Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

Anyone trying to link damage to energy should also give us a primer on how some people will die tripping and falling (a 6' or so drop, head to ground) and others will survive falls from several stories.

 

If we're going to fix the system to make it more "real", we should enhance the variability substantially to reflect what happens in real life as well.

[zornwil]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

Anyone trying to link damage to energy should also give us a primer on how some people will die tripping and falling (a 6' or so drop, head to ground) and others will survive falls from several stories.

 

If we're going to fix the system to make it more "real", we should enhance the variability substantially to reflect what happens in real life as well.

Oh, great, now DOJ is going to release 6 THOUSAND page rulebook, not a 600 page one...well that's a legend product all right..

 

(PS - though you know, Hugh, some smartass could just chalk it up to Luck, Unluck, various Defs, and so on)

[Fox1]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

I am sorry Fox1' date=' but Warp9 was right: it does take energy to wound. The real question is one of scaling. Is the "amount" of damage done proportional to the amount of energy? .[/quote']

 

The question of proportion was already covered, both here and in the articles I linked. KE doesn't scale in proportion to damage under these cases and can in fact even have an inverse effect. Read the links. Buy a Journal or two from the IWBA (Internation Wound Ballistics Association). If you dig far enough it will even tell you in painful detail where all the KE is being wasted, although you'll have to shell out a few bucks for those reports if you don't want to believe the summaries online.

 

Really guys, this is OLD ground for me. And I hate to point it out, but I'm the only one here who has produced actually backing information of ANY kind that isn't from people's memories of their high school physics class. The real world is a more complex place than high school physics. We're not looking at simple elastic collisions here.

 

Tell me please why you think YOU know more than the people who run those research centers that have produced detail reports backed by experimentation with the real world weapons in question? Why should anyone listen to you for a second on this subject?

[Warp9]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

I'm afraid the FBI research and JFK Jungle Warfare School trumps your (surprisingly poor) high school physics.

 

We're done here. Take it to PM if you insist.

Maybe. Firearms analysis is not my field, so I could be mistaken.

 

However, you are in danger of committing the genetic fallacy (which is the concept that the source of an idea determines its worth). The source of an idea does NOT determine its worth. If the greatest scientist on Earth says that 2+2=5 he would still be wrong.

 

BTW I never took Physics in high school, to be accurate it was my "(surprisingly poor) college physics" you should at least try to get that much right

[Trebuchet]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

Anyone trying to link damage to energy should also give us a primer on how some people will die tripping and falling (a 6' or so drop, head to ground) and others will survive falls from several stories.

 

If we're going to fix the system to make it more "real", we should enhance the variability substantially to reflect what happens in real life as well.

IIRC Hero System is designed to represent action movies and fiction, not reality. (Wasn't it you who had a sig to that effect at one time?)

 

My only concern with issues such as this is "Will it enhance or reduce playability?" If making it more "real" hurts enjoyment of the game, then reality is going to take a back seat in our campaign. If increased realism enhances the story, then it'll be included. But it's generally laughable to talk about increasing realism in any campaign setting that features flying people in spandex. Our characters are the stars of the comic book, not "real" people. If I want to experience back pain, financial and family problems, and insomnia then I'll just be recreating my real life. And where's the fun in that?

[Fox1]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

Maybe I missed a left turn before this' date=' but that sounds a little harsh. Warp9 may not be getting what you're saying, but I also see his point that behind some sort of tearing or gorging of the flesh energy somewhere is expended. Not that I'm taking any side here, I'm not, but just saying.[/quote']

 

It is rather harsh.

 

Mainly because this is a common thing that I run into and I already see all the signs (i.e. I'm the only one providing links) that it's not going to end well. I shouldn't react like that, but...

 

Yes the KE is going places. A good chunk of it is going into the bullet itself as heat and deformation (equal and opposite reaction remember). Another huge chunk is going into the temporary wound cavity- an visually impressive effect that doesn't matter unless you get a good skull or liver hit. Another huge chunk is exiting the target in the common case of the bullet going through.

 

And a part of it is used to actually rip through the target, but that part is in no way in directly related to the total KE value of the bullet. The KE requirements to pierce the human body is rather fixed (and it's not that high of a value).

 

And that's just the simple model. It gets even more interesting, such as the fact that penetration can actually drop as KE increases producing less dangerous wounds.

 

It's actually a very complex subject.

 

In any case, seriously, do some research on the subject. Follow the links I gave. Check out the books and studies listed at one of those links. Buy a few Journals. Look at who's buying what kinds of weapons, etc.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

If making it more "real" hurts enjoyment of the game' date=' then reality is going to take a back seat in our campaign.[/quote']

 

Agreed. If you want that much realism in your rules, go with the old Friday Night Firefight (tweaked appropriately for superstrength). I died every time I got into combat using that rules system, though, so you can count me out.

[Fox1]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

Agreed. If you want that much realism in your rules' date=' go with the old Friday Night Firefight (tweaked appropriately for superstrength). I died every time I got into combat using that rules system, though, so you can count me out.[/quote']

 

It can't be that realistic then as 75% or more of the people injured in combat survive.

[zornwil]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

IIRC Hero System is designed to represent action movies and fiction, not reality. (Wasn't it you who had a sig to that effect at one time?)

 

My only concern with issues such as this is "Will it enhance or reduce playability?" If making it more "real" hurts enjoyment of the game, then reality is going to take a back seat in our campaign. If increased realism enhances the story, then it'll be included. But it's generally laughable to talk about increasing realism in any campaign setting that features flying people in spandex. Our characters are the stars of the comic book, not "real" people. If I want to experience back pain, financial and family problems, and insomnia then I'll just be recreating my real life. And where's the fun in that?

Oh you and your petty little "play" and "fun" concerns. This is serious business, dammit, and we better do it right!

 

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

Anyone trying to link damage to energy should also give us a primer on how some people will die tripping and falling (a 6' or so drop, head to ground) and others will survive falls from several stories.

 

If we're going to fix the system to make it more "real", we should enhance the variability substantially to reflect what happens in real life as well.

 

pretty easy, if you use various optional combat rules like hit locations and the throw modifiers chart from UMA

Normal man falls down (equal to 1 hex fall) 1d6 damage.

(or if you base the falling damage on mass, then he takes 2d6 base)

probably was in motion say (3" velocity) for another +1d6

hits head on something hard (+2-3d6 depending on what it is)

And gains perhaps another +1d6 from uneven surface

So we're looking at around a 6 or 7 DC normal attack against a 2 pd 8 body normal, add a head location roll with the appropriate X2 body and yeah...its quite possible in game terms. The converse is even easier. Making normals survive long falls isn't all that hard...A lucky location roll coupled with a sucky damage roll can go a long ways.

of course...this also supports some of the discussion about the systemic problem... its not hard to modify a "I've fallen and hit my head" attack to pack almost as many dice of damage as Mr. "I can lift 10 metric tons" throws with a punch

[zornwil]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

It is rather harsh.

 

Mainly because this is a common thing that I run into and I already see all the signs (i.e. I'm the only one providing links) that it's not going to end well. I shouldn't react like that, but...

 

Yes the KE is going places. A good chunk of it is going into the bullet itself as heat and deformation (equal and opposite reaction remember). Another huge chunk is going into the temporary wound cavity- an visually impressive effect that doesn't matter unless you get a good skull or liver hit. Another huge chunk is exiting the target in the common case of the bullet going through.

 

And a part of it is used to actually rip through the target, but that part is in no way in directly related to the total KE value of the bullet. The KE requirements to pierce the human body is rather fixed (and it's not that high of a value).

 

And that's just the simple model. It gets even more interesting, such as the fact that penetration can actually drop as KE increases producing less dangerous wounds.

 

It's actually a very complex subject.

 

In any case, seriously, do some research on the subject. Follow the links I gave. Check out the books and studies listed at one of those links. Buy a few Journals. Look at who's buying what kinds of weapons, etc.

I'm not dismissing ANYTHING that you're saying, just commenting on the tone and the fact that at least typically some energy must be expended to create wounds.

 

However, I certainly don't pretend to know the relationship at all. And while I respect your knowledge and reference, please don't be offended that I'm not going to try to learn the relationship save the fact that I understand it's not a direct relationship. It's just too much nuance and physics and I have other things to concentrate on, that's all.

[zornwil]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

It can't be that realistic then as 75% or more of the people injured in combat survive.

Which era of warfare?

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

Oh you and your petty little "play" and "fun" concerns. This is serious business, dammit, and we better do it right!

 

 

darn tootin'

[Trebuchet]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

However' date=' I certainly don't pretend to know the relationship at all. And while I respect your knowledge and reference, please don't be offended that I'm not going to try to learn the relationship save the fact that I understand it's not a direct relationship. It's just too much nuance and physics and I have other things to concentrate on, that's all.[/quote']Damned Philistine.

 

[Fox1]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

I'm not dismissing ANYTHING that you're saying, just commenting on the tone and the fact that at least typically some energy must be expended to create wounds.

 

However, I certainly don't pretend to know the relationship at all. And while I respect your knowledge and reference, please don't be offended that I'm not going to try to learn the relationship save the fact that I understand it's not a direct relationship. It's just too much nuance and physics and I have other things to concentrate on, that's all.

 

I apologize. An over-reaction on my part because of past encounters. I meant nothing personal towards you. You actually seem quite reasonable.

[Fox1]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

Which era of warfare?

 

 

 

More seriously, it does vary greatly.

 

Today in Iraq the survival rate is something around 90%. Here's a link to the numbers by month: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_casualties.htm.

 

 

Compared to this to only the Civil War with a 43% survival rate:

http://www.ehistory.com/uscw/features/medicine/cwsurgeon/statistics.cfm

 

 

Of course Killed and Wounded mean many things from many causes and as such those number don't represent only gunshots injuries. Still, striking isn't it?

[zornwil]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

I apologize. An over-reaction on my part because of past encounters. I meant nothing personal towards you. You actually seem quite reasonable.

No big, and thanks.

[zornwil]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

 

 

More seriously, it does vary greatly.

 

Today in Iraq the survival rate is something around 90%. Here's a link to the numbers by month: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_casualties.htm.

 

 

Compared to this to only the Civil War with a 43% survival rate:

http://www.ehistory.com/uscw/features/medicine/cwsurgeon/statistics.cfm

 

 

Of course Killed and Wounded mean many things from many causes and as such those number don't represent only gunshots injuries. Still, striking isn't it?

It is pretty interesting, I've seen different things on this sort of stuff.

 

On a dangerously NGD note but still relevant, George Will was commenting on how much higher the homicide rate would be in America if we still had 1950s-level technology, that gun death statistics are misleading compared to the amount of gun violence. I am NOT making a political point here (though it's just interesting, given his conservative background, that he arrived at being pro-gun control due to this, though I am not), I am just stating it in terms of another factor regarding mortality/damage.

[Lupus]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

Agreed. If you want that much realism in your rules' date=' go with the old Friday Night Firefight (tweaked appropriately for superstrength). I died every time I got into combat using that rules system, though, so you can count me out.[/quote']

Phoenix Command. The ultimate tables-driven combat system (I won't refer to it as an RPG system, even though they did try to tack on a skills system in one book).

 

Guns were rated by penetration and damage class at various ranges. These were then read on the hit location tables to determine how much damage you did to your target. If you had the advanced hit location tables, then you knew what vital organs your shot had gone through.

 

By cross-indexing penetration with damage class, you knew how many damage points had been done. Note, there were no 'hit points' or 'body points' - similarly to FNFF, you coudl take unlimited amounts of damage.

 

Short-term, the damage you took relative to your Knockout Value (determined by physique and willpower stats, I forget what they were called) gave a chance that you would be incapacitated. Long-term, the healing chart gave a time interval until you had to make a roll or die, depending on medical care.

 

Accuracy: instead of giving a bonus to hit, weapons were rated with maximum Shot Accuracy at any particular range. I thought this was cool. No matter how good a marksman you are, hitting a target at 50' with a 2" barrel is a matter of luck. Meanwhile, you got a certain number of actions ever 2 seconds - the more actions you devoted to shooting, the more accurate your shot. So you could fire one shot every 2 seconds and be quite accurate, or fire off a rapid blaze. Certain weapons were better at rapid fire than others. (If I remember, pistols - paritcularly one with guttersnipe sights - were better at the quick shots, sniper rifles better at the aimed shots. Pistols, however, maxed out shot accuracy faster than rifles.) SA was also affected by whether you were aiming down the sight or not.

 

Furthermore, if you were aiming for a location, how tightly you could aim was determined by your SA. If your shot isn't gonna be too accurate, then you won't be able to aim too precisely. How finely you aim down determines the modifier to SA for size. If you then miss, you roll location anyway, since you might still hit something (or go off the chart - a miss).

 

Overall, a damn cool and (to my knowledge and reading since) a highly accurate one. It fell down in a few cases - notably, the damage charts only EVER read front-to-back. And the deviation from aimed shots was up and down only, no side-to-side. In the future, maybe someone will use the system to create a computer model and what may well be the world's most accurate simulation of damage. But as a tabletop game, the original system was unworkably complex and time-consuming enough. Adding more in would be impossible except among the most dedicated number-crunchers.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

Could you explain this a bit more?

 

Don't fire arms also follow the same pattern as STR? (that is doubling kinetic energy for each +DC)

Geeze, this thread has grown since I posted...another 5 pages! Sure turned into a hot topic, didn't it? But then, it is part of "the great STR debate", so maybe that's not so surprising after all.

 

To answer your question, Warp9 -- well, I'm not sure I can, frankly. First of all, I never said (nor, to my knowledge, has any HERO product stated) that a +1 DC with a firearm equates to doubling of kinetic energy.

 

What has been stated is that a +1 DC equates to a doubling of effectiveness...quite a different thing. I don't know that I've ever believed that, though, because I think it's so situation-dependant. Example: you hit somebody with Attack A, and their defenses mean that, in effect, only 1 DC of 'damage' gets through to them; if Attack A gains +1 DC then yes, it's doubling the effectiveness because approximately 2 DC worth of 'damage' is getting to them. On the other hand, if Attack B hits someone and 12 DC of effects gets through, I don't know that making it +1 DC for 13 DC getting through is going to make that much difference.

 

It's all in what you term "effectiveness", I suppose.

[Guest Champsguy]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

Exactly, Doc Anomaly. "Effectiveness" is really freakin' hard to define. Is +1 DC "twice as powerful"? Is +5 Int "twice as smart"? Who knows? How would you measure it anyway? You can't. They're subjective measurements.

[Fox1]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

Overall' date=' a damn cool and (to my knowledge and reading since) a highly accurate one. [/quote']

 

It had it faults, some of which you note. Some of which was due to when it was written (there was a significant change in ballistic wounding theory a few years after it was published).

 

I actually used one version of it for a short campaign once. Oddly enough we decided it was just too graphic for our heroic style games.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

I am a little surprised that no one has yet commented on the irony of applying physics equations, real-world ballistics, and comparisons of the damaging and protective qualities of various materials, to a situation that really only occurs in comic books.

 

There is no realistic comparison between a man with a staff and another man a hundred times stronger than the first, because the second man doesn't exist and can't exist. Even if he did exist he couldn't do the things that such characters do in comic books, because those stunts don't follow the laws of physics.

 

You may say that the comparison doesn't follow the principles of logic either, but logic flows from the premises that you start with. Since the situation in question only exists in comics and similar fiction, those premises should be the conventions of the genre, which although widely recognized and accepted for purposes of storytelling, can't be equated to reality in all circumstances. Attempting to apply real-world standards to a situation that's impossible in the real world, creates a logical fallacy that leads to, well, several pages of debate.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

IIRC Hero System is designed to represent action movies and fiction, not reality. (Wasn't it you who had a sig to that effect at one time?)

 

My only concern with issues such as this is "Will it enhance or reduce playability?" If making it more "real" hurts enjoyment of the game, then reality is going to take a back seat in our campaign. If increased realism enhances the story, then it'll be included. But it's generally laughable to talk about increasing realism in any campaign setting that features flying people in spandex. Our characters are the stars of the comic book, not "real" people. If I want to experience back pain, financial and family problems, and insomnia then I'll just be recreating my real life. And where's the fun in that?

 

I use my real name, the tagline the system gives me and have no avatar, and you think I have a sig

 

But I do agree with your comments. And, at present, the STR rules aren't hurting my enjoyment of the game, so I don't see a need to revise damage to rise faster compared to lift capacity, or to revise damage to reflect the fact that the actual effect of physical injury in the real world (aka the fictional one the newspapers collaborate to create, depending on your PoV ) varies far more dramatically than the game system alows for.

 

And "realism" is a tough word to apply to most games ["realistic" superpowers? "realistic" magic? "realistic" warp drive? Lethal Weapon - "realistic?].

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

pretty easy, if you use various optional combat rules like hit locations and the throw modifiers chart from UMA

Normal man falls down (equal to 1 hex fall) 1d6 damage.

(or if you base the falling damage on mass, then he takes 2d6 base)

probably was in motion say (3" velocity) for another +1d6

hits head on something hard (+2-3d6 depending on what it is)

And gains perhaps another +1d6 from uneven surface

So we're looking at around a 6 or 7 DC normal attack against a 2 pd 8 body normal, add a head location roll with the appropriate X2 body and yeah...its quite possible in game terms.

 

Now it's too likely, though. The odds of a 6 or 7 DC attack failingto beat 2 BOD is pretty remote, so the system as you interpret it virtially giuarantees an injury warranting a trip to the emergency ward. Most people who trip and fall don't take a serious injury (especially young kids, who have 1-2 PD and less than adult BOD, right?, albeit a bit less distance to fall).

 

The fact is that "real world" damage is a lot more variable than game system damage (Hero or any other). I suspect any aproach fully capturing the vaguaries of actual injury would be virtually unplayable.