Hot Enough For Ya?

[Misery Lad]

Here's a question I've been meaning to ask for some time. In issue #100 of Firestorm The Nuclear Man comic (think it was the early 90's), Firestorm fought the megalithic Brimstone literally upon the surface of the sun. My question is a simple one: What, in Champions terms, do you think a character would need to function on (or even inside) the sun, or any other star for that matter? Somehow, I don't think simple Life-Support: Immunity To Intense Heat would quite do the trick.

 

Any takers?

[Chuckg]

Re: Hot Enough For Ya?

 

Star Hero actually has a sidebar to answer that question.

 

The short version is, that close to the surface of the sun is the equivalent of taking a 37d6 Energy Killing Attack, Area Effect, every Segment.

[nexus]

Re: Hot Enough For Ya?

 

surface of the sun. My question is a simple one: What' date=' in Champions terms, do you think a character would need to function on (or even inside) the sun, or any other star for that matter? [/quote']

 

A GM that likes REALLY cinematic backdrops for fights.

[Rapier]

Re: Hot Enough For Ya?

 

Star Hero actually has a sidebar to answer that question.

 

The short version is, that close to the surface of the sun is the equivalent of taking a 37d6 Energy Killing Attack, Area Effect, every Segment.

Hmmm,

 

Average: 130 STUN and 37 BODY

Minimum: 37 STUN and 0 BODY

Maximum: 222 STUN and 74 BODY

 

Ouch.

 

As a GM I would either have to have a buttload of pre-rolls done or would just Standard Effect it. At any rate, this is well into the range of Galactic Champions but not much more than crispy critters for a regular Champions character.

[Chuckg]

Re: Hot Enough For Ya?

 

As a general policy, I tend to Standard Effect all 'environmental' hazards. It saves me a *LOT* of time.

[lemming]

Re: Hot Enough For Ya?

 

Star Hero actually has a sidebar to answer that question.

 

The short version is, that close to the surface of the sun is the equivalent of taking a 37d6 Energy Killing Attack, Area Effect, every Segment.

Ah, ok. That's not so bad. For some reason I thought that was killing. It's that next zone where it starts getting nasty with the 350d6 Killing, AP , Penetrating, etc...

 

That Silver Surfer dude is really tough!

[nexus]

Re: Hot Enough For Ya?

 

He did say it was a Killing Attack, didn't he?

[Agent X]

Re: Hot Enough For Ya?

 

He did say it was a Killing Attack' date=' didn't he?[/quote'] Yep.

 

And this is one of the reasons I like the idea of exponential damage effects. The numbers Steve Long crunched for the sun are just too silly for a guy who wants to run a game that mirrors things like the JLA, with Batsy and Superman in the same team.

[nexus]

Re: Hot Enough For Ya?

 

Yep.

 

And this is one of the reasons I like the idea of exponential damage effects. The numbers Steve Long crunched for the sun are just too silly for a guy who wants to run a game that mirrors things like the JLA, with Batsy and Superman in the same team.

 

I'm gonna get flamed (heh) for this, but I was only half joking with my first response. I say some of it could be GM fiat. You're running Galactic Champions, Captain Galaxy and Omnipetus are duking it out and you think having the fight in corona of the sun would be a cool back drop, they've got Full LS and High Resistant ED. Why not?

 

Of course, that might the Exalted gm in me talking.

[lemming]

Re: Hot Enough For Ya?

 

Damn. He did and then I remembered something, and read the sidebar in Starhero.

 

10d6 Normal Damage, Continious, AP, per segment for the surface.

 

Next step was the way overboard 350d6 RKA, Continious, 2x AP, 4x Pentrating.

 

And then it gets worse.

[lemming]

Re: Hot Enough For Ya?

 

I'm gonna get flamed (heh) for this, but I was only half joking with my first response. I say some of it could be GM fiat. You're running Galactic Champions, Captain Galaxy and Omnipetus are duking it out and you think having the fight in corona of the sun would be a cool back drop, they've got Full LS and High Resistant ED. Why not?

 

Of course, that might the Exalted gm in me talking.

I'm with you actually.

[Guest Champsguy]

Re: Hot Enough For Ya?

 

Yeah. Those numbers were totally screwed.

[CDad]

Re: Hot Enough For Ya?

 

I had a villian that was made up of "Nuclear Fire" - he had Immunity to Heat/Fire: Desolid; Only vs Heat/Fire, Persistant.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Hot Enough For Ya?

 

yeah, those SH numbers were just silly--how could the per segment damage from the center of the sun be vastly greater than the point blank instant damage from an antimatter missile?

the heat at the center of a thermonuclear explosion is supposed to be comparable to the heat at the center of the sun. Sure, the sun is much more massive and sustained, but the per segment damage really shouldn't be significantly higher than that, IMO. If you teleported the earth into the center of the sun, it'd be vaporized within 3 segments if the damage were 20d6 RKA, and about 2 segments if it were 25d6 RKA.

there's a lot of stuff in SH/Terran Empire that leans toward the ludicrous--why does a starship need 3-500 BODY and total defenses over 100 rDEF(well, maybe the defenses are justifiable, though it takes forever to bring them down)?

[Chuckg]

Re: Hot Enough For Ya?

 

Erm, if you threw the Earth into the sun, "only a few moments" is how long it's *SUPPOSED* to last, innit?

 

Add:

 

I mean, the sun is only approximately 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 metric tons of continuously fusing plasma, which you'd expect to be a little hoter than an anti-matter warhead, right?

[Agent X]

Re: Hot Enough For Ya?

 

Erm, if you threw the Earth into the sun, "only a few moments" is how long it's *SUPPOSED* to last, innit?

 

Add:

 

I mean, the sun is only approximately 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 metric tons of continuously fusing plasma, which you'd expect to be a little hoter than an anti-matter warhead, right?

Is it heat that makes antimatter destructive?

[Chuckg]

Re: Hot Enough For Ya?

 

Is it heat that makes antimatter destructive?

 

Actually, given that the destructive force of antimatter comes from the fact that the matter/anti-matter pair anihilation liberates enormous amounts of energy in the form of photons and quarks, and one of the definitions of heat is energy transfer, the answer to your question is "Pretty much, yes."

 

Heat is not the /source/ of the energy release in an anti-matter detonation, but it is the primary /result/ of said detonation. Lots and lots and *LOTS* of heat.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Hot Enough For Ya?

 

In the case of Firestorm and Brimstone, they were both essentially the embodiment of fire, and were shown to actually draw power from the sun allowing them both to grow to planetary size. In HERO terms, I'd say that in addition to whatever massive Defenses they were employing, they would also have had a huge energy Absorption, perhaps large enough to offset the STUN and BODY damage being taken by exposure to the sun. Since the Silver Surfer has been shown to be able to absorb all manner of energy through his silvery shell, the same mechanism could be applied to him.

 

I'm inclined to agree that the solar damage figures from Star HERO are excessive when compared to other HERO System benchmarks. Personally I think that the example power from Champions, "Standing On The Sun," seems more reasonable: 75% Resistant Energy Damage Reduction, plus 90 ED Armor, Hardened x2.

[Agent X]

Re: Hot Enough For Ya?

 

Actually, given that the destructive force of antimatter comes from the fact that the matter/anti-matter pair anihilation liberates enormous amounts of energy in the form of photons and quarks, and one of the definitions of heat is energy transfer, the answer to your question is "Pretty much, yes."

 

Lots and lots and *LOTS* of heat.

Just heat?

[Chuckg]

Re: Hot Enough For Ya?

 

Just heat?

 

Pretty much, outside of the aforementioned quarks, as well as the other effects of all that photon release (lots of light, gamma pulse, etc.).

 

All the other destructive effects are the secondary results of dumping that massive a sudden heat pulse into the surrounding substance, if there is any. If you just detonated it in a vacuum, well, you get a nice big fireball.

 

But yes, the primary destructive agent of an anti-matter detonation is the fact that it just got a few hundred million degrees hotter in the area.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Hot Enough For Ya?

 

The first American H-Bomb tested, "Mike", had a core temperature of 100 million degrees Fahrenheit--hotter than the Sun

 

Now, the Sun's mass means it contains more "heat" than a nuke blast, but the temperature is lower than that at the center point of a thermonuclear explosion.

 

So, that 975d6 KA, continuous, APx8, Penetratingx16 (around 200,000 active points) at the center of the Sun is just a tad excessive--you could build a solid sphere of bullshittium with the mass of a neutron star, t-port it into the center of the sun, and that damage would instantly vaporize it.

 

I hope they edit that out in the next edition of SH...

[Chuckg]

Re: Hot Enough For Ya?

 

> The first American H-Bomb tested, "Mike", had a core temperature of 100

> million degrees Fahrenheit--hotter than the Sun

 

But it sustained that temperature for only a few millishakes. The Sun might be cooler... in relative terms, for a value of "cooler" that still means millilns and millions of degrees... but that temperature is constant.

 

Exposure to 100+ million degrees for .000001 or so nanoseconds, or exposure to 10+ million degrees for 1,000,000,000 nanoseconds... which is gonna hurt more, overall?

 

Edit -- plus, there's also size. That 100 million degree core temp is occurring only over a relatively limited volume. The sun's "fusing plasma temperature" occurs continuously throughout a volume a zillion times larger than the Earth.

 

What are the /three/ factors that determine how much energy, total, you feel from an exposure to a given heat source?

 

a) temperature

 

duration

 

c) surface area of exposure

 

Edit II -- for a rough analogy, try this

 

Nuclear bomb = match

 

Sun = pot of boiling water

 

Now, no one will deny that the match is many times hotter than the boiling point of water.

 

But which one would you rather do -- put the burning match out on your palm, or stick your hand in the boiling pot of water and leave it there for a few seconds?

 

The match, of course. It might be hotter, but it's also much /smaller/, and it's definitely over with more quickly.

 

 

 

> Now, the Sun's mass means it contains more "heat" than a nuke blast, but

> the temperature is lower than that at the center point of a thermonuclear

> explosion.

 

OTOH, staying inside the sun for just one second means you take more destructive energy than from any nuclear blast... because the nuke blast is one boom and everything past the first millishake or so is just the initial heat pulse dissipating, while the sun keeps dumping a *FRESH* load of plasma on you, continually, and repeatedly, ad infinitum.

 

There's also the problem that the sun's gravity well is enough to crush any Earthly substance flat, and would be even if the Sun were totally extinguished, simply from all the mass involved. But that's a secondary problem.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Hot Enough For Ya?

 

If you put a substance with a vaporization point of 6000 degrees into a volcano filled with 2000 degree magma, it's not gonna vaporize no matter how much magma surrounds it. But if you expose it to a half second of 30,000 degree flame, it'll go pffft! just like that.

 

so, if I have 150rED(immune to body damage from a maxed out antimatter missile at point-blank), then the temperature/heat energy-related damage from a stellar body should do pretty much no serious injury. The pressure is another matter entirely, but there's a limit to what increasing the volume of heat will do.

[Chuckg]

Re: Hot Enough For Ya?

 

If you put a substance with a vaporization point of 6000 degrees into a volcano filled with 2000 degree magma' date=' it's not gonna vaporize no matter how much magma surrounds it. But if you expose it to a half second of 30,000 degree flame, it'll go pffft! just like that.[/quote']

 

Since the vaporization point of /any/ solid substance is enormously far below the temperature of the sun, let alone a nuclear bomb, your point -- while true -- isn't really relevant.

 

Edit -- I might also point out that heat of vaporization of a substance is measured in kilojoules per mole, not degrees, but hey. At this point, even my own pedantry isn't large enough to feel any strong urge to keep going.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Hot Enough For Ya?

 

Since the vaporization point of /any/ solid substance is enormously far below the temperature of the sun, let alone a nuclear bomb, your point -- while true -- isn't really relevant.

 

Edit -- I might also point out that heat of vaporization of a substance is measured in kilojoules per mole, not degrees, but hey. At this point, even my own pedantry isn't large enough to feel any strong urge to keep going.

there are comic-book materials that are supposed to be able to withstand nuclear-level temperatures--adamantium, uru, promethium, inertron, several meters of biphase carbide(ala Ogres), whatever Bolos are made of...so it's relevant in the sense that a material which could withstand the temperature/heat of an H-bomb blast at point-blank could also withstand the much lower temperature/heat of a stellar core. I'm pretty sure pre-crisis superman could survive a few seconds at the center of the sun, and that he doesn't have 4000rED, x24 hardened

 

well, we could argue about the relative energy levels and whatnot, but I suspect the damage level could be set far far lower than 40 thousand damage classes(975d6 Kill(2925 DC), with +12 in damage-enhancing advantages= 13*2925= about 38000 damage classes, in a game system based on exponential progression), and still be more than the 60-75 damage classes of starship missile warheads. I'd be fine with higher-than-nuke level damage, just not the absurd level they put in the book.