"Standard" Power Level -- Not So Super?

[Chudwine]

I personally always had a problem with what I call the "dozen army rangers syndrome". If your heroes storm the master villians base, take out his minions and stop his doomsday plot therefore "saving the world", it doesn't feel as important when you know that a dozen highly trained, heavily armed army rangers could have easily achieved the same result.

 

I admit that this is only important for groups or players who feel that the rules define the world. But for those of us who do, it's hard to feel like one of earth's greatest heroes when an antitank rocket (or M50 machine, stinger missle or whatever) is three times as powerful as your biggest attack. It's hard to play in a scenario where you are earth's last hope when you know that it is trivially easy for any major world government to send out a real world strike force that dwarfs the PCs in power.

 

There are several solutions to this (for people who see this as a problem - clearly not everyone does).

1. Don't use the hero system to run an "Earth's Mightiest Heroes campaign". Stick with "Heroes of Metro City" or whatever.

2. Increase the character's points to the point where the truly are more powerful than any real world force. That solution has it's own balance issues as certain powers and constructs (Cosmic Pools, Desolidification, etc) which would normally define a 350 point character are just part of the package for high point characters and as a result all the PCs begin (mechanically at least) to look the same.

Granted a good group of players and a GM who is on the ball can keep this from happening.

3. Introduce house rules that allow for more powerful PCs. The last campaign I ran was of the "Earth's Mightiest Heroes" variety and I introduced a notion called "Scale Factor." This was before 5E and Megascale was introduced so to avoid needless confusion I changed the term to "Force Multiplier" or FM.

In essence, I said that everything in the universe had a Force Multiplier. Force Multipliers were simply assigned - they did not cost points. The real world's FM was 1. FMs went up by factors of 2 (FM 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 etc). The basic idea what that everyone and everything multiplied their attacks and defenses by their FM. The rules required some other tweaking as well of course (tweaks for damage reduction, velocity based damage etc). but in essence the players created standard level characters at a Force Multiplier of 4.

Since they were (essentially) the only FM 4 heroes in the world, there were plenty of circumstances where they and they alone could stop the bad guy or prevent the natural disaster or whatever.

 

The Force Multiplier rules added some additional complications, of course, but they did allow us to play a "Cosmic Heroes" game with fairly standard champions writeups, which was an acceptable tradeoff.

[Trebuchet]

If superheroes were just brightly clad artillery then worrying about their relative power levels compared to conventional forces might make sense. But what supers offer is not dice of damage but rather an unparalleled level of mobility and flexibility. No real world force can teleport, fly without machinery, turn invisible, desolidify, read minds, control the weather, fly faster than light, etc. If all you count is dice of damage then superheroes are just better defended soldiers. Heroes are capable of things real world forces can only dream of; it's their less conventional capabilities that make them so special. Sure an Abrams tank can take a 10d6 RKA on it's front armor without being destroyed, but just how well will that M1A1 fare on the 20th story of a skyscraper? Answer: It can't even get there, much less fight. Apache helicopters can't maneuver down the halls of an underground VIPER base. Supers can.

 

Sure, you might be able to have the government drop a fuel-air explosive or field a large military force to hit a VIPER base and take out the Supreme Serpent, but casualties are likely to be very high. A superhero team might well be able to accomplish the same mission without a single loss of life on either side.

[Agent X]

Originally posted by Kristopher

Personally, I think most players grossly OVERestimate the power level of comic book characters.

What comic books do you read?

[Chuckg]

Originally posted by Trebuchet

Sure, you might be able to have the government drop a fuel-air explosive or field a large military force to hit a VIPER base and take out the Supreme Serpent, but casualties are likely to be very high. A superhero team might well be able to accomplish the same mission without a single loss of life on either side.

 

Well, actually, my first reaction on hearing the terms 'large underground bunker' is to go "Mmmm... earth penetrators."

 

Of course, that's why the canonical writeup for VIEPR World HQ, the Sand Castle, and Ice Station VIPER all specify some really gross air defenses... they thought of it already. And barring a whole lot of plot-induced stupidity on VIPER's part, cracking those defenses would take some effort,

 

Re: casualties -- when I'm RP'ing a superhero with a CVK, I act concerned about minimizing casualties. But speaking as myself? If VIPER existed in the real world, the only casualties I'd care about would be ours... if reducing a VIPER nest to rubble required turning five thousand VIPER personnel into chunky salsa along with it, watch me not care. It's like Al Qaeda... they /need/ to be shot.

 

 

 

Your points about mobility, flexibility, and ability to do things other than firepower are vald, and I've never challenged them. But just as there's a role for people in spandex that nobody else can match them that, likewise there's a role for the wholesale breaking of things and killing of people that nobody else can match the military at.

[Agent X]

Originally posted by Chuckg

Well, actually, my first reaction on hearing the terms 'large underground bunker' is to go "Mmmm... earth penetrators."

 

Of course, that's why the canonical writeup for VIEPR World HQ, the Sand Castle, and Ice Station VIPER all specify some really gross air defenses... they thought of it already. And barring a whole lot of plot-induced stupidity on VIPER's part, cracking those defenses would take some effort,

 

Re: casualties -- when I'm RP'ing a superhero with a CVK, I act concerned about minimizing casualties. But speaking as myself? If VIPER existed in the real world, the only casualties I'd care about would be ours... if reducing a VIPER nest to rubble required turning five thousand VIPER personnel into chunky salsa along with it, watch me not care. It's like Al Qaeda... they /need/ to be shot.

 

 

 

Your points about mobility, flexibility, and ability to do things other than firepower are vald, and I've never challenged them. But just as there's a role for people in spandex that nobody else can match them that, likewise there's a role for the wholesale breaking of things and killing of people that nobody else can match the military at.

White Martians, Daxamites mind-controlled by Darkseid,...

[Chuckg]

OK, fine, insert an exception for PCs of planet-busting power, or games where the PCs are expected to fight legions of planet-busting power.

 

Now, as for the other 99.999999999+% of games out there...

[Agent X]

Originally posted by Chuckg

OK, fine, insert an exception for PCs of planet-busting power, or games where the PCs are expected to fight legions of planet-busting power.

 

Now, as for the other 99.999999999+% of games out there...

Heh. I can live with that compromise.

[Guest Champsguy]

Originally posted by Lord Liaden

I have that from Second Edition C:NM, but I never quite figured out how to make it conform to the HERO STR Characteristic scale. It also seemed rather "ungrainy" to me - big jumps without a lot in between.

 

Can you suggest how to convert it to HERO System, or point me somewhere that might have more details?

 

1 Str in Fuzion = 5 Str in Hero (I believe--it's been awhile since I ran a game where I needed to look at the chart). And I just sorta ignored the graininess.

[Guest WhammeWhamme]

Originally posted by Champsguy

1 Str in Fuzion = 5 Str in Hero (I believe--it's been awhile since I ran a game where I needed to look at the chart). And I just sorta ignored the graininess.

 

Actually, in heroic, 1 STR = 3 STR.

 

It's not really grainy; who buys 42 STR?

[Kristopher]

Originally posted by Agent X

What comic books do you read?

 

I've read a lot of X-books, and a very wide selection of other stuff. I don't actively collect anything. I also know several people who are both avid readers/collectors of comics, and hard-core gamers. They're all pretty much in agreement with the more constrained stat/AP scale presented by some on these boards recently, with the Marvel conversions topping out at 70 or so, FREX.

 

I think there's a real tendancy towards finding the most extreme example of a character's abilities, no matter when or who is responsible for putting that example to print, and using that as a benchmark for that character.

 

Then, someone else comes along and points out that another character trounced that first character in a fight in some other issue, so of course the second character has to be even more bloating in stat and point levels. Repeat a couple of times, maybe it even circles back around to the first character, who now of course just has to be beefed up to be able to laugh off someone who once beat the snot out of someone who...

 

There's also the "JLA Conceit," in which highly popular characters are brought together in order to sell a team book. This leads to "Street Level Character A" suddenly, by some means, being able to hang with "Cosmic Character B" and "Child of the Gods C" on a regular basis, which distorts things quite a bit as well.

 

Then there are the things that comic book characters sometimes get saddled with (kicking the moon out of orbit, pushing the earth around, holding up mountain ranges, etc) that are just plain STUPID. Then, some fanboy comes along and thinks that, not only is that KEWL when the comic book character does it, but he wants his character to pull that lameass crap off as well.

[Agent X]

Originally posted by Kristopher

I've read a lot of X-books, and a very wide selection of other stuff. I don't actively collect anything. I also know several people who are both avid readers/collectors of comics, and hard-core gamers. They're all pretty much in agreement with the more constrained stat/AP scale presented by some on these boards recently, with the Marvel conversions topping out at 70 or so, FREX.

 

I think there's a real tendancy towards finding the most extreme example of a character's abilities, no matter when or who is responsible for putting that example to print, and using that as a benchmark for that character.

 

Then, someone else comes along and points out that another character trounced that first character in a fight in some other issue, so of course the second character has to be even more bloating in stat and point levels. Repeat a couple of times, maybe it even circles back around to the first character, who now of course just has to be beefed up to be able to laugh off someone who once beat the snot out of someone who...

 

There's also the "JLA Conceit," in which highly popular characters are brought together in order to sell a team book. This leads to "Street Level Character A" suddenly, by some means, being able to hang with "Cosmic Character B" and "Child of the Gods C" on a regular basis, which distorts things quite a bit as well.

 

Then there are the things that comic book characters sometimes get saddled with (kicking the moon out of orbit, pushing the earth around, holding up mountain ranges, etc) that are just plain STUPID. Then, some fanboy comes along and thinks that, not only is that KEWL when the comic book character does it, but he wants his character to pull that lameass crap off as well.

Well, I started collecting in 1975 and stopped collecting in late 80s/early 90s but I still buy one once in a while. The X-Men are not baseline for comics and it's best not to assume that recent conditions of fluctuating character concepts is the way it has always been. These characters seem to reset once in a while to recognizable forms from the ancient days of stability past.

 

It's not unusual for the Hulk to knock through hexes of reinforced concrete or make feats of strength equal to ripping off vault doors. I'm not talking about Hercules tugging Manhattan back into place. I haven't cited moving Moons and the like so I think we can drop that.

[Lord Liaden]

I have what I think is a question relevant to this discussion for all you military hardware buffs: roughly how many of the latest top-of-the-line Abrams tanks does the US military have, and how widely are they distributed?

 

If every armored division has some and they're scattered across the United States so that they can get to a major trouble spot relatively quickly, I'd be concerned about the credibility of supervillains as a major threat. OTOH if they aren't numerous, and/or they're concentrated in a few locations so that deploying them requires a long time for transport, then IMO they would fall within the realm of "special cutting-edge weaponry" which major world militaries may have to deploy against supers, which is a long-standing tradition in comics. If that's the case the stats for it and similar high-powered armor and artillery in The Ultimate Vehicle don't seem quite so excessive.

[Chuckg]

> I have what I think is a question relevant to this discussion

> for all you military hardware buffs: roughly how many of the

> latest top-of-the-line Abrams tanks does the US military

> have, and how widely are they distributed?

 

The US Army has 10 active-duty divisions. Here are their home bases.

 

 

1st Armored Division -- Wiesbaden Germany

1st Cavalry Division -- Fort Hood, Texas

1st Infantry Division -- Wurzburg, Germany

2nd Infantry Division -- Camp Red Cloud, Korea

3rd Infantry Division -- Fort Stewart, Georgia

4th Infantry Division -- Fort Hood, Texas

10th Mountain Division -- Fort Drum, New York

25th Infantry Division -- Schofield Barracks, Hawaii

82nd Airborne Division -- Fort Bragg, North Carolina

101st Airborne Division -- Fort Campbell, Kentucky

 

 

Last I checked, an Airborne division has precisely zero tank companies assigned to it.

 

A mechanized infantry division has (if I'm reading this damned chart right) 3 tank battalions attached to it, each one with 58 Abrams tanks. (A tank battalion has 2 tanks attached to the headquarters company, and then 4 tank companies of 14 tanks each. It also has other armored fighting vehicles, such as Bradleys.)

 

An armored division has 5 tank battalions attached to it, each battalion again with 58 Abrams tanks each.

 

So, assuming that all the tanks are home, you still only have Abrams tanks within easy reach of several spots in the country, and a whole lotta country that they have to be flown into. And you need a C-5A transport plane -- one of the big heavies -- to move just /one/ Abrams. Ordinarily, they're only moved by rail and shipping. Flying the beasts is a royal pain in the ass.

 

There's a reason it took us six months and more of build-up prior to Iraq... we had to float 'em there, 'cause we damn sure couldn't fly 'em there.

 

Note -- and yes, right now in the real world, most of the Abrams tanks we own are guess where, or in the process of returning from guess where.

[Chuckg]

For anybody who's interested, the US Army's published Table of Organization and Equipment (TOE) can be found at:

 

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/army/unit/toe/index.html

 

Edit -- and the list of active-duty, integrated, reserve, and National Guard divisions and their home bases can be found at:

 

http://www.army.mil/organization/divisions.html

[gewing]

I feel that in a super hero world there ARE supers who can ignore the military, but Superman is pretty much a one of a kind. Some should be able to. Not all by any means. My impression has always been that some players feel EVERY Super Hero should be able to take on the Army and win. If Spiderman had been in Grozny, he might well have died just due to the area effect weapons. I can see a fair number of heros being able to bounce pistol and some rifle bullets. I like the idea that if it can't do body, it can't do stun. I might put a slight limit on that, but... Armored personnel carriers are supposed to be proof versus small arms. Many supers should be about the same. A .50 caliber should still be scary to them. It MIGHT not kill them, but relatively few should be willing to ignore one.

 

Originally posted by Metaphysician

If your characters can take a nuke, they *are* powerful. There is no mincing with that fact.

 

And yes, 350 points *isn't* powerful. Its roughly the level of the New Mutants or early Teen Titans. You shouldn't expect it to be something more. If you wanna play high powered, than play 500 or 750 points.

 

I also love how *some* people seem to believe that no such thing as a Powerful or Highly Powerful Heroic Normal in any world that has spandex. . .

[Vondy]

Personally - I think tanks are a really bad measure of military might. They are big set pieces that require massive maintenance and support, and are extremely vulnerable to super-heroes. Their guns aren't designed to hit man-sized targets who are more moble than the average man, and have a limited arc of fire (and how many world beaters can fly?). It also doesn't have to be beaten trough. A brick just has to take the turret and flip it off - they're primarily anchored in place by their own weight. As a military commander I would be very concerned about exposing tanks to supers, especially when I might have better options. Helicoptors (greater mobility), guided munitions from standoff range, and non-conventional weapons (chemical, for instance) also have to be factored in. Why expose a tank battallion of more mobile human tanks when you can carpet bomb the area or raze it with a flight of tomahawks?

 

There will always be a few who can ignore conventional forces, but those are few and far between. In most cases heroes will crumble under the weight of first world military forces.

[megaplayboy]

I think a flying brick with a 60 STR and 30" of flight could manage a diving move-through(60") against the "non-Abrams AFV"'s top armor(16DEF) for 32d6(34d6 with pushing) and pretty much pulverize it without doing more than stunning themselves. apply the -12 OCV penalty to their 8 OCV, then consider they are targeting a non-moving multihex vehicle--probably a decent shot at a solid hit. Even the diving move by would do 18d6. Against relatively slow and bulky vehicles, heroes have no tactical disincentive to uncork such sledgehammer tactics.

 

Scale up to the 80 or 90+ AP type supers, and they CAN wreck tanks.

I won't even mention the "Earth Special Forces"(essentially a superhero team) from Dragon Ball Z:D

 

I think upscaling is always going to be an issue for any campaign that lasts more than a year or two.

 

If you average 2-3xp/session, and game:

1x/month:25-30xp/year

2x/month:50-60xp/year

4x/month:100-125 xp/year

 

Take a baseline 350 point PC, keep playing them twice a month for 4 years, and you have a 600 point PC, who could technically be operating at the sub-cosmic power level.

 

So, either as a GM of a long-running game you capitulate to the inevitable power-creep, or you impose an arbitrary power cap(which has the unintended tendency to make every PC a "do everything" type), or you have to scrap campaigns when they reach a level you are no longer "comfortable" with.

 

The other point, of course, is that maybe a majority of players in a group actually want to be Avengers types without having to game for 5 years to reach that level...shouldn't the game system, and the Hero community, be flexible and open-minded enough to accomodate the upper end of the scale as well as the lower?

[Metaphysician]

Thats exactly what we are doing in the campaign I'm in. 750+ points, we are the Sentinels, the World's Greatest Heroes.

 

And we have what looks like an Istvathan invasion coming soon. Fun.

[Agent X]

Originally posted by Von D-Man

Personally - I think tanks are a really bad measure of military might. They are big set pieces that require massive maintenance and support, and are extremely vulnerable to super-heroes. Their guns aren't designed to hit man-sized targets who are more moble than the average man, and have a limited arc of fire (and how many world beaters can fly?). It also doesn't have to be beaten trough. A brick just has to take the turret and flip it off - they're primarily anchored in place by their own weight. As a military commander I would be very concerned about exposing tanks to supers, especially when I might have better options. Helicoptors (greater mobility), guided munitions from standoff range, and non-conventional weapons (chemical, for instance) also have to be factored in. Why expose a tank battallion of more mobile human tanks when you can carpet bomb the area or raze it with a flight of tomahawks?

 

There will always be a few who can ignore conventional forces, but those are few and far between. In most cases heroes will crumble under the weight of first world military forces.

Not the Worldbeaterbeaters.

[Lord Liaden]

I think we may be diverting ourselves unnecessarily by focussing on superheroes who can outright ignore modern military forces, or at least plow through them unaided. I concur that that class of hero (or villain) is the exception in any comic-book universe. Personally, for Avengers or Justice League-style campaigns, I'd be quite satisfied with characters who, as a team, could take on a fair-sized division of modern military and have a reasonable chance of winning, even if they have to sweat for it.

 

I would distinguish between characters who can match a First World army alone (in the CU probably Dr. Destroyer, Takofanes, Gravitar); those who can match a small unit of same by themselves, or an army as part of a team of comparable supers (Mechanon, Firewing, Holocaust, Dark Seraph); those who can handle small military units as part of a team (Grond, Warlord, Anubis, Black Paladin); and those who really aren't up to fighting that level of armament (most of the Champions, for better or worse).

 

Using the guidelines for power levels and point totals in Champions, I'd say that the first of those categories would be the upper level of "Cosmically Powerful" - but it seems from the examples we've discussed that you ideally should be looking at around 1,000 points at least, and most of that being combat-usable. "Cosmically Powerful" would also cover the second tier, and probably "Very High Powered" as well. The upper limits of "High Powered" might accomodate the third rank.

 

I'm inclined to conclude that most Standard Superheroes really aren't cut out to duel with tanks, fighter jets, or even the heavier man-portable weapons (that last depending on how the heroes are built, and the skill and tactics of their opponents).

[Gary]

Originally posted by Chuckg

So, assuming that all the tanks are home, you still only have Abrams tanks within easy reach of several spots in the country, and a whole lotta country that they have to be flown into. And you need a C-5A transport plane -- one of the big heavies -- to move just /one/ Abrams. Ordinarily, they're only moved by rail and shipping. Flying the beasts is a royal pain in the ass.

 

There's a reason it took us six months and more of build-up prior to Iraq... we had to float 'em there, 'cause we damn sure couldn't fly 'em there.

 

Note -- and yes, right now in the real world, most of the Abrams tanks we own are guess where, or in the process of returning from guess where.

 

I think in a world where supervillains existed, that army hardware would be a lot more spread out than in the real world. There would be a lot more rapid deployment forces as well.

[Chuckg]

> I think in a world where supervillains existed, that army

> hardware would be a lot more spread out than in the real

> world.

 

Two words -- "logistical nightmare".

 

The reason armor tends to concentrate is precisely because it's so slow to transport... it already takes /months/ for an armored division to pack up and ship itself overseas, so just imagine the multiplication of delay if they first had to assemble their full strength from N+1 discrete points instead of having the division encamped at the same base.

 

Not to mention all of the other division-level logistics, training, and operational things that are /enormously/ enhanced by having everybody in the same zip code, and would be unnecessarily complicated by dispersing it.

 

One of the prime rules of logistics is that no matter how much money you have in the training and maintenance budget, it's never enough. The last thing anybody's going to do is come up with a basing change that multiplies said expenses geometrically.

[Lord Liaden]

Originally posted by Gary

I think in a world where supervillains existed, that army hardware would be a lot more spread out than in the real world. There would be a lot more rapid deployment forces as well.

 

I'm inclined to disagree with you there. From the point of view of logistical supply and maintenance, and of security, I think it would be rather inefficient to spread major military equipment too thinly. That would also make it much more difficult to gather and deploy in force, as you would need to in a war situation. Previous posts have already indicated how difficult it is to move the heaviest hardware around with anything remotely approaching the mobility of superbeings.

 

Given the conventions of comic-book reality, I'd say the most logical approach would be what we actually see in the comics: small, highly mobile units of elite troops armed with expensive, beyond-cutting-edge man-portable technology. Just the sort of thing we see with PRIMUS and UNTIL.

[Chuckg]

Exactly, LL. They do it that way not just because it's more comic-booky, but because that way actually works.

 

I'm also pretty sure that in a superhero world, Special Operations Command gets even more generous a budget(*) than it does IRL.

 

 

 

 

 

(*) And even IRL, the spec-ops guys get a /very/ nice budget already.

[Gary]

Originally posted by Chuckg

> I think in a world where supervillains existed, that army

> hardware would be a lot more spread out than in the real

> world.

 

Two words -- "logistical nightmare".

 

The reason armor tends to concentrate is precisely because it's so slow to transport... it already takes /months/ for an armored division to pack up and ship itself overseas, so just imagine the multiplication of delay if they first had to assemble their full strength from N+1 discrete points instead of having the division encamped at the same base.

 

Not to mention all of the other division-level logistics, training, and operational things that are /enormously/ enhanced by having everybody in the same zip code, and would be unnecessarily complicated by dispersing it.

 

One of the prime rules of logistics is that no matter how much money you have in the training and maintenance budget, it's never enough. The last thing anybody's going to do is come up with a basing change that multiplies said expenses geometrically.

 

You would still have full strength divisions, and those would be the ones sent to places like Iraq first. However, at least a couple of the active duty divisions would be spread out simply to be able to deal with supervillains running rampant. The army does change its doctrine when it faces a new enemy that the old doctrine is useless against.