Help, the car hit the character!

[Erevahn]

So last night in our superhero game...

 

The hero known as collateral damage decided to step in front of a fleeing SUV filled with bad guys. He wanted to stop them by acting as a wall. The question that came from this is... Does a vehicle in motion, upon hitting a character (regardless of whether they want it to or not) count as a normal attack or a killing attack for the purposes of determining damage? We looked in the books, but couldn't find an answer.

 

Much appreciation to any help offered. He really wants to know if it would have hurt him. He's testing his boundries.

[BNakagawa]

Re: Help, the car hit the character!

 

Generally, large things without spikes/blades are represented by normal damage. It might be different if the vehicle had been designed to cut through things upon impact, but it's a SUV, and last I checked, they aren't designed to focus all of the impact damage onto one point.

 

So, normal damage. Potentially a lot of it, though.

 

$0.02

[Black Rose]

Re: Help, the car hit the character!

 

OTOH, catapults, which usually threw large boulders or collections of somewhat smaller boulders, are counted as Killing Damage in FH. Personally, as much as it pains me to say it, Fuzion had this one right: past a certain point, damage becomes killing no matter if it hits you with spikes or not. I guarantee a thousand-pound beanbag dropped from the top of the St. Louis Arch will register as Killing Damage.

 

As always, this is all IMO.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Help, the car hit the character!

 

Lets see:

 

An SUV has a STR of 35 and a maximum combat move of 23" so it can manage a 15d6 normal/5d6 killing move through.

 

15d6 normal averages 15 BODY/52 STUN

5d6 killing averages 18 BODY and about 47 STUN (although averages are less meaningful)

 

Hitting a normal human, that is going to kill or main either way. My personal feeling is that it is a normal attack (plenty of superheroes are at least as hard as an SUV, have a smaller surface area and can deliver 15d6 normal move throughs). moreover, low speed impacts HAVE to be normal attacks - or any collision with a noral human would cause serious injury, so it is logical to assume they just beceom bigger normal attacks

 

Pleading the case of the killing attack though the very unpredictability of results may be desireable - one person might survive a SUV movethrough - another might get totalled, and variation in damage is far greater for killing attacks.

 

My take is that it is a normal attack. In fact I'd say that is definite: killing attacks do less KB, which just can't be right.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Help, the car hit the character!

 

I'd start with Normal Damage, add in Velocity, then appropriate damge from an object like an SUV, then anything else the GM wants, convert it to DCs and decide which is more appropriate - a Killing Attack or not.

 

Even if it's not, the impact in Normal Damage will probably kill a Normal, which is our baseline here as we know the effects of an SUV smacking Joe Normal.

 

My gut instinct tells me it's Normal Damage, just lots of it.

 

Edit - or "what Sean said, because he answered faster than me."

[Brainstorm]

Re: Help, the car hit the character!

 

If this was a Normal vs. SUV situation, I say that falls under the common Truly Stupid Move House Rule. Smash the character up good or kill him outright at GM's discretion. On the other hand, if we are talking about a superhero, the Move Through maneuver is a great mechanic for the "comic book" physics of a brick trying to stop a moving car in its tracks. Assuming the drivers were not intent on avoiding the collision, I would not require a roll to hit (after all, presumably the hero would move to intercept, so it is a consensual act where only mutual clumsiness would result in a miss.)

 

As far as the effects, I would treat it as a Move Through attack by the vehicle against the humanoid obstruction. This would be normal damage where the Damage Class was a function of vehicular STR (if not printed, setimate based on carrying capacity of the vehicle,) and velocity (every 1" of Movement adding another +1d6 of normal damage.) In other words, an SUV travelling at high speed really would make a Normal go splat far more often than not. However, half of the damage rebounds to the attacker, or in this case the vehicle. Running over a soft target I would limit reflected damage to the amount of BODY + PD in the victim, but a lucky or tough brick hero could bounce off the SUV while leaving it heavily damaged, and a brick who was either lucky and tough or very high powered might indeed hold his ground while the vehicle crumpled around him. Also, I believe Clinging and Knockback Resistance have parts to play in all this -- they might not be as useful as various forms of Physical Defense, but they would help clinch the "stand your ground" outcome when a brick does try behave like a tree in front of a car.

 

Regards,

Brainstorm

 

P.S. Or in other words . . . "me three."

[garou]

Re: Help, the car hit the character!

 

I would probably consider it a normal attack if the person had some ability to try and dodge out of the way, roll with the impact, etc. Those are going to be the people who got hit and managed to walk away (if very lucky) or survive it in good shape. If (for one reason or another), the victim cannot or will not take any sort of evasive maneuver, I'd call it killing.

 

Of course, if you start looking at vehicular impacts vs. pedestrians, I'd rather be hit by an old Cadillac than an SUV or pickup, and I'd take either as opposed to being hit by a van. With a lower hood, you manage to roll somewhat - whereas being hit by a van is a lot like being hit by a fast-moving wall.

 

Edit - I'd consider it to almost always be normal damage vs. a PC.

 

Personal experience - I have been hit about 6 times as a pedestrian, 3 times as a cyclist, and 2 times as a passenger, and I have hit 1 other car (his fault, but cops don't get tickets). Ironically, they all involve people not seeing me or failing to stop in time in traffic (or, in the case of the cop, failure to yield to oncoming traffic - me - who couldn't possibly have seen him.)

[BNakagawa]

Re: Help, the car hit the character!

 

Modern vehicles are engineered with crumple zones, where the front and back deform but the center passenger compartment does not.

 

A catapult boulder is usually a solid rock which does not deform so much as shatter if it hits something harder than itself.

 

Apple - Orange.

[Funksaw]

Re: Help, the car hit the character!

 

Getting hit by a car in Champions is normal damage.

Getting hit by a car in Dark Champions is killing damage.

 

It all depends on the genre.

[Super Squirrel]

Re: Help, the car hit the character!

 

I would treat it as Normal Damage because it is essentually a move through.

 

Car STR / 5 + Car Velocity / 3 dice in Normal Damage.

[KA.]

Re: Help, the car hit the character!

 

Erevahn,

I would say in the particular case you describe (stand there and take it),

the damage would be Normal.

Why?

Normal vs. Killing Damage is not really about

"Can this kill me?"

or

"Is this Dangerous?"

 

It is about two major factors:

1) Should Resistant Defenses be required to stop it?

2) How random is the damage?

 

Let me give a bit more detail.

 

1) Should Resistant Defenses be required?

If you get hit with a small stick, you will probably not take any damage at all.

At the most, you may get a bruise.

That is because your natural PD applies, so you have some defense to this attack.

If you get nicked by a razor blade, you will bleed, because your skin's defense will not protect you from this type of attack.

It is a Killing Attack.

If you move up the scale a bit, a Boxer may be able to absorb a Punch that would knock you out, because he has a higher PD than you.

But, you could still cut him with a razor blade, because that PD is still not Resistant.

Moving on up the scale, a really tough Superhero might be able to handle a really large impact, like that of an SUV, or at the very least his PD would apply.

But, if the same SUV had some type of sharpened spike on the front of it, and that spike is what hit the hero, he might easily be killed if his PD was not Resistant, because the spike would make it a Killing Attack.

 

2) How random is the damage?

The other aspect of the Killing Attack is the randomness of the damage.

While Normal attacks are fairly average in their damage, due to the number of dice involved, a Killing Attack damage roll that includes a lot of 1's or 6's can easily do almost no damage or a great deal of damage.

The lower number of dice rolled makes the process more random.

This is good for attacks that can be either very light or very damaging depending on how you are hit.

Under normal circumstances, this might be a good way to emulate being hit by a car.

Many people are killed by cars every year, but many people also survive because the car just 'clipped' them, or they 'bounced off'.

This is a good indicator of something you might want to use a Killing Attack for, because it can be "all or nothing".

 

However, you brought up a specific case, a Superhero bracing themself for a car to hit them on purpose.

 

To me, that takes some of the randomness out of the equation.

 

After all, part of the danger emulated by the Killing Attack is that you might get hit in a way that does lots of damage (neck bent sideways) or in a way that does very little (outstretched arm is clipped by passing car).

 

But if you are standing there braced for the impact, you have a pretty good chance to 'choose' how you are hit.

 

You aren't going to get clipped in the arm, because you want to stop the car, and you certainly aren't going to bend your neck sideways and use that to absorb the impact.

 

Instead, you are basically going to try to withstand the blunt force of the vehicle, which means Normal Damage.

 

Just my opinion,

 

KA.

[Duke Bushido]

Re: Help, the car hit the character!

 

heh heh heh---

 

sorry, but I had to toss this out:

 

I'd have to go with reduced DCs of Killing Damage.

 

Unless you are playing in 2007 or later.

 

Owing to the type and extent of injury caused to pedestrians in such encounters, the government has begun to work with manufacturers to design 'nerf zones' into vehicles that will increase a pedestrian's chances of survival in an accident, with particular regard to knee and head trauma.

 

So far, the Cadilac Division of GM (who stands to lose the most in design terms; their latest trend has been a fleet of what has been aptly described as 'finely honed chisels') is way ahead of the curve, but their plans will not see implementation until the 07 models at the earliest.

 

Given that the vehicle the character was hit with was an SUV, you open up a whole new can of worms. What kind of SUV? While originally built on pick-up truck platforms (and thus exempt from most government safety requirements), with their meteoric rise in popularity, over half of them are now built on car platforms, which is to say, no platform at all.

 

The 'truck-based' SUVs are easy to spot: there are pick-up trucks that look just like them: all the full-sized SUVs, the Explorer, the older Rodeo (not the newer), the Pathfinder--

 

okay, you don't care about all that. Sorry.

 

At any rate, if it's essentially a car on stilts-- say a RAV 4 or a CRV or a Ford Escape or whatever-- the front end is surprisingly soft, being mostly vinyl and some polypropelene stiffeners and buffer zones, with no center stiffening beyond the radiator chair. In this case, Normal Damage will suffice.

 

The ones on truck-chassis, in particular the full-sized, are very nearly armored on the front, with exceptions to the Ford full-sized, which may well shatter on impact with a house cat. The smaller Ford Expedition still uses the orignal Mazda Chassis (up till 03 or 04; can't remember now), though the newest examples of that are lacking major structural elements in the center-- the fastest way to prepare to get in line with the new 'pedestrian friendly' laws.

 

I first stated 'Killing Damage" because more than likely your villains will have taken off in a nice, sinister full-sized, which puts it down to Ford or Chevy, Dodge not having made one since they retired the Ram Charger in the 80s. The Fords-- the front ends are completely looks-oriented on the Expidition, just as it is on the F-150 it is based on. Minor collisions in these vehicles has resulted in all kinds of nasty things, including tearing off the remotely-located oil filter on early models of this body style. The filter has since been moved, but the front ends still lack integrity. Hey, they're not regulated since the are technically 'trucks,' and the lighter they are, the more competitive in the mandated efficiency wars.

 

The Chevys retain most of the pick-up structure, including multi-layered and reinforced steel bumpers and staunchly re-inforced bumper braces, as well as a double rolled upper radiator chair, a triple-rolled lower, and a very solid cross member almost immediately behind it that is actually much stronger than the rest of the frame. Getting hit with one of these is just nasty.

 

The Escalade, purely a re-skin of the Chevy offerings, has almost no integrity at all to the front end, replacing almost everything with plastic, but still retains the radiator chairs and crossmember.

 

 

Now that you know more than you ever wanted to, feel free to mow down some more PCs.

 

 

EDIT:

almost forgot:

 

the Excursion, the largest Ford offering, has a more substantial front end than the Expedition, but even then the center is mostly 'for show', placing it in terms of pedestrian damage between the Chevy stuff and the Escalade, but still more painful than the Expedition.

 

Keep in mind that 'crumple zones' were never intended to have anything to do with pedestrians; jut the people killing them. That's the motivation behind the new laws coming.

[EverKnight]

Re: Help, the car hit the character!

 

By coincidence I was looking this up the other day from the point of view of whether my brick could stop a vehicle. From what I remember the damage is usually normal damage and calculated as for a move through. STR is based on the size of the vehicle. I believe Sean Waters has already provided the relevant numbers. I do remember that the example of a regular automobile did 12d6 damage.

 

To stop the vehicle the knockback has to be resisted. This can be done by using STR to resist the knockback, which is a half phase action that can be aborted to. If the character resists the knockback then the vehicle is stopped.

 

For my own character once the density increase and STR has been figured in he can manage -20" of knockback resistance. Of course, anything too big and he'll probably spend the next phase looking at the tweety birds as he recovers from stunned.

[Duke Bushido]

Re: Help, the car hit the character!

 

next question of course is what happens to the people inside the car?

[ghost-angel]

Re: Help, the car hit the character!

 

next question of course is what happens to the people inside the car?

hope they have airbags.

[Phil]

Re: Help, the car hit the character!

 

I haven't got any details, but my gut feeling from experimental evidence at the age of 16 is that actually the Move Through element isn't always that bad, especially at lowish speeds. It's the hitting the road at the end of it that causes the real pain.

[prestidigitator]

Re: Help, the car hit the character!

 

What kind of hood ornament?

[Sean Waters]

Re: Help, the car hit the character!

 

........................Personal experience - I have been hit about 6 times as a pedestrian' date=' 3 times as a cyclist, and 2 times as a passenger, and I have hit 1 other car (his fault, but cops don't get tickets). Ironically, they all involve people not seeing me or failing to stop in time in traffic (or, in the case of the cop, failure to yield to oncoming traffic - me - who couldn't possibly have seen him.)[/quote']

 

Remind me not to cross the road with you then....

[TheRavenIs]

Re: Help, the car hit the character!

 

Well to me I would have to say that it's normal damage, with a BUT!!!! . Sometimes it would have to be killing damage. As said by others, it depends on the type of SUV, and the type of hero game you are playing.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Help, the car hit the character!

 

Maybe it is all about how you are hit?

 

So: whenever a vehicle ploughs into someone, roll 1d6. 1-3 it is normal damage, 4-6 it is killing, unless the context makes it obvious which it should be.

 

On a related note can I point out that I'm not aware of any difference in the rules, vis damage taken, if you are standing in the middle of a road or against a wall when you are hit. The latter would CERTAINLY cause more damage. Thoughts?

[ghost-angel]

Re: Help, the car hit the character!

 

Maybe it is all about how you are hit?

 

So: whenever a vehicle ploughs into someone, roll 1d6. 1-3 it is normal damage, 4-6 it is killing, unless the context makes it obvious which it should be.

 

On a related note can I point out that I'm not aware of any difference in the rules, vis damage taken, if you are standing in the middle of a road or against a wall when you are hit. The latter would CERTAINLY cause more damage. Thoughts?

I know of nothing official off the top of my head but, I'd add a number of DCs to the damage equal to the DEF+BODY of the wall, and apply the damage to the wall as well to see if you just got pushed through it.

[Duke Bushido]

Re: Help, the car hit the character!

 

HAHAHAHAHAH!

 

Sorry, Sean--

 

for just a moment, I forgot a few cultural differences-- diction, spelling, etc.

 

I sat hear for a full ten seconds wonder "what the *(&*(() is "pluffing?"

 

Okay, O/T, but amusing enough I thought I'd share....

[garou]

Re: Help, the car hit the character!

 

Remind me not to cross the road with you then....

Are you kidding? Aside from the fact that I appear to be a magnet for such things (leaving other people around me untouched, except for the instances where I was a passenger), I've only been seriously hurt (to the point of requiring hospitalization) for one of those. And of the others, I only needed stiches once.

 

Fortunately, I kept hitting my head, which apparently is quite hard.

[EverKnight]

Re: Help, the car hit the character!

 

Maybe it is all about how you are hit?

 

So: whenever a vehicle ploughs into someone, roll 1d6. 1-3 it is normal damage, 4-6 it is killing, unless the context makes it obvious which it should be.

 

On a related note can I point out that I'm not aware of any difference in the rules, vis damage taken, if you are standing in the middle of a road or against a wall when you are hit. The latter would CERTAINLY cause more damage. Thoughts?

 

There is the difference in knockback damage; full damage from getting knocked against a wall as opposed to half damage from getting knocked back along the road.

 

I guess there is also crushing damage if the person ends up with the car on top of them or pinning them against a wall.

 

At the end of the day the rules are sufficient for superheroes who are supposed to be able to shrug off this sort of thing. For normal people forget the mechanics and just describe what an icky mess they now make.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Help, the car hit the character!

 

HAHAHAHAHAH!

 

Sorry, Sean--

 

for just a moment, I forgot a few cultural differences-- diction, spelling, etc.

 

I sat hear for a full ten seconds wonder "what the *(&*(() is "pluffing?"

 

Okay, O/T, but amusing enough I thought I'd share....

 

The farmer set out early

His fields for to plough

Not early enough for the milkmaid

He got her up the duff.

 

 

Ah cross cultural humour/divided by a common language/splendid. You say aluminum. I say aluminium. Let's call the whole thing off....

 

Long may there be such differences: I wouldn't want to live in a homongenised world