Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

[prestidigitator]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

I suggest that maybe you should read Star Hero.

 

Also a good understanding of what the rules say on the matter will be of help here as well. The rules clearly state that each +1 BODY represents a doubling of mass. (FREd 302-303 under breaking things) you'll note that it does not say anything about "only applying to 2D objects," it refers to objects in general.

 

But again you can just refer to Star Hero, although you could figure it out yourself using the rules in the main book.

I'm quite familiar with your reference to the amount of Body for large objects. But that depends on treating the whole Earth as "one object." What I'm saying is that the main book also gives rules for destroying a volume of earth, rock, etc. I submit that it takes much less damage to destroy the Earth if you apply it over the whole volume of the Earth. And I can do it with a lot fewer points (210 AP, I think?) then the 80 DCs needed to do approximately 81 Body, as Champsguy puts it (somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 points, I think?). Okay. Mine might leave the iron core. Woopie!

[Fox1]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

You have also provided nothing to show that increasing kinetic energy does not increase the raw amount of tissue damage.

 

The article you referenced, for example, says nothing to this effect.

 

Oh boy.

 

Ok, need something besides a simple summary- here:

 

http://teapot.usask.ca/cdn-firearms/Fackler/wrong.html

 

 

Here, I'll copy a section for those who don't want to follow the link and read the whole thing:

 

"Serious misunderstanding has been generated by looking upon "kinetic energy transfer" from projectile to tissue as a mechanism of injury. In spite of data to the contrary (1, 63), many assume that the amount of "kinetic energy deposit" in the body by a projectile is a measure of damage (2-5, 36, 37, 40). Such opinions ignore the direct interaction of projectile and tissue that is the crux of wound ballistics."

 

...

 

"The assumption that "kinetic energy deposit" is directly proportional to damage done to tissues also fails to recognize the components of the projectile-tissue collision that use energy but do not cause tissue disruption. They are 1) sonic pressure wave, 2) heating of the tissue, 3) heating of the projectile, 4) deformation of the projectile, and 5) motion imparted to the tissue (gelatin bloc displacement for example). "

 

Me again, he leaves out wasted energy as the bullet exits the other side.

 

 

"Anyone yet unconvinced of the fallacy in using kinetic energy alone to measure wounding capacity might wish to consider the example of a modern broadhead hunting arrow. It is used to kill all species of big game, yet its striking energy is only about 50 ft-lb (68 Joules)-- less than that of the .22 Short bullet. Energy is used efficiently by the sharp blade of the broadhead arrow. Cutting tissue is far more efficient than crushing it, and crushing it is far more efficient than tearing it apart by stretch (as in temporary cavitation). "

 

 

Can we put this to bed yet?

[Ki-rin]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

I'm sorry, I'm still amazed to see anyone debate this from a realism stance.

"Realism" is an icky word when we are discussing most RP genre's. Perhaps "Logical Consistency" is better. Both Suspension of Disbelief and Emotional/Intellectual Involvement require that things work "sensibly" for PC's and their players within the context of the game environment. When this doesn't happen, people have a less satisfying game experience.

 

Although I shouldn't be. I've seen worse.

Absolutely.

 

I suppose I'll be hearing about how the katana can chop barrels off of rifles or some such next...

Not by me you won't. Although a real katana (made the traditional "1000 folds" way) is capable of some pretty amazing feats. The original standard of quality for them was to see how many human torsos they could cut through in one swing. Condemned Criminals were used for this purpose. A "six man" or "nine man" katana was just that: a blade that just after manufacture could cut through that many male torsos on one swing. The amazing part is that this is verifiable historical fact, not some gaming simulation.

[Fox1]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

"Realism" is an icky word when we are discussing most RP genre's. Perhaps "Logical Consistency" is better. Both Suspension of Disbelief and Emotional/Intellectual Involvement require that things work "sensibly" for PC's and their players within the context of the game environment. When this doesn't happen, people have a less satisfying game experience.

 

Granted.

 

But I can't believe that anyone would consider a MA's punch equaling the punch of someone with the strength of 40 men anything but a major suspension of Disbelief issue.

 

Saying it's ok due to genre, fine. Saying it's ok due to game balance, fine. Those I can grasp.

 

But because it *seems* right to them? There's some major oddness going down with how that person judges their reality.

 

 

And the whole question of maybe damage doesn't relate to strength in HERO System. Let's put that to bed right now. Every 5 points of strength does one additional point of body on average. The rules specifically state that each point of body destroyed doubles the destroyed mass.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

What genre? It's been awhile since I've read comics, so maybe this has changed or something, but in my experience a brick punching an enemy with his fists v.s. clobbering him with a truck is analogous to a regular guy punching an enemy v.s. clobbering him with a 2x4. Definitely a higher order of attack.

 

If you're talking about Champions, not comic books, then that's a rules convention not a genre convention. (Yes, I know, I'm being pedantic. )

 

Maybe my use of the term genre is wrong. I believe that Ultimate Brick suggests that Strong characters that regularly pick up objects to use as weapons to either a) increase damage increase odds of hitting c) hit targets at range should actually pay for these abilities. If not payed for they should be used infrequently and have major drawbacks (property owner sues character for example) when compared to the character that paid points.

 

HM

[prestidigitator]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

Oh boy.

 

Ok, need something besides a simple summary- here:

...

Here, I'll copy a section for those who don't want to follow the link and read the whole thing:

...

Me again, he leaves out wasted energy as the bullet exits the other side.

...

Can we put this to bed yet?

My friend, you are confusing a couple of issues. First, I am not saying that destroying tissue is the only thing that the energy of a bullet goes into. I am also not saying that the damage is proportional to the kinetic energy. What I am saying is that an increase in kinetic energy tends to cause an increase in tissue damage (that is not a statement of proportionality. In fact, it is an incredibly loose statement of correlation.). None of your quotes nor your references refute that.

 

Second, the arrow thing is just a little bogus. Changing projectile types is completely independent of increasing the kinetic energy of the same projectile. We were talking about the effects of energy, not type of projectile. By the way, the sources you have sighted, and most other ballistics studies, are primarily concerned with the type of projectile, not differing amounts of energy imparted to a given projectile.

 

Third, you are once again completely skirting the issue of the thread. You know, the parts that make all of this firearms nonesense completely off-topic? See my previous post.

[Fox1]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

 

Ok, I'm done. There is no point talking to someone who is incapable of listening and thinking.

 

I found the ignore option on this board, and life is good.

[zornwil]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

IDHMBIFOM, but 43 STR should be able to lift about 20,000 pounds/9600 Kg, or about the weight of a semi-tractor. Figure most midsized cars will weigh about one quarter of that. Sure, he can easily pick up an ordinary car and use it as a weapon, but it's not going to have enough DEF + BODY to add substantially to the damage above the 8½ he can do with a punch. A die or two, maybe, but essentially any object tough enough to take that hit without breaking will probably be too heavy to use as a weapon. (And certainly lifting and dropping an object isn't going to do any more damage than a punch or squeeze damage by the same character.)

 

And just because your dad could tip over a car doesn't prove anything. I'm sure he was a giant radioactive lizard too.

Ah, okay, got what you're referring to, thx, Treb.

 

And as to dad, well, he did used to regularly beat up Godzilla, so you have a point.

[Ki-rin]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

Sorry, but you're wrong. I can blow an Earth-sized hole in a wall as thick as the Earth with far less than 200 Body. It's closer to 100. Of course, that has to be done with one single attack.

 

The Earth is about 13,000 km thick. Let's say the entire Earth is made of the same metals that a vault door is made of. So that's 16 Def. 2 meters of metal has 19 Body. Every doubling of thickness for a wall is +2 Body. So, to put a hex-sized hole through the Earth, you'd need...

 

9 doublings (+18 Body) would make it a kilometer of metal instead of 2 meters.

10 (+20 Body) more doublings would make it 1,000 km.

4 (+8 Body) more doublings would make it 16,000 km, which is 3,000 more than you need.

 

So, given the 19 Body for the initial hex, that's 19+18+20+8=65 Body needed. Add in the 16 Body for Defense, and that's an 81 Body attack to blow a hole through a vault door as thick as the Earth.

 

Now, to blow up the rest of it, we need +1 Body for each doubling of the diameter of the hole. So, we basically need a 13,000 km diameter of the hole. That's (borrowing the above math) 23 more Body. Boom. Earth-sized hole in the Earth.

 

81+23=104. That's 104 Body needed to blow up an armored Earth. So that's a 100D6 EB that you haymaker. No problem.

 

By the way, the rules for blowing up stuff like that can be found on page 304 of 5th Edition (not revised). If you're gonna disagree, I'm gonna need you to cite a rule and have a page cite handy.

...And those rules are on p176-178 of 4ed. ...and p86-88 of _Champions_ (6th printing June 1988). I don't have any of the others handy. I'll skip the references to other HERO publications. With the sole exception of one reference in Star Hero, all "breaking objects" write ups have been explictly or implicitly about smaller than planet size objects that were substantially thinner in at least one dimension. They also tend to assume attacks that are reasonably close in scale to the size of the area you want to affect. The Star Hero reference is aberrant, and probably resulted in the invention of MegaScale to fix things.

 

Attempts to destroy the Earth using 200 Bod with Rules that do not cover the situation is no more or less than Rules Abuse. It also breaks the internal logical consistency of the game. However, the rules +can+ be used in a logically consistent manner to figure what it would take to destroy the earth.

 

The earth masses 5.97x10^27 g and has a volume of 1.08 x 10^27 cm^3

and therefore has an average density of 5.52 g/cm^3. This is denser than Titanium (4.5 or 4.85), and about the same as ceramics such as Vandium Carbide (5.71). In HERO terms, the earth's average Body is probably best treated as a ceramic. Figuring out the earth's DEF is more difficult since all of its size, shape, and composition need to be taken into account in order to accurately model its DEF. Whatever the value is, it's likely to be _HIGH_ given the fact that the earth is a comparatively solid sphere of great size and composition 5.52x that of water.

 

Even if we ignore the earth's DEF, there is an enormous amount of relatively hard mass that must be affected all at once if we want to destroy its physical structure. (It's _much_ easier to render the earth sterile rather than destroy it's structure.) A first pass is that every cm^3 of Earth requires 5.5 Body (28 AP) to destroy (11 Body, 55 AP, to vaporize) +above+ the amount needed to overcome the DEF of that cm^3 of Earth. Given Earth's likely DEF, The base attack per cm^3 is likely be quite a bit higher in order to get 5.5 Body through. Then to affect 1.08x10^27 cm^3, we need to multiply that base damage by 2^90 as well as pay for the Advantages necessary to affect such a large volume all at once. Finally, the attack must be designed to not allow the the earth to dissipate energy by simply being knocked out of orbit. To inflict maximum structural damage, the attack must hold the earth in place rather than let it move.

 

I'm not going to actually crunch the numbers, but the amount of Body required is at least 5.5*90= 495 if Earth had 0 DEF. Since Earth has a considerably higher DEF (probably greater than 20), the required AP cost to get that 495 Body through in one shot over that entire volume is _HUGE_.

[zornwil]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

Maybe my use of the term genre is wrong. I believe that Ultimate Brick suggests that Strong characters that regularly pick up objects to use as weapons to either a) increase damage increase odds of hitting c) hit targets at range should actually pay for these abilities. If not payed for they should be used infrequently and have major drawbacks (property owner sues character for example) when compared to the character that paid points.

 

HM

I think this has been how - I THINK - the majority have dealt with the bricks who use objects for AoE (edit here) regarding DAMAGE (I think the others are not so applied that way - and I should add here that in fact I have no problem with bricks habitually grabbing big stuff and won't penalize them for that). I tend to deal with it this way but as I think about it probably not terribly consistently.

 

Along these lines, I did a set of rules for bludgeoning people with, ahem, other people, since that seemed to become semi-common in the earlier part of our campaign, though it seemed to settle down. They're at http://www.realschluss.org/x-champions/house_rules/ch_bludgeoning.html . I know there are HERO rules that do cover this sort of thing but they're not as straightforward and this is geared to how I wanted to both promote and limit such things in our games.

[zornwil]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

Granted.

 

But I can't believe that anyone would consider a MA's punch equaling the punch of someone with the strength of 40 men anything but a major suspension of Disbelief issue.

 

Saying it's ok due to genre, fine. Saying it's ok due to game balance, fine. Those I can grasp.

 

But because it *seems* right to them? There's some major oddness going down with how that person judges their reality.

 

 

And the whole question of maybe damage doesn't relate to strength in HERO System. Let's put that to bed right now. Every 5 points of strength does one additional point of body on average. The rules specifically state that each point of body destroyed doubles the destroyed mass.

Just curious on your last point - would you please cite? The only reference I am aware of and could find is in 5ER on page 449 and it indicates "The size of the hole doubles for every +1 BODY inflicted over the wall's base BODY." But note that "A character who exceeds the wall's BODY has created a human-sized hole in it" (emphasis mine); this seems to indicate that it isn't as formulaic as a doubling of mass destroyed per BOD in a single attack.

 

Of course this all has to do with the ambiguity of "what is BOD"? BOD, for a character, is definitely not (consistently) the same as mass.

[zornwil]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

(snip) The Star Hero reference is aberrant, and probably resulted in the invention of MegaScale to fix things.

 

OMG, I can't believe we're on the "what it takes to destroy Earth" debate...it's a time-honored one... (or is that time-dishonored?)

 

Anyway, Star Hero came out after 5th, 5th introduced Megascale. Just FYI/FTR. I take no position on destroying a planet myself, though I really should think about that as I should be working on the "cyber ninja pirates in space" game.

[Fox1]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

Just curious on your last point - would you please cite?

 

I went looking for a cite after the post as I was concerned that I think have been living in an old edition back when each level of Density Increase granted +1 Body.

 

That's no longer the case so I'll have to do some looking.

 

In the meantime I withdraw the comment in respect to 5th edition revised.

[zornwil]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

I went looking for a cite after the post as I was concerned that I think have been living in an old edition back when each level of Density Increase granted +1 Body.

 

That's no longer the case so I'll have to do some looking.

 

In the meantime I withdraw the comment in respect to 5th edition revised.

Okay, if you find it do let me know ,whether PM or via the thread.

[zornwil]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

General PS - in 5ER on page 447 is the same reference as in 5th regarding "...each doubling of mass is +1 BODY". But then it adds "The GM may wish to increase an object's BODY based on its size or the materials it is made of." This wasn't really directly apropos to my exchange with Fox1 above, but it bears on the issue of course generally. And I think the point that the book indicates that additional size or different material alters the numbers in addition to mass indicates it's also not a simple equation. Then there's also the issue of how BOD damage really works, so that creates further complexity.

[Ki-rin]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

OMG, I can't believe we're on the "what it takes to destroy Earth" debate...it's a time-honored one... (or is that time-dishonored?)

It's a chestnut that is old enough and well enough "cooked" by now that it should be in a official FAQ and not need discussion anymore.

 

Anyway, Star Hero came out after 5th, 5th introduced Megascale. Just FYI/FTR. I take no position on destroying a planet myself, though I really should think about that as I should be working on the "cyber ninja pirates in space" game.

Ummm, No. My first copy of Star Hero is the 1st printing in Feb 1989. Star Hero (as well as I) have been around awhile.

 

BTW, that original ed of Star Hero did NOT have the broken "Earth has 86 Body" example in it. The "improved" FRed based Star Hero did...

[prestidigitator]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

Ok, I'm done. There is no point talking to someone who is incapable of listening and thinking.

 

I found the ignore option on this board, and life is good.

Man. I didn't mean to be that offensive. I thought it was all in the nature of a spirited argument. I would apologize, but I guess maybe you can't hear me anyway....

[prestidigitator]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

It's a chestnut that is old enough and well enough "cooked" by now that it should be in a official FAQ and not need discussion anymore.

Right. So let's move on. Now what do you think it would take to destroy the Sun....

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

Right. So let's move on. Now what do you think it would take to destroy the Sun....

 

besides an active Stargate?

 

I'm not sure....

 

HM

[zornwil]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

It's a chestnut that is old enough and well enough "cooked" by now that it should be in a official FAQ and not need discussion anymore.

 

 

Ummm, No. My first copy of Star Hero is the 1st printing in Feb 1989. Star Hero (as well as I) have been around awhile.

 

BTW, that original ed of Star Hero did NOT have the broken "Earth has 86 Body" example in it. The "improved" FRed based Star Hero did...

Okay, sorry, thought you meant the later version, obviously. I didn't buy the Hero books aside from the core rulebook back in the "old days" because generally I couldn't afford it, and by the time I could things were in the toilet and I just didn't bother at that point. So there are a few of those books I didn't realize existed in prior editions - Star Hero is one of them.

[zornwil]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

Man. I didn't mean to be that offensive. I thought it was all in the nature of a spirited argument. I would apologize' date=' but I guess maybe you can't hear me anyway.... [/quote']

Quoting you so Fox1 can see, if he's interested, since you posted that.

[zornwil]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

Right. So let's move on. Now what do you think it would take to destroy the Sun....

A GM...

 

[prestidigitator]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

A GM...

 

Bah! Falling back on that old one! That's the cheap way. We're looking for stuff that will put sand in the GM's va**na. Heh.

 

...and seriously, thank you for the mediation.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

...And those rules are on p176-178 of 4ed. ...and p86-88 of _Champions_ (6th printing June 1988). I don't have any of the others handy. I'll skip the references to other HERO publications. With the sole exception of one reference in Star Hero, all "breaking objects" write ups have been explictly or implicitly about smaller than planet size objects that were substantially thinner in at least one dimension. They also tend to assume attacks that are reasonably close in scale to the size of the area you want to affect. The Star Hero reference is aberrant, and probably resulted in the invention of MegaScale to fix things.

 

Attempts to destroy the Earth using 200 Bod with Rules that do not cover the situation is no more or less than Rules Abuse. It also breaks the internal logical consistency of the game. However, the rules +can+ be used in a logically consistent manner to figure what it would take to destroy the earth.

 

The earth masses 5.97x10^27 g and has a volume of 1.08 x 10^27 cm^3

and therefore has an average density of 5.52 g/cm^3. This is denser than Titanium (4.5 or 4.85), and about the same as ceramics such as Vandium Carbide (5.71). In HERO terms, the earth's average Body is probably best treated as a ceramic. Figuring out the earth's DEF is more difficult since all of its size, shape, and composition need to be taken into account in order to accurately model its DEF. Whatever the value is, it's likely to be _HIGH_ given the fact that the earth is a comparatively solid sphere of great size and composition 5.52x that of water.

 

Even if we ignore the earth's DEF, there is an enormous amount of relatively hard mass that must be affected all at once if we want to destroy its physical structure. (It's _much_ easier to render the earth sterile rather than destroy it's structure.) A first pass is that every cm^3 of Earth requires 5.5 Body (28 AP) to destroy (11 Body, 55 AP, to vaporize) +above+ the amount needed to overcome the DEF of that cm^3 of Earth. Given Earth's likely DEF, The base attack per cm^3 is likely be quite a bit higher in order to get 5.5 Body through. Then to affect 1.08x10^27 cm^3, we need to multiply that base damage by 2^90 as well as pay for the Advantages necessary to affect such a large volume all at once. Finally, the attack must be designed to not allow the the earth to dissipate energy by simply being knocked out of orbit. To inflict maximum structural damage, the attack must hold the earth in place rather than let it move.

 

I'm not going to actually crunch the numbers, but the amount of Body required is at least 5.5*90= 495 if Earth had 0 DEF. Since Earth has a considerably higher DEF (probably greater than 20), the required AP cost to get that 495 Body through in one shot over that entire volume is _HUGE_.

 

FYI, this has always been my take on the subject, but it's NOT any more official than the "by the book" +1 Body = X2 mass rule which is part of cannon. Go check my rather old Planetbusters thread in the star hero forum to see some more discussion on the topic. ignoring the wall body table and using the body/mass doubling makes the Earth some 80 something body. If its addressed as a single target, it becomes kinda patheticly easy to destroy the earth. You run into the same problem with a lot of other items as well. if you look at the sample vechiles in Fred, you'll find that they tend to stick pretty close to the "appropriate" body for their mass. Which results in things like an Aircraft carrier with 28 body or so.

This is a problem we HAVE addressed and bypassed in our games... it violates suspension of disbelief in a major way

[Lupus]

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

 

FYI, this has always been my take on the subject, but it's NOT any more official than the "by the book" +1 Body = X2 mass rule which is part of cannon. Go check my rather old Planetbusters thread in the star hero forum to see some more discussion on the topic. ignoring the wall body table and using the body/mass doubling makes the Earth some 80 something body. If its addressed as a single target, it becomes kinda patheticly easy to destroy the earth. You run into the same problem with a lot of other items as well. if you look at the sample vechiles in Fred, you'll find that they tend to stick pretty close to the "appropriate" body for their mass. Which results in things like an Aircraft carrier with 28 body or so.

This is a problem we HAVE addressed and bypassed in our games... it violates suspension of disbelief in a major way

Really, it's a miracle that the earth has survived the multiple-megaton nuclear tests. They must have all rolled REAL low on their damage dice, because otherwise they'd have destroyed the earth in one hit.

 

(I'm in agreement, btw. There are times to apply the rules, and other times to overrule them. The '86 BOD to destroy the earth' is a blind application of a rule that, in my opinion, doesn't scale well enough. It just doesn't make SENSE. And in my games, I'm gonna ignore it big-time. )