Life Support: How much is "Intense"?

[Trebuchet]

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

 

was Steve also responsible for throwing exponential damage progression out the window and saying the heart of the sun does 975d6 KA APx8, Penetrating x16 per segment?

Apparently a questonite sphere with the mass of a neutron star would be instantly vaporized 3 or 4 times over in one second by the heat of the sun's core.

1) Damage in Hero never has been exponential in nature. That's quite inexplicably been one of it's longest held fantasies. Only lifting is exponential.

 

2) Everyone knows questionite is highly flammable at nuclear fusion temperatures. That's why every piece has a UL warning label "Caution: Keep Away From Nuclear Fusion Sources"

[OddHat]

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

 

1) Damage in Hero never has been exponential in nature. That's quite inexplicably been one of it's longest held fantasies. Only lifting is exponential.

 

2) Everyone knows questionite is highly flammable at nuclear fusion temperatures. That's why every piece has a UL warning label "Caution: Keep Away From Nuclear Fusion Sources"

 

Nuclear Fusion Sources would also be a good name for a rock band.

[megaplayboy]

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

 

1) Damage in Hero never has been exponential in nature. That's quite inexplicably been one of it's longest held fantasies. Only lifting is exponential.

 

2) Everyone knows questionite is highly flammable at nuclear fusion temperatures. That's why every piece has a UL warning label "Caution: Keep Away From Nuclear Fusion Sources"

 

well, yes and no. It's not strictly exponential, but it generally tracks pretty closely to it. First of all, a guy who's a thousand times stronger than a normal throws 6x as many dice, not a thousand times as many dice of damage. A tank gun throws 3 or 4 times as many dice of damage as a .44 magnum, not 10,000 times. A nuclear bomb, about 10-20x as many DC as a hand grenade, not a million times.

 

But the base(non-area) damage of a nuke(the simplified version) is 300 active points, 20d6 KA. The base damage at the core of the sun(where, I note, the core temp would actually be lower than that at the center of an H-bomb blast) is nearly 50x higher, and then one applies the +12 in damage-enhancing advantages, for an active point cost 600x higher.

Note that about 51d6 KA is sufficient to vaporize the Earth instantly. Why does the damage inside the core of the sun have to be over 100x greater per segment than that of a planet-vaping attack?

If you built the aforementioned neutron-star sized piece of questonite(DEF 30, BODY 30 per 100 ton hex, +3 BODY per doubling(owing to the material toughness), up to 90 doublings, yields 30 DEF, 300 BODY for the toughest object in the universe)--200d6 KA would vape it handily, and I doubt the Sun would generate that much damage, either.

 

It's just a horrible writeup. Steve's a great game designer, but it wouldn't be the first time he's done a bad writeup(Iowa-class Battleships with 10 DEF come to mind...).

[Hugh Neilson]

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

 

1) Damage in Hero never has been exponential in nature. That's quite inexplicably been one of it's longest held fantasies. Only lifting is exponential.

 

Must we go there again?

 

The theory is that a doubling of force exerted is required to raise an attack by one damage class. This doesn't hold up under close analysis as defenses and stats affected (BOD, STUN) don't hold up as being exponential themselves.

[megaplayboy]

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

 

Must we go there again?

 

The theory is that a doubling of force exerted is required to raise an attack by one damage class. This doesn't hold up under close analysis as defenses and stats affected (BOD, STUN) don't hold up as being exponential themselves.

well, DEF and BODY go up by +1-3 per doubling of thickness/mass, which at worst corresponds on the damage end of things to +2-6 DC KA per doubling of force/energy. So, a trillion-fold increase in damage/energy over a hand grenade(9 DC) should yield an extra...80-240 DC of KA. Note that the base damage at the core of the sun equates to almost 3000 DC, which would be about 500 doublings under the most generous calculations--about 10^150.

This is orders of magnitude beyond the energy output created by converting the mass of the universe into energy.

5 points of STR(+1d6 damage) also adds +1 PD and +2.5 Stun, which happens to be exactly equal to the average amount of stun rolled per die.

[Hugh Neilson]

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

 

well' date=' DEF and BODY go up by +1-3 per doubling of thickness/mass, which at worst corresponds on the damage end of things to +2-6 DC KA per doubling of force/energy.[/quote']

 

Remember what I said about not holding up to close scrutiny? Here we go.

 

Assume we have a 1" thick wall made of HandWavium. It's DEF 15, and has 12 BOD. If we make it 2" thick, it increases to 15 BOD (+3 per doubling).= I believe the official rule is 1 BOD = doubled, which is even worse.

 

Now, assume a character has a 6d6 KA, standard effect. It will always strike for 18 BOD, and inflict 3 BOD on the wall.

 

The 1" thick wall requires 4 hits to breach. If the 2" thick wall is twice as durable/twice as much BOD, shouldn't it require 8 hits (ie twice as many) to breach? Alternatively, if the 2" thick wall is reduced to half its BOD by one hit, a second hit should eliminate the other half and breach the wall, shouldn't it?

 

To evaluate +1 BOD = doubled (which is the more appropriate rule as =5 points adds 1 BOD to a KA), we need simply reduce that KA to 5d6+1, which does 16 points on Standard Effect. It will take 12 hits to breach the 1" thick wall, and 13 to breach the 2" thick wall (since 2x thickness = +1 BOD). Shouldn't the 2" wall require 24 hits?

 

Since any hit capable of doing 1 BOD halves the object's BOD, a second hit for 1 BOD should eliminate the remaining BOD. Any hit doing 2 BOD should destroy the target, since 1 BOD reduced it by half, and 2 BOD is double 1 BOD, under the "doubling = +1 BOD" rule.

 

This is why I say that, despite the claim +1 DC = 2x the force, it doesn't hold up to close scrutiny, as the mechanics don't support the claim force has doubled.

 

Happily, I can ignore these rubber physics and just play the game, so I see no need to change it, but (as Treb says), the "1 DC or 1 BOD doubles the power" theory doesn't hold up to close analysis.

[megaplayboy]

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

 

Remember what I said about not holding up to close scrutiny? Here we go.

 

Assume we have a 1" thick wall made of HandWavium. It's DEF 15, and has 12 BOD. If we make it 2" thick, it increases to 15 BOD (+3 per doubling).= I believe the official rule is 1 BOD = doubled, which is even worse.

 

Now, assume a character has a 6d6 KA, standard effect. It will always strike for 18 BOD, and inflict 3 BOD on the wall.

 

The 1" thick wall requires 4 hits to breach. If the 2" thick wall is twice as durable/twice as much BOD, shouldn't it require 8 hits (ie twice as many) to breach? Alternatively, if the 2" thick wall is reduced to half its BOD by one hit, a second hit should eliminate the other half and breach the wall, shouldn't it?

 

To evaluate +1 BOD = doubled (which is the more appropriate rule as =5 points adds 1 BOD to a KA), we need simply reduce that KA to 5d6+1, which does 16 points on Standard Effect. It will take 12 hits to breach the 1" thick wall, and 13 to breach the 2" thick wall (since 2x thickness = +1 BOD). Shouldn't the 2" wall require 24 hits?

 

Since any hit capable of doing 1 BOD halves the object's BOD, a second hit for 1 BOD should eliminate the remaining BOD. Any hit doing 2 BOD should destroy the target, since 1 BOD reduced it by half, and 2 BOD is double 1 BOD, under the "doubling = +1 BOD" rule.

 

This is why I say that, despite the claim +1 DC = 2x the force, it doesn't hold up to close scrutiny, as the mechanics don't support the claim force has doubled.

 

Happily, I can ignore these rubber physics and just play the game, so I see no need to change it, but (as Treb says), the "1 DC or 1 BOD doubles the power" theory doesn't hold up to close analysis.

you're only looking at one side of the equation--there are obvious reasons why doubling the body for every doubling of thickness doesn't resolve the issue. if a mm thick wall had 5 body, shouldn't a 1000 mm thick wall by this logic have 5000 body? After all, it should take 1000x as many hits to breach.

 

 

that would actually create a linear progression, not an exponential one.

 

there will be inconsistencies in the system, but yes, dagnabit, it is basically an exponential progression for damage(albeit with some fudging).

 

how much damage does 10^70 joules of energy do? 10^70 d6, or some rollable number of dice? If it's a rollable number of dice, there's some kind of system of progression at work, and it tracks (loosely or closely, whichever you prefer) to an exponential progression of force/power/energy.

 

what system in place explains why a tank gun does 3 or 4x as much damage(in dice) as a magnum, instead of hundreds or thousands? It is, at least, quasi-exponential. There is certainly some level of arbitrariness, but the values(heretofore) chosen and assigned for damage and toughness correspond reasonably well to their real-world counterparts.

 

Except the bleedin' sun.

[Trebuchet]

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

 

The theory is that a doubling of force exerted is required to raise an attack by one damage class. This doesn't hold up under close analysis as defenses and stats affected (BOD' date=' STUN) don't hold up as being exponential themselves.[/quote']My point exactly.

[Trebuchet]

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

 

It is' date=' at least, quasi-exponential. There is certainly some level of arbitrariness, but the values(heretofore) chosen and assigned for damage and toughness correspond reasonably well to their real-world counterparts.[/quote']I think people worry about this too much. The only accurate answer to "How much bigger is an 11d6 than a 10d6 attack?" is "+1d6" Anything else is speculation. This is a game system, not a simulation.

[Vanguard]

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

 

 

Note that about 51d6 KA is sufficient to vaporize the Earth instantly.

 

 

Does that above number account for the fact that you'd have to destroy each HEX of the earth?

[Warp9]

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

 

I think people worry about this too much. The only accurate answer to "How much bigger is an 11d6 than a 10d6 attack?" is "+1d6" Anything else is speculation. This is a game system' date=' not a simulation.[/quote']

IMO a game system is a kind of simulation.

 

It may not be the most advanced, "hyper-realistic" type of simulation, but it is a simulation of a sort.

[Warp9]

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

 

Does that above number account for the fact that you'd have to destroy each HEX of the earth?

It there a specific rule that you can quote me where it says that a planet must be attacked HEX by HEX?

 

I know that you could attack it in that manner, and in most cases that is probably what you'd want to do anyway, but I want to see were it says that it must be dealt with in this manner.

 

You could attack a door of an aircraft carrier rather than attacking the whole craft--but the attacker would always have the choice of attacking the object as a whole instead.

 

If you rule that large objects must be attacked in a "piece by piece" fashion, you would end up throwing out the current rules for breaking objects, and also the rules for breaking walls (you also end up making Area Effect attacks more powerful).

 

But then again perhaps there is something written in the rules where it says that things must be done in this manner.

[megaplayboy]

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

 

I think people worry about this too much. The only accurate answer to "How much bigger is an 11d6 than a 10d6 attack?" is "+1d6" Anything else is speculation. This is a game system' date=' not a simulation.[/quote']

dude, why does the core of the sun do 975d6 APx16, Penetrating x 8(or vice versa) KA? It's an attack with an active point cost over 100,000 points!

 

My point is, it doesn't work, either as a simulation or within the game system.

Bad writeup.

[megaplayboy]

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

 

Does that above number account for the fact that you'd have to destroy each HEX of the earth?

If you want that interpretation, then you take megascale 5 AE 1 hex on the attack. It's still a finite number of dice, and far fewer active points than the alleged damage in each hex at the core of the sun.

 

A mega-starship which could take zero damage from 100 critical hits with antimatter missiles(i.e., 150 BODY each) would be vaporized in one second.

[Mentor]

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

 

dude, why does the core of the sun do 975d6 APx16, Penetrating x 8(or vice versa) KA? It's an attack with an active point cost over 100,000 points!

 

My point is, it doesn't work, either as a simulation or within the game system.

Bad writeup.

I suspect that the write up was a bit tongue in cheek.

Ultimately it occured, because surviving in the the heart of the sun in most games should require massively appropriate SFX and concept backup and not buying a 45 ED Hardened Force Field and 15 Points of Flash Defense, which are the kinds of values strict exponential doubling could result in.

[megaplayboy]

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

 

I suspect that the write up was a bit tongue in cheek.

Ultimately it occured, because surviving in the the heart of the sun in most games should require massively appropriate SFX and concept backup and not buying a 45 ED Hardened Force Field and 15 Points of Flash Defense, which are the kinds of values strict exponential doubling could result in.

huh, don't see it. we accept 20d6 KA as reasonable nuke damage, so 15-30+ d6 KA (necessitating at least 60-120+ rED, plus enough extra defense to shrug off the stun damage) seems reasonable for per segment Sun damage.

Explosions in Hero actually go up +2 DC per doubling of explosive(+3 DC if you count the explosion advantage), so a 10 MT nuke = 10^7 KG of TNT= about 23 doublings = +46 DC up from a 1 kg TNT block, which is pretty close to 20d6 KA.

using that rule, 10^70 joules is about...450 DC or so(150d6 KA). Seems pretty reasonable to me.

Why do I use that number? That's the mass of the universe, converted fully into energy. Even with +10 in advantages thrown on top, it's still only about a fifth as many points as the "sun damage" writeup Steve did in SH.

 

Yes, a good concept and sfx should be required--but the character shouldn't have to written up with more points than G-d.

[Warp9]

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

 

I suspect that the write up was a bit tongue in cheek.

Ultimately it occured, because surviving in the the heart of the sun in most games should require massively appropriate SFX and concept backup and not buying a 45 ED Hardened Force Field and 15 Points of Flash Defense, which are the kinds of values strict exponential doubling could result in.

I don't agree.

 

Note: Actually I believe that it is probably a Life Support issue, but assuming that LS doesn't cover survival in the sun. . . .

 

For me, your statement above is like saying surviving a 120 mm tank gun in most games should require massively appropriate SFX and concept backup and not buying a large amount of resistant defenses.

 

The forces you are subjected to at the heart of the sun are of a definable quantity (in physics terms). They should be able to be stated out in the same way that the damage from any other attack would be stated out.

[Cancer]

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

 

I would say that a 2-pt LS should cover any condition (relevant to that LS) that can be found naturally on Earth's surface. If you have to go to artificial or off-world circumstances to get that condition, then you need more than the 2-pt LS. Now, that covers a lot of stuff....

 

Treb's initial point was that -95 (IIRC) does occur naturally on Earth's surface, and yes, that can kill a lightly-dressed human in a minute or less. That doesn't bother me that much. Maybe the cost is out of whack with the effect you get from it, but it's not so big a deal.

 

Most of the shouting seems to be coming from corner cases, where you have to go to off-world conditions to get to those extremes. And for a cosmic-power superhero game, this probably matters, and some coherently thought-out number-crunching needs to be done. "Core of sun", "neutronium", "absolute zero", etc., ... make a decision about how to scale the damage into those regimes, stat it out, post something worked out in a coherent way. There'll still be shouting after that, but it'd be a step in the right direction.

[Trebuchet]

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

 

huh, don't see it. we accept 20d6 KA as reasonable nuke damage, so 15-30+ d6 KA (necessitating at least 60-120+ rED, plus enough extra defense to shrug off the stun damage) seems reasonable for per segment Sun damage.

Explosions in Hero actually go up +2 DC per doubling of explosive(+3 DC if you count the explosion advantage), so a 10 MT nuke = 10^7 KG of TNT= about 23 doublings = +46 DC up from a 1 kg TNT block, which is pretty close to 20d6 KA.

using that rule, 10^70 joules is about...450 DC or so(150d6 KA). Seems pretty reasonable to me.

Why do I use that number? That's the mass of the universe, converted fully into energy. Even with +10 in advantages thrown on top, it's still only about a fifth as many points as the "sun damage" writeup Steve did in SH.

 

Yes, a good concept and sfx should be required--but the character shouldn't have to written up with more points than G-d.

Wow. You've never even read the Explosives rules, have you? If you'll look at the Explosives chart on page 487 of 5ER, you'll see:

 

Dynamite (1 stick) 5d6 EX

Dynamite (2 sticks) 6d6 EX

Dynamite (4 sticks) 8d6 EX

 

There is absolutely nothing about this list that is exponential. It's simply adding +1d6 for each stick of dynamite. Given this totally arithmetic progression and assuming for the sake of argument that a single stick of dynamite weighs one pound, 100 pounds of dynamite should do 95d6 and a 15kTon nuke (Hiroshima) should do 30,000,000d6; or 10 million d6 K.

 

Since that is patently absurd based on Steve Long's writeup of the sun, I think we can finally lay to rest any absurd idea that the damage system in Hero is either exponential or arithmetical. It is neither. It's possible it's some sort of logarithmic scale which climbs sharply at first and then levels out, but nobody can creditably claim it's exponential. And it's rather clearly not arithmetic, at least not above a few score dice.

 

I do not and never have considered a 20d6 K EX as a creditable simulation of a nuclear weapon.

[Vanguard]

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

 

It there a specific rule that you can quote me where it says that a planet must be attacked HEX by HEX?

 

I know that you could attack it in that manner, and in most cases that is probably what you'd want to do anyway, but I want to see were it says that it must be dealt with in this manner.

 

You could attack a door of an aircraft carrier rather than attacking the whole craft--but the attacker would always have the choice of attacking the object as a whole instead.

 

If you rule that large objects must be attacked in a "piece by piece" fashion, you would end up throwing out the current rules for breaking objects, and also the rules for breaking walls (you also end up making Area Effect attacks more powerful).

 

But then again perhaps there is something written in the rules where it says that things must be done in this manner.

 

Ok, pg 304 of Fred (Don't have revised so it might change things) takes about Wall damage (extrapolating here) where it says that a character that exceeds the walls Body has created a human-sized hole in it and the hole doubles for every +1 Body inflicted over the wall's base body.

 

Page 188 of Ultimate Vehicle says that for large vehicles you might want to consider using appling the rule for damaging walls.

 

Don't have Star Hero so I can't look up the section on "Target: Earth" but i think it says something similar.

 

I'm not sure there's a hard and fast rule that says you MUST do it like this, I just think that it would be more realistic (in some sense). And you really wouldn't be making AoE more powerful just increasing the usefulness of it instead of just using it to hit those pesky speedsters and/or the whole group of agents at once.

[Vanguard]

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

 

If you want that interpretation, then you take megascale 5 AE 1 hex on the attack. It's still a finite number of dice, and far fewer active points than the alleged damage in each hex at the core of the sun.

 

A mega-starship which could take zero damage from 100 critical hits with antimatter missiles(i.e., 150 BODY each) would be vaporized in one second.

 

Basically was just being nitpicky. You're right with the AoE and that was all I really was trying to say. Although, I think that the sun itself would qualify as an AoE attack (especialyl since it could easily engulf the earth) so the point it really moot.

 

Don't you think a mega-starship should be destroyed when it enters the heart of a star?

[Gary]

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

 

With the very noted exception of velocity rules, damage in Hero System mostly seems to follow an Exponential progression.

 

Here's one way of looking at it:

 

A 50 Str Man dropping a 25 ton object on a target would do 10d6 damage

A 55 Str Man dropping a 50 ton object on a target would do 11d6 damage

A 60 Str Man dropping a 100 ton object on a target would do 12d6 damage

etc.

 

By definition, the energy of the impact of the object dropping on the target is doubling with each 5 Str, and +1d6 is being added each time.

 

And this thought experiment avoids the entire question of whether twice the lift actually means twice the punching power.

[keithcurtis]

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

 

The definition of the damage is exponential. The mathematical representation of it is linear.

 

Keith "Yet strangely, I have no problem with this" Curtis

[gojira]

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

 

So damage is logrithmic then?

[Trebuchet]

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

 

With the very noted exception of velocity rules, damage in Hero System mostly seems to follow an Exponential progression.

 

Here's one way of looking at it:

 

A 50 Str Man dropping a 25 ton object on a target would do 10d6 damage

A 55 Str Man dropping a 50 ton object on a target would do 11d6 damage

A 60 Str Man dropping a 100 ton object on a target would do 12d6 damage

etc.

 

By definition, the energy of the impact of the object dropping on the target is doubling with each 5 Str, and +1d6 is being added each time.

 

And this thought experiment avoids the entire question of whether twice the lift actually means twice the punching power.

Yes, that is one simplistic way of looking at it. Another equally valid conclusionis that each doubling of mass becomes marginally less effective at adding damage. You are assuming that a doubling of energy means a doubling of effective damage. Real world attacks tend to dispute that conclusion. Yes, a modern tank round's impact energy is measured in megajoules of energy. But is it really doing hundreds of thousands of times more damage than a rifle bullet with only a few hundred joules? The amount of damage inflicted on any object struck by an attack is affected by many more factors than mere mass: Velocity, material, construction, shape, and hardness as well as similar questions about the object struck. We don't calculate any of those in Hero.

 

If each 5 STR is doubling effect, then why doesn't each +5 STR double Leaping and Throwing distances? If a normal with 10 STR can jump 2", then why can't a super with 60 STR jump 2048" instead of the mere 12" he does in the system? That's only 10 doublings. After all, energy is energy, right?

 

The simple fact of the matter is that the Hero system's underlying physics is a complete muddle. It's fitted together in a very ad hoc way to represent the physics of fictional stories, not reality. It would need to be reworked from the ground up to actually represent reality; and I doubt the results would be worth the trouble anyway. So blanket claims that X joules of energy = Yd6 damage simply are not supported by what little internal "logic" the system has. Sometime +1d6 is just +1d6.