The Quintessential BODY

[Mister E]

Re: The Quintessential BODY

 

What color is a basketball? I'd say it's orange. I acknowledge that there are black lines on it' date=' but I wouldn't say that a basketball is black. The biggest and most important parts of the HERO system are linear. I acknowledge that some parts are exponential.[/quote']

If there's a leaf of lettuce on my hamburger' date=' I skill call it a hamburger, not a lettuce sandwich which parenthetically happens to have a quarter pound of beef on it. That's why I say the system is linear.[/quote']You win, dude. I can't argue with such logical reasoning as you bring to the table.

 

Sorry, I just thought this was funny.

 

The issues you have brought up, have pointed something out to me that I might want to add on to my original post, and I need time to meditate on it. Thanks.

[Hawksmoor]

Re: The Quintessential BODY

 

As a slight aside I object to your assertion that earlier (and current for that matter) editions had characters with inflated stats. HERO grew out of Champions which was a super heroic roleplaying game. Justice Inc and the rest were Heroic roleplaying games. Regardless, high stats, read as anything over 10, are part and parcel of the game and have been since the game was concieved. Deviations you and other players might have towards the lower end of the spectrum are just that: deviations from the norm. High stats are the norm and represent heroic and superheroic stature.

 

On topic I thoroughly disagree with the concept of limiting my character's body to anything less than either the campaign maximum or the amount of points I am willing to spend. I often have characters in the 14-18 Body range as a matter of course. That said I *always* have higher than 10 INT, unless the character cannot support it (Hardcase), just to have quicker than average uptake if not genius level intellect, and 11-14 EGO to represent the strong will required to take up being a superhero.

 

YMMV, and it obviously does.

 

Hawksmoor

[zornwil]

Re: The Quintessential BODY

 

Yes' date=' but what exactly does "twice as big" mean in HERO? If it means "double in all three dimensions" then the object's [i']mass[/i] has just cubed. And mass is what a character lifts with his STR. +5 STR allows a character to lift double the mass; not the original mass³. So how are these to be reconciled?

+1 BOD is x2 mass on the charts, not x2 area or such. Maybe I missed your point though?

[zornwil]

Re: The Quintessential BODY

 

Well, I did use the word 'ineffable'... sure it's a leap, that's why I started this thread. All I really want to do is contribute what I can, to the general corpus of understanding the people of this Discussion Board has.Not as much as you might think. Note, for instance, some of the entries in the Characteristics Benchmarks Table (page 41 5er):

 

1) A pro football player has a BODY of 11-13

2) Rasputin, a character attributed with legendary fortitude and survivability, has a BODY of 14-20.

 

Obviously, this is very much different from all of the other Characteristics, which put mundane virtuosos in the 14-20 range, and the truly rarified elite in the 21-30 range. This, to me, seems like an attempt to mirror the +1 BODY = x2 effectiveness rule. Rasputin isn't in the 21-30 range, because that would be more like the +5 = x2 effectiveness of STR and Damage.Consider it fixed. Thanks. =)

 

I think that's a pretty big stretch when you consider that, even "restrained", that's quite a gulf at x16 mass at BOD 14. Also, given that the chart on page 40 spells out no differentiation of BOD from other physical chars for those levels of characteristics, and that Rasputin's CON is higher than BOD which seems to be their guesstimate on the legend of the poison and water effects (as opposed to the shooting and stabbing!), I'm not sure that it's really a good idea to fall too much for correlating BOD to mass for characters.

[Onyxclaw]

Re: The Quintessential BODY

 

I tend to find that low body is more than fine if the character has decent defenses.

 

My dragon character from the scifi game (small dragon, size class enormours) only has 16 body, roughly equivalent to a light war horse, which is roughly how big the bulk of her body is minus the wings and tail.

 

She also has high defenses, total defenses without electrical force field is around 10 resistant (for chest vitals, and tail hits) and 8 resistant (for others), with forcefield (wich costs X2 endurance to maintain) is 18-20 resistant, 10 of that hardened. (this may seem like a lot but this character cannot ever buy more armour unitl she grows, which will not happen over the course of the game. She also cannot wear equipment and will not...cultural taboo.)

 

Her defenses (not FF) were bought with damage resistance instead of armour, so stunning her is much easier than hacking off one of her limbs, which in my opinion is a much better option, since the dragon scales really just make it hard to penatrate her skin, not reducing impact damage.

 

If I had given her more body she would be impossible to kill in the setting that we are currently playing in. Besides, the 16 is more than enough. I think the most body she has taken year to date is 2, granted she's only actually been hit by attacks maybe 4 times (extra DCV while in Flight). My largest dragon maxes out it's BODY at 30. But it also has 35 resistant defenses, with 10 hardened, and 75% damage reduction against physical blows. I do not have anything with more body than that.

 

under most circumstances having an excess ammount of body isn't rellay neccisary. You can effectively double your body/stun by buying damage reduction, which IMO is the better way to go.

 

As a general rule I don't allow characters to buy extra body beyond 14 without a good reason which they need to clear by me. The local frail looking wizard doesn't need to have 20 body under most circumstances.

 

I do advocate extra body instead of damage reduction and defenses for the following:

A character who always takes damage and visably so, but for whom said damage is irrelevant until there is so little left of them they finally fall apart.

Thus they take the damage, and they show it, but they wont dies until you've hacked them up into tiny pieces. If you want a really tough one of those, maybe you could give it extra body only to not die.

[Mister E]

Re: The Quintessential BODY

 

As a slight aside I object to your assertion that earlier (and current for that matter) editions had characters with inflated stats. HERO grew out of Champions which was a super heroic roleplaying game. Justice Inc and the rest were Heroic roleplaying games. Regardless' date=' high stats, read as anything over 10, are part and parcel of the game and have been since the game was concieved. Deviations you and other players might have towards the lower end of the spectrum are just that: deviations from the norm. High stats are the norm and represent heroic and superheroic stature.[/quote']Like I said, this is just the impression I've gotten from the Discussion Board.

 

I was introduced to HERO, when the 4th ed., at the end, was just barely banging around; but I didn't truly begin to get involved until 5th ed..

 

One of the things I noticed, was that DEX and CON on just about every character presented in the suppliments, was in the 20's... even on characters whose concepts didn't seem to support such high stats. When I actually started playing the game, I discovered why this was: For DEX, disparaging differences in CV's are crippling; and for CON, those with average CON will spend the majority of their heroic careers stunned.

 

You could argue that it makes sense that Bulldozer has the same DEX as a highwire circus acrobat, or that Cheshire Cat has more CON than your average gorilla, but I think this is more a matter of meta-gaming, than an attempt to accurately represent characters.

On topic I thoroughly disagree with the concept of limiting my character's body to anything less than either the campaign maximum or the amount of points I am willing to spend. I often have characters in the 14-18 Body range as a matter of course. That said I *always* have higher than 10 INT, unless the character cannot support it (Hardcase), just to have quicker than average uptake if not genius level intellect, and 11-14 EGO to represent the strong will required to take up being a superhero.

 

YMMV, and it obviously does.

 

Hawksmoor

Whatever stats you, me, or anyone gives their characters, is totally fine. The numbers speak for themselves, and are never wrong, unless they don't properly represent the intensions of the player. My only goal with this thread, is to inform players what exactly numbers on the BODY stat represents.

 

If you are arbitrarily assigning numbers to your characters' stats, then that's pretty much the end of the discussion for me.

 

If you like having all of your characters' life forces fortified with heroic internal drives, and sheer relentless ferocity... well that's pretty damn cool, and I totally dig it.

[Hawksmoor]

Re: The Quintessential BODY

 

My only goal with this thread, is to inform players what exactly numbers on the BODY stat represents.

 

Alas, you are wrong about what that number means the instant you apply the concept to a heroic and/or superheroic character. That number *only* represents the amount of unkillability a particular character has, irrespective of mass, will to live, or alien genetics. It is purely a metagame construct. We can slap all the explaination we want to 'make it believable' but in the end it comes down to how many points do we want to spend to keep this character out of the grave.

 

Hawksmoor

[Mister E]

Re: The Quintessential BODY

 

As a general rule I don't allow characters to buy extra body beyond 14 without a good reason which they need to clear by me. The local frail looking wizard doesn't need to have 20 body under most circumstances.

I think this is a very good rule, by and large.

 

This is going to sound funny, but with all the Sword and Sorcery I've read, I actually think wizards are more justified than your average footsoldier, in taking high BODY, due to arcane dabblings that fortify their constitutions (not CON so much, though).

[Onyxclaw]

Re: The Quintessential BODY

 

I think this is a very good rule, by and large.

 

This is going to sound funny, but with all the Sword and Sorcery I've read, I actually think wizards are more justified than your average footsoldier, in taking high BODY, due to arcane dabblings that fortify their constitutions (not CON so much, though).

 

ah, but such things are justifications now aren't they

 

Most wizard characters I've made use charms and spells that last all day or until they take them off to bolster thier defenses or give them the body they might nee to avoid death. It is not inherently a part of them. Spells and magic items are the be all and end all of stat inflation ^^

 

But yes, I understand what you mean.

[zornwil]

Re: The Quintessential BODY

 

Alas, you are wrong about what that number means the instant you apply the concept to a heroic and/or superheroic character. That number *only* represents the amount of unkillability a particular character has, irrespective of mass, will to live, or alien genetics. It is purely a metagame construct. We can slap all the explaination we want to 'make it believable' but in the end it comes down to how many points do we want to spend to keep this character out of the grave.

 

Hawksmoor

"Unkillability"?!?

 

Anyway, I think that is truly the bottom line, but would add that it's not a "metagame" concept so much as it is simply a mechanism in the game to represent the damage a character can take. The metagame comes in only if one applies it solely to be less killable (good term, btw!) against as opposed to with character concept. Of course, to be fair, one deliberately tends to create less killable character concepts for a number of reasons, both metagaming ("I want my character to live!") and in-game. And there's nothing wrong with metagaming on some levels - e.g., it's really important that PCs are created with a metagame understanding, otherwise they simply won't function as is desired for the campaign.

 

Of course, I'm probably just quibbling over the meaning of metagame.

[bigdamnhero]

Re: The Quintessential BODY

 

Such cases are variables involved with rolling damage dice. A .50 machine gun does 3D6K damage. On average' date=' its going to do 10.5 Body per hit. Enough to seriously injure or kill normal people in a single hit (provided you are using Impairing/Disabling rules) however, occasionally, the minimum damage will be seen...a mere 3 Body, not even an imparing wound. "He was shot through the chest by several .50 rounds and was still able to drag his wounded comrade to safety..." Chances are slim, but it does occasionally happen...in game as well as in real life. [/quote']

 

I always considered the difference between rolling 3 damage and rolling 18 damage to be primarily the difference in shot placement. Both may be chest shots, but one is a graze ("Only a flesh wound!") while the other hits the spinal cord. (Which is why using CSLs to add damage for missile weapons makes sense.) There are other variables, of course, such as whether the bullet hits a rib or not. Range makes a difference too, but at the same range under similar conditions, the actual kinetic energy of .a 50 cal round is a number, not a range of randomly-generated numbers.

 

Anyway, my point was that you can have different people get shot in the exact same spot, with identical wound tracks, and yet one person lives and the other doesn’t. My EMT friend talks about it all the time: “The guy wasn’t hurt that bad, but he just gave up.†Or “This guy was seriously messed up, but I’ve never seen anyone hold onto life like that.†Obviously “holding onto life†doesn’t make the difference between me and Godzilla. But at human levels, it is a factor IMO.

 

 

Alas' date=' you are wrong about what that number means the instant you apply the concept to a heroic and/or superheroic character. That number *only* represents the amount of unkillability a particular character has, irrespective of mass, will to live, or alien genetics. It is purely a metagame construct. We can slap all the explaination we want to 'make it believable' but in the end it comes down to how many points do we want to spend to keep this character out of the grave. [/quote']

 

Well put. Everything else is just a way to justify the characters "unkilability." But hey, that's role-playing.

[Trebuchet]

Re: The Quintessential BODY

 

You have brought this up before, and I think your argument is silly. 5 Character Points worth of Growth makes you twice as big, and grants you x2 mass. 15 Character Points worth of Growth is required to grant you x2 height, but coincidently grants you x8 mass.

 

What exactly is the point you are trying to make?

First of all, mere size or mass cannot be (and is not the) only factors in determining the toughness of an object to being killed or destroyed. That applies equally to living being and inanimate objects. The old passenger liner Queen Mary was larger than an Iowa class battleship, but only an imbecile would argue that the battleship wouldn't be vastly more difficult to destroy than the Queen Mary. The rules are quite explicit in stating that the size chart is nothing but a basic guideline and that the GM can increase or decrease BODY as he sees fit. Any object, be it a PC or a piece of furniture, will be as tough as the player and GM need it to be and feel is appropriate. The system itself is not even internally consistent.

 

Secondly, my point is that this entire debate is pointless. This is a role playing system for interactive storytelling, not a materials engineering textbook. You're attempting to apply science to a non-scientific endeavor. This is as silly as arguing the genetics of J.R.R. Tolkein's Middle Earth.

 

So tell me: Just how closely are Ents related to hobbits?

[bigdamnhero]

Re: The Quintessential BODY

 

So tell me: Just how closely are Ents related to hobbits?

 

Of the top of my head, I'd have to say...not very.

[PhilFleischmann]

Re: The Quintessential BODY

 

Most Mecha in most roleplaying games are written up as vehicles, or are in a separate class by themselves, but still basically vehicles. "Drone" mecha are uncommon in the Mecha genre; most are piloted. Some, like the Evas in Neon Genesis Evangelion, or a few other animes, have minds of their own, although this rarely means they get to act autonomously.

 

In my mind, the most accurate and practical write-up of a Mecha is to write it up as a vehicle.

Fine. I suppose you can call a Mecha an inanimate object if you want, but in HERO terms, Vehicles have their own rules and are handled very differently from rocks, walls, trees, lampposts, and furniture. Are you going to force Mechas in your capmaign to have a BODY solely determined by size/mass? Judge Yoda by his size, do you?

[PhilFleischmann]

Re: The Quintessential BODY

 

You win, dude. I can't argue with such logical reasoning as you bring to the table.

 

Sorry, I just thought this was funny.

 

The issues you have brought up, have pointed something out to me that I might want to add on to my original post, and I need time to meditate on it. Thanks.

What can I say? I've been known to come up with some really wierd analogies. I once had a philosophical discussion in which I made an analogy between the question of free will and non-Euclidian geometry.

 

"Imagine that this Twinky represents the typical amount of paranormal activity going on at any given time..." -- Egon Spengler

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: The Quintessential BODY

 

I once had a philosophical discussion in which I made an analogy between the question of free will and non-Euclidian geometry.

As a mathematician, I suspect I would have found that intersting...

[Mister E]

Re: The Quintessential BODY

 

First of all' date=' mere size or mass cannot be (and is not the) only factors in determining the toughness of an object to being killed or destroyed.[/quote']You are implying that I had made the statement that mass or size is the only factor in determening BODY! Why? I think I've made myself pretty clear, from post-one, that there were other factors. Yet nobody has been able to argue against the very simple, and obvious fact, that the doubling of matter in an object carries with it an incrimental increase of BODY by a factor of 1, or whether or not every aspect of BODY is exponential. Merely arguing that BODY isn't exponential, because you yourself prefer to assign it arbitrarily without regard to its exponential nature, is not an effective argument.

That applies equally to living being and inanimate objects. The old passenger liner Queen Mary was larger than an Iowa class battleship' date=' but only an imbecile would argue that the battleship wouldn't be vastly more difficult to destroy than the Queen Mary. The rules are quite explicit in stating that the size chart is nothing but a basic guideline and that the GM can increase or decrease BODY as he sees fit. Any object, be it a PC or a piece of furniture, will be as tough as the player and GM need it to be and feel is appropriate. The system itself is not even internally consistent.[/quote']Oh, but it is:

 

Attacking And Damaging Objects(page 447): "The number of BODY an object has depends on its size, shape, weight, and durability (or lack thereof). For example, a machine witha heavy steel casing and fragile inner mechanisms would have a high DEF but few BODY."

 

Object BODY Table(page 449): 100kg ~ living/vehicle = 10 BODY, unliving = 7 BODY, complex = 5.

 

Focus Limitation (page 292-295): "A Breakable Focus has a DEF eaual to the (Active Points/5) of the largest power bought through the Focus; the minimum DEF is a 3 (unless the GM rules otherwise)... A focus is destroyed when it loses all of its powers, or when any single attack against it does two times (2x) its DEF in BODY, at the GM's option... Some Breakable Foci are especially vulnerable to attacks. A Fragile Focus for only 1 DEF, and this cannot be bought higher. Fragile represents a Focus that's exceptionally delicate - anyone can destroy it, ruin ir, or permanently sap it of its powers, given time... On the other hand, some Breakable Foci are much less vulnerable to attacks - they're Durable. A Durable Breakable Focus has double its normal DEF... An Unbreakable Focus is just that: unbreakable by any force."

 

Obviously, there is just as much, if not more variance in the BODY or durability of inanimate objects, as the there is in living creatures. Composition... arangement... fragility... durability... I never debated against the existence of these factors.

 

There is a method... there is a system... and it is exponiential. I am not crazy, and I am not making all of this up.

Secondly' date=' my point is that this entire debate is pointless.[/quote'] As far as you are concerned, you might be right... it probably is pointless.

This is a role playing system for interactive storytelling' date=' not a materials engineering textbook. You're attempting to apply science to a non-scientific endeavor.[/quote'] This business of your perception of me as trying to "apply science to a non-scientific endeavor" is something you have brought up before, and I honestly don't think you have a clue what my motives are, or what it is I'm talking about. Simply making the statement that BODY is exponential by incriments of +1 is not an attempt at Civil/Structural/or Mechanical Engineering. I too am talking about the game system's mechanics. Nothing more. Please try to understand that, if nothing else.

This is as silly as arguing the genetics of J.R.R. Tolkein's Middle Earth.

 

So tell me: Just how closely are Ents related to hobbits?

Cute. But, totally irrelivant.

[Hawksmoor]

Re: The Quintessential BODY

 

Incorrect. I stated that Body as an exponential progression has nothing to do with the creation of characters. The restriction on creating a character's body as limited by mass is anathema to the core concept of the game system. You can say that body for inanimate objects has exponential basis, but that fails utterly if you apply it to characters. It is not arbitrary, it is simply a metarule of the RPG. Players can pay however many points they want to increase a trait up to established campaign limits.

IME a Damn Good Reason is "I am tough" I don't need any more than that to justify a 18 or 25 Body.

 

I have nothing against exponential systems, WEGS (the DC Heroes engine) is one of my two favorite systems and that is entirely exponential. However, even in that system Characters are not held to the rule; 2 APS of Body or 18 APS of Body can be expressed by the same mass of a character. One is Jimmy Olsen and the other is Superman.

 

Hawksmoor

[Trebuchet]

Re: The Quintessential BODY

 

This business of your perception of me as trying to "apply science to a non-scientific endeavor" is something you have brought up before' date=' and I honestly don't think you have a clue what my motives are, or what it is I'm talking about.[/quote']BODY is a guideline to how hard it is to destroy/kill something within the HERO system. That's all it is. I think you're trying to suggest it has a deeper purpose solely to support your "damage is exponential" argument. A case can be made damage is exponential; but it is not a particularly convincing case. The arguments for linearity are just as solid. Since you're fairly new here, you may be unaware that this topic has been debated on these boards ad nauseum with no clear conclusion. Both sides have fairly good cases, but no compelling evidence either way.

 

As your own examples from the rules above illustrated, mass is quite certainly not the only determinant as to how much BODY something has. (And if a living being doesn't qualify as "complex" I can't imagine what does.) That being the case, trying to assign arbitrary meaning to the term is utterly pointless. 1 BODY means 1 BODY, not some imaginary (and highly variable depending on the circumstances) measurement of mass. No more, no less.

 

In any case, I'm done here. You're of course free to go around with a scale and a materials handbook and assign whatever value to BODY you wish in your campaign as if that actually has some purpose. But 1 BODY still means nothing more than 1 BODY.

[Warp9]

Re: The Quintessential BODY

 

Yes' date=' but what exactly does "twice as big" mean in HERO? If it means "double in all three dimensions" then the object's [i']mass[/i] has just cubed. And mass is what a character lifts with his STR. +5 STR allows a character to lift double the mass; not the original mass³. So how are these to be reconciled?

Size in 1 dimension is called "length."

Size in 2 dimensions is called "area."

Size in 3 Dimensions is called "volume."

 

The game is dealing the 3D objects (at least for the most part) so we are really talking about volume.

 

Assuming a constent density, Volume doubles as Mass doubles.

 

Your volume doubles with every 5 points of Growth. And the volume of a given material that you can lift with STR doubles for each 5 points.

 

I see no inconsistency here.