Life Support: How much is "Intense"?

[Lucius]

Life Support: How much is "Intense"?

 

I'm not hostile to paper and pencil any more than using email makes me hostile to the postal service. .

 

I wouldn't assume a person is hostile to the postal service just because they use email. But if they make statements implying that email is the only worthwhile text-based form of communication, yes, I'm apt to think they're hostile to the postal service, or perhaps somehow ignorant of it. And certainly I'll wonder if they even realize that not everyone HAS email, or wants it.

 

However, we seem to have wandered very far off topic.

 

Luciuse Alexander

 

The palindromedary asks, what was the topic again?

[Warp9]

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"?

 

So how are you arriving at the energy of a 1DC attack to use as a baseline to work from?

 

That is a resonable question, and I see that Treb has also requested the same info (in a later post).

 

In the past, my Joules to DCs conversions have been based on charting the known values of existing attacks (mostly guns and bullets) in terms of HERO damage and kinetic energy. Looking at these attacks it is possible to see a relationship between energy and damage. It is from this relationship that I drew my baseline for the Joules of 1 DC.

 

Here is some data on the energy and damage values of a number of firearms in HERO.

 

2 DCs or 1d6-1 K (from 75 Joules to 150 Joules)

.22 LR Pistol 103 J

 

3 DCs or 1d6 K (150 Joules to 300 Joules)

PPK/S 199 J

380 ACP 269

 

4 DCs or 1d6+1 K (300 Joules to 600 Joules)

38 Special 322 J

Browning HP 500 J

MP 5 570 J

9mm Makarov 382

9mm Parabellum 476

 

 

5 DCs or 1 1/2d6 K (600 Joules to 1200 Joules)

357 Mag 725 J

 

6 DCs or 2d6 K (1200 Joules to 2400 Joules)

.44 Mag 1530 J

AK-47 2004 J

M-16A1 1847 J

 

7 DCs or 2d6+1 K (2400 Joules to 4800 Joules)

SVD Sniper Rifle 3113 J

FN-FAL 3313 J

M-60 3553 J

 

8 DCs or 2.5d6 K (4800 Joules to 9600 Joules)

 

9 DCs or 3d6 K (9600 Joules to 19,200 Joules)

.50 Cal HMG 18000 J

[Warp9]

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"?

 

I'd like to add to the above post that knowing exactly how many Joules relate to 1 DC is not an exact science.

 

So I also went with a different example: dynamite.

 

The following site gives information that relates to the joules of a stick of dynamite.

 

http://www.geocities.com/angolano/Engineering/WTC.pdf

 

on page 3 of the pdf file it says that 3 sticks of dynamite = 1 MegaJoule.

 

 

According to that information 5 DC = 1/3 Million Joules. That is definitely not the Joule level of a 5 DC bullet. This difference makes it hard to find a common energy baseline for both bullets and dynamite.

 

However, the energy released in an explosion of dynamite is probably a much better match to a supernova event (more so than a bullet anyway).

 

And based on the information that 5 DC (1 stick of dynamite) = 1/3 Million Joules then a 10^44 supernova would be rated at 126 DCs or 42d6 K

 

added on edit: this all assumes that we are considering an exponential scale--the official progression of dynamite in HERO is clearly not exponential.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"?

 

added on edit: this all assumes that we are considering an exponential scale--the official progression of dynamite in HERO is clearly not exponential.

Thank you; it's good to know where baseline numbers come from, and how they are derived.

 

I'm also glad you added that edit, because when you started talking about dynamite, I have admit I was thinking "Oh, no...he didn't just do what I think he did, did he? Not after all the debate there's been recently about the way sticks of dynamite scale...!"

 

[Trebuchet]

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"?

 

That is a resonable question, and I see that Treb has also requested the same info (in a later post).

 

In the past, my Joules to DCs conversions have been based on charting the known values of existing attacks (mostly guns and bullets) in terms of HERO damage and kinetic energy. Looking at these attacks it is possible to see a relationship between energy and damage. It is from this relationship that I drew my baseline for the Joules of 1 DC.

 

Here is some data on the energy and damage values of a number of firearms in HERO.

 

[snip]

Thanks for the info on your baseline. It is interesting how the DCs in Hero don't seem to much agree with real world mortality rates from firearms. Certainly these are not doing exponentially greater damage to their target. Of course, a considerable amount of the energy from a firearm impact upon a human being seems to be wasted if it just zips straight through; something Hero doesn't simulate very well. Even a .22 LR can kill in the real world if it hits the head. Even the classic .45 ACP manstopper doesn't always work. Noted firearms expert Mossad Ayoob had an example years ago of two men in an apartment building who decided to kill each other. One had a .45 semiauto; the other a .22 LR revolver. They exchanged shots in a hallway at point blank range. The man with the .45 was struck once in the chest and died almost instantly; the guy with the .22 was hit several times in the chest and torso by .45 slugs and still survived. In fact, he took a bus to the nearest hospital!

 

Extra BODY, I guess.

[OddHat]

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"?

 

Noted firearms expert Mossad Ayoob had an example years ago of two men in an apartment building who decided to kill each other. One had a .45 semiauto; the other a .22 LR revolver. They exchanged shots in a hallway at point blank range. The man with the .45 was struck once in the chest and died almost instantly; the guy with the .22 was hit several times in the chest and torso by .45 slugs and still survived. In fact' date=' he took a [i']bus[/i] to the nearest hospital!

 

Extra BODY, I guess.

 

Joeseph Greenstein (real world strength performer) was once shot in the forehead by a .38 Caliber revolver. The impact knocked him out, but the bullet didn't penetrate his skull. He was out of the hospital the next day. It's amazing what people survive.

 

Even in the real world, sometimes people roll low.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"?

 

The two bits of body that tend to allow an instant (or near instant) kill if damaged are the heart and the brain, both of which are protected by bone.

 

If you are a detail freak, it might be wise to consider both as 1 DEF armour that reduces damage before location modifiers, meaning that, whilst hits to the head and vitals usually do more damage, on particularly low rolls they might well do less BODY.

 

You could even up the bone protection (2 or even 3 DEF) and give it activation roll - sometimes a bullet or knife slips between the ribs, or hits a weakspot on the skull.

 

Probably too much effort for most, but not an unreasonable solution, I'd suggest.

[OddHat]

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"?

 

The two bits of body that tend to allow an instant (or near instant) kill if damaged are the heart and the brain, both of which are protected by bone.

 

If you are a detail freak, it might be wise to consider both as 1 DEF armour that reduces damage before location modifiers, meaning that, whilst hits to the head and vitals usually do more damage, on particularly low rolls they might well do less BODY.

 

You could even up the bone protection (2 or even 3 DEF) and give it activation roll - sometimes a bullet or knife slips between the ribs, or hits a weakspot on the skull.

 

Probably too much effort for most, but not an unreasonable solution, I'd suggest.

 

Some people also have freakishly thick, dense bones (insert South Park joke here). Just a few years of weight training or, on the flip side, sedentary living, can make quite a difference as far as injuries are concerned.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"?

 

Don't really understand the hostility to HD.

 

I don't believe I'm "hostile" to Hero Designer. I just don't accept it as the One True Way of writing up character sheets. Pen and paper, word processors, spreadsheet software and Hero Designer are all means one can use to write up a character. There is no basis, in my opinion, for ascribing any "superior" status to HD, or to any of these other options.

 

I'm not hostile to paper and pencil any more than using email makes me hostile to the postal service. It's a simple matter of convenience and commonality. If I'm corresponding with another gamer via email' date=' and we both have HD, it's just darn convenient to be able to send a character writeup, receive it, make changes to it and send it back, all without ever breaking out a calculator, a word processing program or a spreadsheet set up to accomodate various calculations and formulae. And there are hundreds, even thousands of gamers with this tool available to them.[/quote']

 

So long as HD is applying all the rules in the same manner we both interpret them, including any house rules.

 

And I suspect that a significant percentage of gamers also have word processing and/or spreadsheet software which is compatible, if not the same SW. If not, openoffice.org has free software (so the gamer need not shell out $$ for HD) which, I understand, very closely mimics the MS Office package. HD is compatible with, to my knowledge, no other software package.

 

From a practical standpoint' date=' after 4 iterations of Hero software, if a character writeup can't be done in HD, it's going to limit the ways in which that sheet can be presented and replicated. Whereas, if it can be done in HD, not only can it be presented and replicated in HD, it can be presented and replicated in HTML, in Word, on paper, in long hand, etc..[/quote']

 

Until, of course, a new book introduces a new rule. How much trouble did HD designers have using Turakian Age magic when it first came out? Now, HD will be updated (eventually) to handle official Hero constructs. It's unlikely to be updated to handle house rules, however.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"?

 

I wouldn't assume a person is hostile to the postal service just because they use email. But if they make statements implying that email is the only worthwhile text-based form of communication, yes, I'm apt to think they're hostile to the postal service, or perhaps somehow ignorant of it. And certainly I'll wonder if they even realize that not everyone HAS email, or wants it.

 

However, we seem to have wandered very far off topic.

 

Luciuse Alexander

 

The palindromedary asks, what was the topic again?

 

Yes, it is quite a bit off topic, agreed.