 RKA sounds about right for the sabot round, though personally, I'd cut it down to about 6d6 RKA and add double Armor Piercing, or *maybe* AP and Penetrating.

 

For HEAT rounds, 6d6 RKA, maybe with one level of Armor Piercing, but with a linked 2-3d6 RKA Explosion.

 

Sound about right??

[Vanderbilt_Grad]

Originally posted by Agent X

Let's not go overboard on what the military would be doing. At some point, there isn't anything to ground the game in to some likeness to "real Earth" - The military in this comparison, I sincerely doubt, refers to such measures.

 

I'm simply going on what I read in CU and in one or two cases making logical conclusions.

 

None of the things I suggested are big leaps. In all cases where I mentioned advaned tech, super-soldier programs, and the like I did state that their numbers would be small.

 

If anything I think that you are underestimating the effects that these small changes could make.

[Agent X]

Originally posted by WhammeWhamme

Why should it matter? That much force, applied ANY which way should do SOMETHING!

 

AAARGH.

 

That does it. I will implement the 'I don't care, dammit' ruleset:

Any superpower used on any military hardware will automatically destroy it. I don't care if it's a 1 pip playing card... BOOOM!

No military hardware or personnel can hit any superpowered being. Rolls will not be made. Even if they're unconscious, tied to a table, and have a huge bullseye stapled on them.

Area Effect Attacks cannot affect any hex a PC or statted NPC is in. They will miss sufficently for that. Even if they're megascale.

 

Or I could just play 1000 point games. Yeah, I like that option better.

Hrm. Better make that 1500. And require all PC's pass the 'Nuke Test'.

One of the areas where I think this game breaks down is the idea that range modifiers and area affect attacks are the only thing that matters when a character is moving at high speeds. I've never been satisfied by the idea that an extremely maneuverable character flying at, say, 700 mph or thereabouts non-com is that easy to hit.

[Agent X]

Originally posted by Vanderbilt_Grad

I'm simply going on what I read in CU and in one or two cases making logical conclusions.

 

None of the things I suggested are big leaps. In all cases where I mentioned advaned tech, super-soldier programs, and the like I did state that their numbers would be small.

 

If anything I think that you are underestimating the effects that these small changes could make.

I'm not underestimating it. I'm arguing it's a bad way to go. At some point, we might as well play superagents vs. the supervillains and laugh when the superheroes offer to help.

[Chuckg]

Has it occurred to you yet that there are enormous amounts of plots which *can't* be fixed by throwing an army at them?

 

Or are your games only about kicking the crap out of the target du jour?

 

When you want to kill people and break things, call out the divisions of guys with guns. When you want to take down giant monsters, call out the people who own strategic bombers and cruise missiles. When you want to lock down a small nation, send in the Marines.

 

But when you want to keep Teleios from replacing half of the Congressional Subcommittee on Bio-Ethics with clones, call the Champions. When you want to stop GRAB from stealing the Crown Jewels and mooning the queen, call the New Knights. When Viperia's busy throwing a hissy fit in Mall Of America because Hot Topics ran out of her favorite "alternative" lipstick shade, call Unity. Etc, etc.

[Guest Champsguy]

Originally posted by Chuckg

> Just last year, an M1-A1 Abrams shot a hotel room where

> the Army believed snipers were hiding. Television crews on

> the same floor survived. That means it wasn't too far above

> a 6D6 RKA. That 8D6 Explosion would have destroyed the

> entire top half of that hotel. [snip]

 

How, in that 'vast knowledge' of real-world military hardware that you claimed, did you avoid noticing that said tank was not firing HE during that incident? I thought you wear supposed to be a military hardware gearhead?

 

Sheesh.

 

The only correction the 8d6 Explosion needs is (edit) nothing, because it doesn't actually exist in TUV.

 

If you'd been paying attention, I was criticizing Steve Long's writeups. Page 326 of the 5th Edition rulebook:

 

"It is armed and equipped with a main gun (105mm cannon, RKA 8D6, Explosion, 55 charges)..."

 

As I said earlier "I didn't buy TUV, because the writeups in that book are similarly flawed" (or something to that effect). As I said, the US Army's tanks don't come with HE rounds. Thus, the 5th Edition writeup is seriously flawed because it appears to mimic such a weapon.

 

Even an 8D6 RKA, you see, without Explosion, would have blown that building to pieces. Let's look at page 304 of the 5th Edition book, specifically, Wall Body. Let's determine that the outer wall of that hotel was made of stone (that's what it looked like to me). We'll give it the benefit of the doubt, and say that it was re-inforced concrete, the hardest stone listed on page 304. That gives it a Def of 8. We'll also give it the benefit of the doubt, and say that it was a full meter thick (which it wasn't, but let's pretend). That gives it a Body of 11. So, to punch a hole in that building, we'd need to do 19 Body.

 

Quoting from 304: "A character who exceeds the wall's Body has created a human-sized hole in it. The size of the hole doubles for every +1 Body inflicted over the wall's base Body." Given that an 8D6 RKA averages 28 Body, that's 9 Body, or about 500 doublings, more than it needs. As I said before, tank guns don't do that. The top of the building didn't disintigrate, so we know that the tank didn't shoot it with an 8D6 RKA. Got it?

 

Let's look at another problem. Knockback. An M1-A1 Abrams can be shot by it's main gun without going anywhere. Is this true of the book writeups? Again, I don't have TUV, so I'll use the 5th Edition main book writeup as my basis (I'm not buying TUV, because I've seen Steve Long's vehicle writeups for years now, and he's not changing his style--if anything, he's getting worse). The M1-A1 has 9 inches of KB Resistance from its size. If it gets shot with an 8D6 RKA (28 Body average), it's going to take 8" of knockback, on average (28 - 3D6 (11 average) = 17" - 9" KBR = 8" of flying tank). Given that tanks don't usually fling each other 50 feet through the air when they hit, I'd say there's something wrong with those writeups.

[Guest Champsguy]

Originally posted by Vanderbilt_Grad

The CU military has several important differences from our real world military.

 

1. They have experience with fighting superbeings starting with WW II & have had time to develop strategies and tactics specifically designed for dealing with them. Note that 100+ speed 2 soldiers are not all going to go on phases 6 & 12. Many will hold actions & stagger their fire. You can expect attacks from *someone* on just about every phase. They will also co-ordinate fire.

 

2. They have a super-soldier programs. They may not have tons of them but imagine special forces with near-superhuman and maybe slightly above superhuman stats.

 

3. They have power armor squads. Again they may not have many & the armor will probably not be as good as the heroes get but they have them & know how to use them both deployed individually in squads & supporting other troops.

 

4. They have a small amount of advanced tech. This isn’t ever really well defined but even a few things like ‘mind link’ based radios that can’t be jammed by ‘radio darkness’ could make a huge difference. They probably even have a few units with energy based weapons. A few ‘x-ray vision scanners,’ ‘stun guns,’ and non-lethal area attacks might even things out in the urban areas a bit. Their tanks might allow better perception too.

 

5. The CU military also has a small number of it’s own super being soldiers. Adding supers of their own to the mix changes things quite a bit.

 

6. The military probably has access to UNTIL and PRIMUS information on super beings and will generally know *exactly* what they are going against.

 

That's all fine and good, but I don't think that's exactly what this thread was about. The thread was about super heroes vs. F-16s and Abrams tanks, not "your super team vs the military super team". Of course the military in a super world would be a little different. But I didn't think that was the discussion at hand.

[Chuckg]

> If you'd been paying attention, I was criticizing Steve Long's > writeups. Page 326 of the 5th Edition rulebook:

 

> "It is armed and equipped with a main gun (105mm cannon,

> RKA 8D6, Explosion, 55 charges)..."

 

> As I said earlier "I didn't buy TUV, because the writeups in

> that book are similarly flawed" (or something to that effect).

> As I said, the US Army's tanks don't come with HE rounds.

> Thus, the 5th Edition writeup is seriously flawed because it

> appears to mimic such a weapon.

 

You know, a 'major military gear buff' such as yourself should have remembered that the original main gun of the M1A1 Abrams MBT /was/ the 105mm tube... which *did* have the 105mm HE round. At one time. The 120mm Rhinemetall tube was not put on the Abrams until the late -A1 refits and the -A2s.

 

Steve Long's original writeups can be criticized for being a few years behind the times... AAMOF, I think they were copied over from the 4e "Hero Almanac" writeups, which /did/ come out at around the time that the -A1 was still using the old M-60 tube with HE and etc...

 

/sigh/

 

And yet you criticize Steve Long's writeups by saying that they didn't match the performance of our tanks in Iraq, when even the casual Tom Clancy reader would know that our tanks in Iraq had the 120mm main gun and the description you referred to was explicitly talking about the 105mm!!!

 

My faith in your credentials as a major military gear buff is now dead.

[Guest Champsguy]

I think you guys are also overlooking one major problem the military has: it can't get that many guys into position.

 

Supers battles happen extremely quickly. If a fight goes on for 2 or 3 turns, it's a long fight. That's less than a minute in real-world time. Most of our superhuman combats were over (in one way or another) before an entire turn had passed. Your average human can't run inside a building and climb a flight of stairs before the battle is over and done with.

 

The problem this means for the military is that you're almost never, ever going to get the superhumans to be where the concentration of your forces are. Sure, you may have 10,000 men with machine guns, but unless you literally set a trap for the supers, you'll never get to use them. The US has the world's only deployable military, and it takes us weeks to move any significant amount of force. That's blazing fast compared to everybody else. I've read some of the proposed plans for increasing the speed with which our military deploys. Some of the most radical have us getting a division on-site within 2 days. Oh gosh! 2 days!

 

Unless the military knows exactly where a superhuman will be at exactly the right time, they won't be able to bring even a fraction of that firepower to bear.

[Guest Champsguy]

Originally posted by Chuckg

> If you'd been paying attention, I was criticizing Steve Long's > writeups. Page 326 of the 5th Edition rulebook:

 

> "It is armed and equipped with a main gun (105mm cannon,

> RKA 8D6, Explosion, 55 charges)..."

 

> As I said earlier "I didn't buy TUV, because the writeups in

> that book are similarly flawed" (or something to that effect).

> As I said, the US Army's tanks don't come with HE rounds.

> Thus, the 5th Edition writeup is seriously flawed because it

> appears to mimic such a weapon.

 

You know, a 'major military gear buff' such as yourself should have remembered that the original main gun of the M1A1 Abrams MBT /was/ the 105mm tube... which *did* have the 105mm HE round. At one time. The 120mm Rhinemetall tube was not put on the Abrams until the late -A1 refits and the -A2s.

 

Steve Long's original writeups can be criticized for being a few years behind the times... AAMOF, I think they were copied over from the 4e "Hero Almanac" writeups, which /did/ come out at around the time that the -A1 was still using the old M-60 tube with HE and etc...

 

/sigh/

 

And yet you criticize Steve Long's writeups by saying that they didn't match the performance of our tanks in Iraq, when even the casual Tom Clancy reader would know that our tanks in Iraq had the 120mm main gun and the description you referred to was explicitly talking about the 105mm!!!

 

My faith in your credentials as a major military gear buff is now dead.

 

I don't care if it's dead or not. I know that the 105 mm gun was used back in the late 80s. But it damn sure wasn't 8D6 RKA Explosion. It also wasn't copied directly from the 4th Edition Hero Almanac 2. That writeup was a 5D6+1 RKA double AP with (I believe) a +1 Increased Stun Multiple. I'd have to go and check. In fact, other than that Almanac 2 writeup, there weren't any prior publications of Abrams tank main guns in Hero (the 4th Edition BBB had the same stats for the tank's hull, but had no writeup for the gun). The 8D6 RKA Explosion is something completely new to Hero 5th Edition. That scrap of text I quoted was first published in 2002.

 

Understand what I'm saying? Understand now why I have virtually ZERO faith in Steve Long's vehicle writeups? He failed to get the basic attributes of the tank right.

 

Now, I wanna see your response on my other points.

[Chuckg]

> Unless the military knows exactly where a superhuman

> will be at exactly the right time, they won't be able to

> bring even a fraction of that firepower to bear.

 

1) The whole idea of "superhumans vs. the military" presumes that such a fight is actually going on. If it's "the military tries to find supers while they hide in the city", well, that's not a military mission, that's a PRIMUS mission. We've already said that in-thread.

 

2) You're talking about infantry deployment. If Firewing tried to, for example, strafe the Washington Monument, there'd be F-18s out of Bolling AFB in five minutes.

 

Sure, it takes only 2-3 Turns for the actual fight. But even "normal" Champions campaigns RP taking time to arrive and leave. Unless your team has a mass MegaScale teleporter for a member, natch.

 

3) Having already said a minimum of three times that the military is not suited for every mission and that both superheroes and agencies such as UNTIL and PRIMUS would still have no dearth of work to do even if we agreed that none but the most megapowerful superbeings could take on a large field formation and live, why are you still harping on a point that was already settled an hour ago?

[Chuckg]

> I don't care if it's dead or not.

 

Don't confuse you with facts, your mind is made up, eh?

 

[snip]

> It also wasn't copied directly from the 4th Edition Hero

> Almanac 2.

 

Fair enough.

 

> The 8D6 RKA Explosion is something completely new to Hero

> 5th Edition. That scrap of text I quoted was first published

> in 2002.

 

So? It was still obviously referring to the -A1 series of tanks, seeing as how the words "105mm" were there, and there has never been a 105mm mounted on an -A2 model.

 

> Understand what I'm saying? Understand now why I have

> virtually ZERO faith in Steve Long's vehicle writeups? He

> failed to get the basic attributes of the tank right.

 

Actually, he was fairly accurate on them. It's merely your obtuse insistence that he was talking about the same tank and same gun system that you used for your example.

 

Which is why TUV updated to the -A2 series 120mm gun, natch. Oh, wait, you didn't bother to read TUV. You simply read one entry and assumed forever after that Steve Long could never be right about anything.

 

As far as answering 'your other points' -- are you even bothering to read anything that isn't you?

[Agent X]

Originally posted by Chuckg

Has it occurred to you yet that there are enormous amounts of plots which *can't* be fixed by throwing an army at them?

 

Or are your games only about kicking the crap out of the target du jour?

 

When you want to kill people and break things, call out the divisions of guys with guns. When you want to take down giant monsters, call out the people who own strategic bombers and cruise missiles. When you want to lock down a small nation, send in the Marines.

 

But when you want to keep Teleios from replacing half of the Congressional Subcommittee on Bio-Ethics with clones, call the Champions. When you want to stop GRAB from stealing the Crown Jewels and mooning the queen, call the New Knights. When Viperia's busy throwing a hissy fit in Mall Of America because Hot Topics ran out of her favorite "alternative" lipstick shade, call Unity. Etc, etc.

Of course not. It never occurred to me. I've only been playing this game for more than a decade and I only collected comic books from 1975 into the late 80s/early 90s. Chuckg, these statements aren't necessary.

[Chuckg]

/rolleyes/

 

Re: your point about destroying buildings and vehicular knockback... apparently, somebody forgot that the 'Real Weapon' disad can, at DM's discretion, apply at no cost to real-world weapons... like tank cannons.

 

Which would cover both the hotel not collapsing (AP projectile makes only little hole, Real Weapon) and the tanks not taking massive knockback (DU either blows through or sticks in, but doesn't push, Real Weapon).

 

The more detail you go into, the less I am impressed with your knowledge of either the rules or the vehicles.

[Chuckg]

"At some point, we might as well play superagents vs. the supervillains and laugh when the superheroes offer to help."

 

-- Agent X

 

Yup, my statements were necessary all right.

[Agent X]

Originally posted by Chuckg

> If you'd been paying attention, I was criticizing Steve Long's > writeups. Page 326 of the 5th Edition rulebook:

 

> "It is armed and equipped with a main gun (105mm cannon,

> RKA 8D6, Explosion, 55 charges)..."

 

> As I said earlier "I didn't buy TUV, because the writeups in

> that book are similarly flawed" (or something to that effect).

> As I said, the US Army's tanks don't come with HE rounds.

> Thus, the 5th Edition writeup is seriously flawed because it

> appears to mimic such a weapon.

 

You know, a 'major military gear buff' such as yourself should have remembered that the original main gun of the M1A1 Abrams MBT /was/ the 105mm tube... which *did* have the 105mm HE round. At one time. The 120mm Rhinemetall tube was not put on the Abrams until the late -A1 refits and the -A2s.

 

Steve Long's original writeups can be criticized for being a few years behind the times... AAMOF, I think they were copied over from the 4e "Hero Almanac" writeups, which /did/ come out at around the time that the -A1 was still using the old M-60 tube with HE and etc...

 

/sigh/

 

And yet you criticize Steve Long's writeups by saying that they didn't match the performance of our tanks in Iraq, when even the casual Tom Clancy reader would know that our tanks in Iraq had the 120mm main gun and the description you referred to was explicitly talking about the 105mm!!!

 

My faith in your credentials as a major military gear buff is now dead.

Crass.

[Guest Champsguy]

Originally posted by Chuckg

> Unless the military knows exactly where a superhuman

> will be at exactly the right time, they won't be able to

> bring even a fraction of that firepower to bear.

 

1) The whole idea of "superhumans vs. the military" presumes that such a fight is actually going on. If it's "the military tries to find supers while they hide in the city", well, that's not a military mission, that's a PRIMUS mission. We've already said that in-thread.

 

Well, I'm not arguing that the fight would never take place. I'm saying that when the fight does take place, the nature of superhumans (and the nature of the military) will determine the nature of the battle. In this sense, superhumans have a huge advantage regarding deployment speed.

 

In other words, Firewing may fight a tank. But he's not going to ever have to fight a fully coordinated tank platoon with infantry support. The nature of superhumans lets them choose the battlefield.

 

2) You're talking about infantry deployment. If Firewing tried to, for example, strafe the Washington Monument, there'd be F-18s out of Bolling AFB in five minutes.

 

Sure, it takes only 2-3 Turns for the actual fight. But even "normal" Champions campaigns RP taking time to arrive and leave. Unless your team has a mass MegaScale teleporter for a member, natch.[//b]

 

I will grant you one point. In our game, we do have mega-movement powers, so I'm sort of assuming that the super team will as well. I prefer to think of most super teams as faster than the old 4th Edition Champions, where Defender had something like 15 mph flight. "You! Kid on the bike! Come back here! Don't pedal so fast!"

 

Ogre makes his escape on a moped. "Ha ha, Champions! You'll never catch me now!" (rings the bell)

"He's right! Too... fast!!! Armor... jets... can't keep... up!"

 

 

3) Having already said a minimum of three times that the military is not suited for every mission and that both superheroes and agencies such as UNTIL and PRIMUS would still have no dearth of work to do even if we agreed that none but the most megapowerful superbeings could take on a large field formation and live, why are you still harping on a point that was already settled an hour ago?

 

I'm wondering what role you do think the military will assume? I can't think of them being well-equipped at all to deal with superhuman menaces. I can see them fighting Viper, or maybe fighting Dr Destroyer's robots and goons, but not much else.

[Agent X]

Originally posted by Chuckg

> I don't care if it's dead or not.

 

Don't confuse you with facts, your mind is made up, eh?

 

[snip]

> It also wasn't copied directly from the 4th Edition Hero

> Almanac 2.

 

Fair enough.

 

> The 8D6 RKA Explosion is something completely new to Hero

> 5th Edition. That scrap of text I quoted was first published

> in 2002.

 

So? It was still obviously referring to the -A1 series of tanks, seeing as how the words "105mm" were there, and there has never been a 105mm mounted on an -A2 model.

 

> Understand what I'm saying? Understand now why I have

> virtually ZERO faith in Steve Long's vehicle writeups? He

> failed to get the basic attributes of the tank right.

 

Actually, he was fairly accurate on them. It's merely your obtuse insistence that he was talking about the same tank and same gun system that you used for your example.

 

Which is why TUV updated to the -A2 series 120mm gun, natch. Oh, wait, you didn't bother to read TUV. You simply read one entry and assumed forever after that Steve Long could never be right about anything.

 

As far as answering 'your other points' -- are you even bothering to read anything that isn't you?

You seem ignorant of the degree of familiarity Champsguy has when it comes to Steve Long. Perhaps, you should ask some old-timers about Champsguy's role on the older boards.

[Agent X]

Originally posted by Chuckg

Yup, my statements were necessary all right.

No. What GV was describing would pretty much make superheroes useless.

[Chuckg]

> Well, I'm not arguing that the fight would never take place.

> I'm saying that when the fight does take place, the nature

> of superhumans (and the nature of the military) will

> determine the nature of the battle. In this sense,

> superhumans have a huge advantage regarding deployment

> speed.

 

Oh, for the love of...

 

Yo, "major military buff". Deployment speed is only a factor if you're on the *OFFENSE*.

 

If the superhumans are picking the time and place of the battle, then obviously, the military is on the *DEFENSE*.

 

> In other words, Firewing may fight a tank. But he's not going

> to ever have to fight a fully coordinated tank platoon with

> infantry support.

 

Unless he's picking on that tank while it's still in the tank park at the base, he damn sure will... because when tanks deploy, they deploy in units. With infantry support, whenever they're near a built-up area. Sending a tank out into the field all alone with no other friendlies nearby is considered "Hey enemy! Please kill my tank!"

 

Addendum -- even the mighty M1A2 Abrams, considered the most ridiculously over-armored AFV in the world -- and I speak of the IRL opinion of it, not the game writup -- dies if you hit it in the right spot on the flank or rear aspect with a sufficient anti-vehicle weapon. Modern MBTs are built very much on a "This Side Towards Enemy" design philosophy.

 

So whenever possible, tanks move /at least/ in pairs... so that they can cover each other's backs. Lone tank = vulnerable. Tankers hate vulnerability. It makes them feel very edgy.

 

> The nature of superhumans lets them choose the

> battlefield.

 

At which point, the military has both the disadvantages and the advantages of playing for the defense.

 

[snip]

> I will grant you one point. In our game, we do have mega-

> movement powers, so I'm sort of assuming that the super

> team will as well. I prefer to think of most super teams as

> faster than the old 4th Edition Champions, where Defender

> had something like 15 mph flight. "You! Kid on the bike!

> Come back here! Don't pedal so fast!"

 

The "average" genre superteam uses a super-plane to get to and from battles, not a warp gate.

 

I hope you remembered to buy Mach 5+ for that plane, plus some really mondo radar invisibility, plus a force field -- or else some day, you might be two miles up and going along at MegaScale and finding out that even Brick-Man isn't gonna survive the long trip all the way down to the ground when some inconsiderate jerk stuffs a six-pack of Sidewinders up your afterburner.

 

(It is not a coincidence that my own team plane design *did* have Insvisibility to Radio, No Fringe -- a Darkness vs. Radio Jammer - a Force Field generator to back up the kendrium hull -- and enough MegaScale flight to leave even an SR-71 sucking its exhaust. It was specifically *designed* to give the laugh to the US Air Force.

 

But many superteams, even such notables as the X-Men or Avengers, don't get quite that paranoid in their superplane design.)

 

[snip]

> I'm wondering what role you do think the military will

> assume?

 

Vs. metahumans? Short of rampaging giant monsters, metahumans foolish enough to try and intervene on conventional battlefields, people who attack military bases, 'Team Achilles' style actions by elite spec-ops units trying to quietly zorch the more vulnerable metahumans as they sleep in what they think are their safe little beds, and extreme cases like "Doctor Destroyer vs. the US Navy, see 'Battle Of Destroyer Island' 1991", I don't see them assuming that large a role at all.

 

OTOH, if the superhumans are dumb enough to try and engage the military on /their/ home ground, they'd either be massively powerful or else they're going to be massively dead.

 

This is what, the fourth time I've said this or words to this effect?

[Metaphysician]

Why, pray tell me, should organizations be magically forbidden from having agents and operatives above a certain level of competence ( point value )?? Its not like they can have many; 350 points is more less the equivalent of an upper end special forces trooper. Besides, if you drop a squad of properly equipped Delta Force ( or VIPER Superhuman Combat Specialists. . . ) on the Champions, they *should* win.

[Chuckg]

BTW, I might remind people that "350 point agents" exist becuase those agenst have to pay points for their equipment.

 

If they didn't have to, they'd be more like 150 to 200 point Heroic or Very Competent Normals.

 

Which /are/ the competence levels guys like Navy SEALs and Recon Marines should be at. You ever /met/ any of those guys for real? With rare exceptions, they are so frighteningly competent and well-rounded that they're enough to make you believe in metahumans.

[Guest Champsguy]

Originally posted by Chuckg

/rolleyes/

 

Re: your point about destroying buildings and vehicular knockback... apparently, somebody forgot that the 'Real Weapon' disad can, at DM's discretion, apply at no cost to real-world weapons... like tank cannons.

 

Which would cover both the hotel not collapsing (AP projectile makes only little hole, Real Weapon) and the tanks not taking massive knockback (DU either blows through or sticks in, but doesn't push, Real Weapon).

 

The more detail you go into, the less I am impressed with your knowledge of either the rules or the vehicles.

 

I know about the real weapon limitation. Steve Long introduced it in Dark Champions. So what? If Steve Long said that a tank cannon was a 100D6 RKA, would that be okay?

 

Using "real weapon" is a cop-out, because it totally divorces the weapon from any real-world effect. You should be able to read the stat sheet and determine with some degree of accuracy exactly what will happen if you shoot X target with it.

 

What will happen if you shoot a tank cannon at Hyperman's Fortress of Pimpitude? I should be able to tell by the stat sheet. There shouldn't be a limitation on the weapon that says "May not actually do this to any object".

 

An 8D6 RKA is powerful. It levels buildings. A blast or two from one of those can destroy the Golden Gate bridge. That's part of the fun of hurling around an 8D6 RKA. Tank cannons aren't 8D6 RKAs. They just don't do that much damage to the scenery. A 5 or 6D6 AP RKA is much more in tune with what that gun should do.

[Agent X]

Originally posted by Metaphysician

Why, pray tell me, should organizations be magically forbidden from having agents and operatives above a certain level of competence ( point value )?? Its not like they can have many; 350 points is more less the equivalent of an upper end special forces trooper. Besides, if you drop a squad of properly equipped Delta Force ( or VIPER Superhuman Combat Specialists. . . ) on the Champions, they *should* win.

 

No, they shouldn't.