Life Support: How much is "Intense"?

[Gary]

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

 

In order to represent firearms to that degree of accuracy you'd need to rework the damage rules in Hero from scratch; and the granularity would have to be far smoother. And the simple fact is that in the real world bullets do not dump all their energy with 100% efficiency. Even the shape and material of the bullets nose can make a significant difference. Armor piercing rounds don't have pointy noses only for ballistic purposes.

 

That was why my example was with a bullet proof vest that stopped the actual bullet, but transmitted its energy to me. To avoid this entire issue and leave just the energy part. And this objection doesn't apply when dropping a 3.2 ton object on me compared to a 1.6 ton object.

 

But the exact same kinds of issues apply when representing realistic attacks such as explosives. There obviously isn't any more energy in a shaped charge than there is in the explosive used, but that 15-20% of the total energy of a block of C4 used as a shaped charge can blow a nice hole in a piece of armor that the block without the channeling would only smudge.

 

The shaped charge gets Armor Piercing. The regular explosive gets Explosion. The energy is the same, but the energy applied to the single target is obviously different. Thus more damage is done to that single target with a shaped charge.

 

 

True. But better game balance won't be created by more accurate formulas for weapons. This is a role-playing game, not a tactical wargame. If that's what you want to do, I suggest designing rules so you can use superpowers in Advanced Squad Leader.

 

Depends on what you mean by game balance.

[Gary]

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

 

Obviously true, but you've neglected a couple of aspects. First, given normal human biology, the only way to increase strength is to increase muscle mass. Thus, both force and mass are greater, and acceleration does not improve as much as it would otherwise.

 

Second, there are definite mechanical limits to how fast muscle tissue can contract, motors can spin, hydraulic pumps move fluid, etc, regardless of how much load is present. If your arm was massless, would you really be able to move it at infinite speed? Consider, too, the forklift: it can lift several tons, but the fork doesn't come up noticeably faster when it's empty.

 

None of these objections apply when it comes to the simple case of dropping a weight on a target. By definition, the character who is 5 pts stronger will drop twice the weight on the target, but does only +1d6 damage with that weight.

[Sean Waters]

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

 

Let us assume that strengh relates to Force. And let us assume that the relationship betweeen Force and Mass tells us how quickly you can get your hand moving. Then Strength relates directly to the factors of "body mass and how fast you can move your fist." I would aruge that strength plays a big part in damage.

 

 

The part I put in bold confuses me a bit.

 

 

 

I confuse myself sometimes

 

1. Linear: a 1kt tactical nuke has approximately 3 BILLION times the energy of a .44 magnum bullet. I have not got that many dice.

 

2. Exponential: in order to be realistic, given the relatively tight scale, you wouldn't roll dice at all - a particular attack would have a specific damage: if 1 point of BODY dobles the energy then even 1 point of variation is too much. Bullets always have the same energy, and when hitting a simple object, always have similar effects. When hitting a complex object, like a person, the important factor tends to be 'did you hit something vital'?

 

On teh one hand you need too many dice, on the other none at all - neither is the game I've been playing all these years - which is why we have this odd fusion that, I maintain, nonetheless works.

 

As for the 200d6 hitting earth...well, if I allowed a 200d6 non AE, then all it would do is punch a small hole in the planet ('all' he says ). It would not be enough to destroy the planet - Earth has a lot more than 200 BODY - but it wouldn't cause shock waves and earthquakes either because that is not what the attack is built like. I'd fall back on litral interpretation of the rules. (I wouldn't have a volcano erupt either - a 2m hole would seal long before the magna got to the surface )

[Sean Waters]

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

 

Gary, Treb, I know you are enjoying yourselves, and I don't know much about guns, but it seems to me that bullets usually kill by 1. penetrating and 2 hitting something important inside that you need to stay alive (or that holding in the blood you need to stay alive).

 

If you are doing firearms 'right' then you would have a differnt effect if a bullet penetrated the target than if it did not. Wnergy, or momentum, or whatever, would matter a lot if the bullet did not penetrate.

 

On penetration it then beceomes a matter of 'did you hit the heart, etc, which is more of a hit location problem than anything else. Energy only matters to determine if the bullet can getdeep enough and even .22s can hit deep organs if they go in the right place.

 

Further complicated by big rifle bullets - they can casue systemic shock results on penetration...

 

What I'd say though is that we are applying a system that has a lot of potential variation, but not using it. To say a particular bullet is a 1d6+1 RKA misses the potential for modelling. You could build it very differently within the system. At present a bullet and a knife might look exactly the same damage wise. In reality they are very different - again it comes down to how you build the attack, or your defences.

[Sean Waters]

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

 

So we have a .38 Special which does 1d6+1 RKA and we have a dagger which does 1d6+1 HKA (with strength): in theory they cause the same damage in game.

 

You can use the knife in two ways – slashing or stabbing. Unless the knife actually cuts the surface of the target it is unlikely to do any real damage – minimal stun PERHAPS. If it does penetrate a slash is likely to cause a large wound that bleeds a lot and a stab is likely to cause a small deep wound that may or may not kill, depending on whether it hits a vital organ. If it is not a kill shot it will cause bleeding, but probably not as much as a slash would.

 

If the .38 fails to penetrate its target then there is a good chance that it will sting a great deal and cause bruising. If it penetrates then it will have effects similar to a knife stab (OK the actual wound will be different, but the effects are similar).

 

(Of course part of the problem is that real world damage doesn’t divide so neatly into STUN and BODY, but there you go)

 

So, job one seems to be to determine if it gets through.

 

Let’s start with the stab/bullet first. We have 4DCs (well, actually 2+2 and 4). How do you determine if it gets through defences? Well, as usual, roll your BODY damage and compare to defences.

 

Right. Let us assume that the defences beat the bullet. The effect may be pain and bruising at the impact point. Bruising is a long term injury, so should be represented as BODY damage, but we know all the BODY damage was soaked by the defences, so we need to find some more. That’s a bit difficult without adding damage dice. Let us assume that a bullet/stab that does not get BODY through defences is subject to the limitation (has to use standard multiplier of 2: -1/4 or -0*). That way if the defences stop the thing penetrating the consequences will be minor – pain but nothing likely to take you down.

 

If the thing DOES penetrate defences, how about a limitation: STUN multiplier based on BODY damage done (-1/2*): basically you take the BODY damage after location multipliers, and use that as the die roll for the stun multiplier (with anything over 6 BODY counting as a 6) – so minor wounds won’t be likely to KO you, major ones will. I DO APPRECIATE that this is not necessarily always accurate, but it is generally.

 

Now the knife slash will bleed (the knife can be used two ways so should be built as a 2 slot multipower) – the only way to simulate that is with extra damage, as there are no powers that affect the application of the bleeding rules. Seems to me that if you build a knife as half immediate damage and half gradual damage (1 minute) that is about right: so you get 1pip +1/2d6 (gradual effect) for the same price, but more active points (which is 1/2d6+1d6(gradual effect) with strength (or maybe it isn’t – can’t recall the damage add rules – damn)

 

Point is you the get a weapon that causes a shallow bleeding cut that will take you down over time.

 

NOW I’M NOT SAYING I’M RIGHT in the way I constructed these (and there are other ways: build ballistic armour as 6PD armour, +6 (normal) PD (only if armour not penetrated –1/2)) but the point is to illustrate that we do not simply have to use the unmodified damage rules (well, we do, I'm not modifying the damage rules - just the way the damage causing power is built)– the whole point of Hero is tailoring to what you want, and that can apply to damage application as much as character build.

 

Sorry to witter on for so long….

 

 

 

 

 

 

*This value will vary with camaign.

[OddHat]

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

 

None of these objections apply when it comes to the simple case of dropping a weight on a target. By definition' date=' the character who is 5 pts stronger will drop twice the weight on the target, but does only +1d6 damage with that weight.[/quote']

 

Nor is either objection entirely correct. The first is not accurate, and the second attempts to apply real world limits to a game where people can run faster than the speed of light.

[Trebuchet]

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

 

That was why my example was with a bullet proof vest that stopped the actual bullet' date=' but transmitted its energy to me. To avoid this entire issue and leave just the energy part. And this objection doesn't apply when dropping a 3.2 ton object on me compared to a 1.6 ton object.[/quote']You're missing my main point; which is that you're using a single specific example to gauge damage in Hero when there are countervailing examples within the system itself (such as the Explosives rules). You cannot draw a general conclusion from a specific example; you can only use specific examples to illustrate generalities. You cannot prove objectively that a falling object which masses twice as much actually does twice as much damage to whatever it falls on even in the real world; much less within the pseudo-physics of a role-playing system.

 

Depends on what you mean by game balance.

You perenially seem to think you can properly define game balance solely mathematically within a role-playing system where numbers are only part of game balance. Since you can't accept anyone else's definitions (or even that it may be impossible to even define the term, much less quantify it), why don't you enlighten us as to how you define game balance?

[Trebuchet]

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

 

Gary, Treb, I know you are enjoying yourselves, and I don't know much about guns, but it seems to me that bullets usually kill by 1. penetrating and 2 hitting something important inside that you need to stay alive (or that holding in the blood you need to stay alive).

 

If you are doing firearms 'right' then you would have a differnt effect if a bullet penetrated the target than if it did not. Wnergy, or momentum, or whatever, would matter a lot if the bullet did not penetrate.

 

On penetration it then beceomes a matter of 'did you hit the heart, etc, which is more of a hit location problem than anything else. Energy only matters to determine if the bullet can getdeep enough and even .22s can hit deep organs if they go in the right place.

 

Further complicated by big rifle bullets - they can casue systemic shock results on penetration...

 

What I'd say though is that we are applying a system that has a lot of potential variation, but not using it. To say a particular bullet is a 1d6+1 RKA misses the potential for modelling. You could build it very differently within the system. At present a bullet and a knife might look exactly the same damage wise. In reality they are very different - again it comes down to how you build the attack, or your defences.

All of that is pretty much correct, which is why Gary's example of dropping blocks on people is so laughably simplistic - it would do more or less damage depending on factors such as whether the target is standing or prone, whether his hands are above his head, how tough he is (If we can postulate someone strong enough to drop multiton blocks, we can certainly postulate someone tough enough to catch it), whether said block hits other objects nearby, what the shape of the block is, etc. As I've said previously (and you've correctly observed in this post), damage is not simply a function of energy. Other factors can and do influence the results.

[OddHat]

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

 

For me exponential vs linear damage is a question of suspension of disbelief vs playability. I favor the damage is exponential approach mainly because it's playable; I don't want to have to roll hundreds of dice for damage, or to kill Superheroes in every comic book style combat, so I accept the fudge. Damage is exponential (keeping the number of dice down) but somehow being hit by a man who can punch through cinderblocks doesn't instantly kill Joe Normal (unless we use hit locations, disabling and bleeding).

 

In the end I come down on the "a d6 is only a d6" side of the argument because I don't think strictly accurate modeling of real world physics is possible without a major overhall of HERO, and I'm not convinced it would be more fun.

 

That said, like every gamer, there are many areas of the system I'd like to tweak, starting with that frickin' explosives chart.

[Trebuchet]

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

 

I confuse myself sometimes

 

1. Linear: a 1kt tactical nuke has approximately 3 BILLION times the energy of a .44 magnum bullet. I have not got that many dice.

 

2. Exponential: in order to be realistic, given the relatively tight scale, you wouldn't roll dice at all - a particular attack would have a specific damage: if 1 point of BODY dobles the energy then even 1 point of variation is too much. Bullets always have the same energy, and when hitting a simple object, always have similar effects. When hitting a complex object, like a person, the important factor tends to be 'did you hit something vital'?

 

On teh one hand you need too many dice, on the other none at all - neither is the game I've been playing all these years - which is why we have this odd fusion that, I maintain, nonetheless works.

I think you've hit on something important here - if the system is exponential, then every +1 DC attack is doing twice as much damage and we've created a real granularity problem: 1 point of BODY is twice as much as 2 points, etc. How can we justify having exponentially bigger hits doing 1 or 2 BODY? How is it logical that a perfect 10d6 attack will do 20 BODY, but a worst case will do zero BODY if it's the exact same amount of attack energy? Is a perfect all-6's 10d6 roll really doing 1024 times as much damage as an average roll? That's what advocates of exponential damage would have us believe.

 

If damage is exponential, then obviously BODY must be too. It's not hard to see where that leads - the man with 10 BODY should theoretically be four times as hard to kill as the man with 8; and someone with 20 BODY should be hundreds of times harder to kill. But it clearly doesn't work that way in Hero. Someone in Hero with 10 BODY is only marginally harder to kill than someone with 8; not exponentially more.

 

Of course, if "energy = damage" as some here would have you believe, then there shouldn't be any need for a game differentiation between a Killing attack and a Normal attack at all. Both are simply causing damage by impacting a certain amount of mass at a certain velocity.

[Sean Waters]

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

 

I think you've hit on something important here - if the system is exponential' date=' then every +1 DC attack is doing twice as much damage and we've created a real granularity problem: 1 point of BODY is twice as much as 2 points, etc. How can we justify having exponentially bigger hits doing 1 or 2 BODY? How is it logical that a perfect 10d6 attack will do 20 BODY, but a worst case will do zero BODY if it's the exact same amount of attack energy? Is a perfect all-6's 10d6 roll really doing [i']1024 times [/i]as much damage as an average roll? That's what advocates of exponential damage would have us believe.

 

If damage is exponential, then obviously BODY must be too. It's not hard to see where that leads - the man with 10 BODY should theoretically be four times as hard to kill as the man with 8; and someone with 20 BODY should be hundreds of times harder to kill. But it clearly doesn't work that way in Hero. Someone in Hero with 10 BODY is only marginally harder to kill than someone with 8; not exponentially more.

 

Of course, if "energy = damage" as some here would have you believe, then there shouldn't be any need for a game differentiation between a Killing attack and a Normal attack at all. Both are simply causing damage by impacting a certain amount of mass at a certain velocity.

 

 

As to the energy/damage debate my take is this: it isn't the delivered energy that is doing the damage.

 

I mean, treat a human being as a 100kg bag of water. You need 418700 joules of energy to increase the body's temperature by 1 degree klevin (or celsius). A .44 magnum bullet is carrying, what, 2000 joules? If it transfers all that energy, you are going to need over 200 rounds hitting your target to raise the temperature by 1 degree, and probably over a thousand to raise the temperature of the target to a point where it becomes fatal: it won't destroy the body from heat, just make the body chemistry non-functional. Of course, by that time the corpse will be unrecogniseable anyway.....

 

By way of comparison, you burn about 2000 calories a day (well, kilocalories) from the food you consume, which is a little over 8 million joules. it's a wonder anyone survices the cheesecake.

 

Silly, eh?

 

Bullets cause death by cutting flesh. They have far more energy than they need to FUNCTIONALLY destroy a vital organ: they use if, coupled with momentum and penetration characteristics to GET to the vital organs.

 

Now I emphasise FUNCTIONALLY becasue a built probably won't destroy your heart if it penetrates your chest: it will still be there, it just has a hole in it that stops it working properly.

 

Energy IS a more useful measure of damage potential to inanimate materials, but even then does not tell the whole story. It depends on material hardness, flexibility, the area over which the energy is applied, even the time it takes to apply the energy. Apply enough energy you can functionally destroy something. Apply an awful lot more and you can change its chemical state so it really doesn't exist in the same form any more.

 

Hero uses a convenient conceit: double BODY = destroyed. Again it is a game convention, and not a bad one, but it doesn't mirror reality necessarily.

 

---

 

I try to think of damage against defences as exponential (i.e. the potential to actually cause damage is exponential) but actual damage caused (i.e. BODY damage) is linear. It is best not to think about it too much: it is never going to make true sense, but it keeps me going....

[ghost-angel]

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

 

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

Under the laws of Dramatic And Common Sense and that build specifically I would say...

 

No, no it doesn't.

[Warp9]

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

 

If you really think about it, it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense for a "universal" game system to force realism directly.

I can agree with this concept.

 

And I'd add that there is nothing in HERO which keeps you from creating the following power:

 

Chocolate Cream Pie Throwing: 10d6 RKA AP

 

The system needs to be flexible enough to simulate unreal things such as spandex-clad mutants firing cosmic bolts from their eyes, wizards casting spells to summon supernatural creatures, and singularity-powered starships with warp drives. So it's incumbent upon the people using the system to make their simulations only as realistic as the genre requires.

Are you saying that these things can not exist within reality, or are you saying that they do not exist within your experience of reality?

 

To me that is a big difference.

 

I can still apply basic laws of physics to many hypothetical situations. Although I'll agree that trying to apply physics to a wizard's rules of summoning is useless.

 

A sci-fi gun that fires 100 gram metal spikes at 1000 m/sec by using magnetic acceleration may not currently exist on Earth. But we can still make a fairly good educated guess at what it would be like damage wise. I can give you specifics about the projectiles energy and momentum.

 

There are better and worse guesses. There are guesses are not perfect but that are good enough for a game (ball park estimates), and there are IMO guesses which are not good enough, even for a game.

[Trebuchet]

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

 

I can agree with this concept.

 

And I'd add that there is nothing in HERO which keeps you from creating the following power:

 

Chocolate Cream Pie Throwing: 10d6 RKA AP

I don't have a clue what point you were trying to make here. Is it that sfx don't have to make sense?

 

Are you saying that these things can not exist within reality, or are you saying that they do not exist within your experience of reality?

 

To me that is a big difference.

 

I can still apply basic laws of physics to many hypothetical situations. Although I'll agree that trying to apply physics to a wizard's rules of summoning is useless.

 

A sci-fi gun that fires 100 gram metal spikes at 1000 m/sec by using magnetic acceleration may not currently exist on Earth. But we can still make a fairly good educated guess at what it would be like damage wise. I can give you specifics about the projectiles energy and momentum.

 

There are better and worse guesses. There are guesses are not perfect but that are good enough for a game (ball park estimates), and there are IMO guesses which are not good enough, even for a game.

My point is that these things don't exist, and while it's certainly possible we'll someday see singularity powered starships with warp drives logic tells us that spandex-clad mutants firing cosmic bolts from their eyes are extremely unlikely and wizards casting spells to summon supernatural creatures are simply not going to happen ever. So a game system which has to enforce reality within the system itself (as opposed to the GM enforcing it by genre) simply won't be able to simulate things that are not phyically possible (or incredibly unlikely), which severely restricts its utility as a universal system. I don't know about you, but I like being able to play things that are impossible.

[Warp9]

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

 

I confuse myself sometimes

 

1. Linear: a 1kt tactical nuke has approximately 3 BILLION times the energy of a .44 magnum bullet. I have not got that many dice.

 

2. Exponential: in order to be realistic, given the relatively tight scale, you wouldn't roll dice at all - a particular attack would have a specific damage: if 1 point of BODY dobles the energy then even 1 point of variation is too much. Bullets always have the same energy, and when hitting a simple object, always have similar effects. When hitting a complex object, like a person, the important factor tends to be 'did you hit something vital'?

 

On teh one hand you need too many dice, on the other none at all - neither is the game I've been playing all these years - which is why we have this odd fusion that, I maintain, nonetheless works.

I believe that you'd change the specific play experience by going fully linear or exponential, but I don't think it'd be unplayable.

 

If you were to go linear, you'd probably keep bricks to a smaller scale of power. At 80 STR you'd be ten times stronger than Joe Average, and as long as everything else fit to this same scale, everything would be fine for many gamers.

 

IMO, the gamers who'd have an issue with this limited scale would be those who want their character to be able to preform specific feats--like having a Mega-Blast which hits like 1,000 sticks of dynamite. Of course, you can't really do that very easily with the current system anyway.

 

If you wanted a linear game with high power characters you could always just have really high stats like 10,000 STR. You have pointed out that the resulting 2,000d6 damage would be too much, but there are alternatives. You could roll 10d6 and multiply that by 200 for the damage.

 

 

 

A fully exponential game would require the gamers to always remember that they are dealing an exponential scale. However, I think it would still be playable. And you would have to get rid of dice, but you might want to limit the range of randomness.

 

Instead of:

10d6 (range 10 - 60 : Avg 35)

 

You might have:

28 + 2d6 (range 30 - 40 : Avg 35)

 

Or, if this is still to random, you could just limit the randomness to the "to hit" action. That way your damage could be based on how good a hit you got.

 

You could also bring BODY in line with STR. Instead of doubling every point BODY could double every 5 points (like STR does).

 

 

As for the 200d6 hitting earth...well, if I allowed a 200d6 non AE, then all it would do is punch a small hole in the planet ('all' he says ). It would not be enough to destroy the planet - Earth has a lot more than 200 BODY - but it wouldn't cause shock waves and earthquakes either because that is not what the attack is built like. I'd fall back on litral interpretation of the rules. (I wouldn't have a volcano erupt either - a 2m hole would seal long before the magna got to the surface )

My issue here is that this is not a literal interpretation of the rules.

 

A non AE attack can hit one target. To my knowledge, the rules do not say how big a single target can be.

 

As far as I know, there is nothing in the rules that allows a galaxy sized character/object to ignore non-AE powers.

 

If you wanted to impose limits on what you can hit with a non-AE power, where would you start?

 

Area Effect:1 Hex is an existing power. So I assume that an non-AE power would not be able to impact a whole hex; it would then have to be limited to a much smaller space than 1 hex.

 

Maybe you should only be able to make a tiny "bullet hole" in an object if you don't have AE on your power? But that would really limit a non AE power from doing much damage in many cases.

[Warp9]

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

 

I don't have a clue what point you were trying to make here. Is it that sfx don't have to make sense?

Yes, basically.

 

The idea is that I agree that HERO allows you to buy things that are totally unrealistic (assuming that the GM will let you get away with it).

 

My point is that these things don't exist,

They don't exist in your experience--that doesn't meant that they do not exist somewhere.

 

and while it's certainly possible we'll someday see singularity powered starships with warp drives logic tells us that spandex-clad mutants firing cosmic bolts from their eyes are extremely unlikely and wizards casting spells to summon supernatural creatures are simply not going to happen ever.

Can you prove that magic doesn't exist? I'm not saying that it does, simply that I can't prove it does not.

 

So a game system which has to enforce reality within the system itself (as opposed to the GM enforcing it by genre) simply won't be able to simulate things that are not phyically possible (or incredibly unlikely), which severely restricts its utility as a universal system.

I'll have to give that one some more consideration. . . .

 

But for now I'll say the following:

 

IMO there is no reason why a purely effect based game system should link the abilities of lifting, throwing, punching, and jumping. If your character can lift a great mass, then buy "lifting." If your character can punch really hard, then buy a no-range attack to represent this ability. If your character can jump high, then buy "leaping."

 

Currently the system does link these abilities together for you. Therefore I do think that there is a legitimate question about the relationship between each ability: does lifting power currently match to punching power?

 

 

I don't know about you, but I like being able to play things that are impossible.

I'm just not as sure as to what is "impossible" as you are

[megaplayboy]

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

 

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.

 

How much does it do, then?

And do you think that giving the Sun more active points than are even possible to cram into Hero Designer is a good build?

I mean, Galactus could totally sit in the sun for centuries, and merely emerge with a good tan;) And he's not built on 1.5 million points.

[Trebuchet]

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

 

How much does it do, then?

And do you think that giving the Sun more active points than are even possible to cram into Hero Designer is a good build?

I must point out that the Sun wasn't built in Hero Designer 2.42, but rather in Universe Designer 1.0. So whether the Sun can be built in Hero Designer or not is really immaterial to the discussion at hand.

 

That having been said, I don't think Steve Long's build of Sol in Star Hero is the definitive word on the topic. I think it was just his tongue-in-cheek method of answering all those constant "How many points of ED does my PC need to survive in the Sun?" by pedants who feel the need to quantify everything. The answer, of course, is "More than you can afford."

 

In any case, even his sun design shows that a strategic nuke is going to be far more than 20d6 EX. And that's not to even consider that a semi-realistic writeup of a nuke would have to include shockwave, flash, heat, radiation, and other effects; not just a simple big EX attack. For a strategic nuke in the 100kTon+ range I wouldn't even start below 100d6 K EX; megaton range weapons might well exceed 1000d6 K EX if we were trying to do accurate representations. Since I consider any nuke to be a plot device and not a Power; I see no need to define it past "You can't survive it, and neither will Birmingham."

[Trebuchet]

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

 

They don't exist in your experience--that doesn't meant that they do not exist somewhere.

 

[snip]

 

Can you prove that magic doesn't exist? I'm not saying that it does, simply that I can't prove it does not.

Those are metaphysical discussions and not relevant to the discussion at hand. In any case, it is not possible to prove negatives. It is up to supporters of magic to prove its existence; not up to non-believers to disprove it.

 

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

[OddHat]

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

 

Since I consider any nuke to be a plot device and not a Power; I see no need to define it past "You can't survive it' date=' and neither will Birmingham." [/quote']

 

Superman could survive it. So could The Master from the Circle and Mete.

 

Of course, I handle that with Desolidification, but plenty of people hate that power when used as a defense as well.

[megaplayboy]

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

 

I must point out that the Sun wasn't built in Hero Designer 2.42, but rather in Universe Designer 1.0. So whether the Sun can be built in Hero Designer or not is really immaterial to the discussion at hand.

 

That having been said, I don't think Steve Long's build of Sol in Star Hero is the definitive word on the topic. I think it was just his tongue-in-cheek method of answering all those constant "How many points of ED does my PC need to survive in the Sun?" by pedants who feel the need to quantify everything. The answer, of course, is "More than you can afford."

 

In any case, even his sun design shows that a strategic nuke is going to be far more than 20d6 EX. And that's not to even consider that a semi-realistic writeup of a nuke would have to include shockwave, flash, heat, radiation, and other effects; not just a simple big EX attack. For a strategic nuke in the 100kTon+ range I wouldn't even start below 100d6 K EX; megaton range weapons might well exceed 1000d6 K EX if we were trying to do accurate representations. Since I consider any nuke to be a plot device and not a Power; I see no need to define it past "You can't survive it, and neither will Birmingham."

 

But there's more than a handful of comic book superheroes who, to put it quite bluntly, can withstand a direct hit from a strat nuke. Do we build them on half a million points? DBZ characters can throw planet-vaping attacks--do we build them on millions of points?

 

Why is the world so worried about Dr. Destroyer when a mini-nuke will kill him straight dead, according to your scaling?

 

If the progression isn't linear, then it's either exponential or logarithmic, with some fudge factor thrown in.

Reasoning from effects here is pretty simple--can 20d6 KA vaporize a 100-ton main battle tank instantly? yes. It's an open question whether it should be able to vaporize completely a 100,000 ton aircraft carrier, but then again, only the biggest nukes would do that to carriers anyway(too much mass to vaporize).

I should note that the space nukes and antimatter missiles(which destroy stuff on a scale exceeding the biggest real world nukes) still only clock in at 20d6 KA and 25d6 KA, respectively. And those writeups were done, or at least approved by, the same Steve Long who did the sun damage writeup.

[Zeropoint]

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

 

I think you're overestimating the level of damage that a nuclear weapon does. Yes, it creates a huge swath of destruction, and yes, it does more damage than most things can withstand.

 

However, objects have been known to withstand a nuclear explosion. Several bank vaults were discovered intact in the rubble of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During the early conceptual phases of the Orion project, an experiment was performed in which two graphite-coated solid steel spheres were placed near a small nuclear device. When recovered, not only were the spheres intact, but the graphite was not completely removed from the side facing the explosion.

 

A strategic nuclear weapon, as I understand them, would be adequate represented by something like a 20d6 RKA, Mega-Area: One Hex = 100 meters, Explosion. Almost nothing will withstand the damage of ground zero, few things that aren't heavily armored with survive within a kilometer of the blast, and most buildings within two kilometers of the ground zero should be left with "no brick on top of another".

 

If those radii aren't big enough, you can bump the megascale up to 150m or 200m per hex. In any case, you don't need to have millions of dice of damage to reflect the effects of a nuclear weapon.

 

Zeropoint

[Warp9]

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

 

Those are metaphysical discussions and not relevant to the discussion at hand. In any case, it is not possible to prove negatives. It is up to supporters of magic to prove its existence; not up to non-believers to disprove it.

 

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

All that is true. However, just because nobody has proven the existance of a thing doesn't mean that you can say it is not possible for it to exist. And my problem is that you were throwing around the term "impossible."

 

If I want to make the assertion that intelligent life exists elsewhere beyond Earth, it is up to me to prove it.

 

Yet, even if I can't prove that such life exists, that does not mean you can assume that it definitely does not exist.

[Trebuchet]

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

 

Superman could survive it. So could The Master from the Circle and Mete.

 

Of course, I handle that with Desolidification, but plenty of people hate that power when used as a defense as well.

Superman isn't a Champions character; so I'd handle his survival of a nuke as a matter of concept and sfx. It's it's not like he survives them unscathed; they seem to beat him up pretty good.

 

I can't address the Master since I've never seen his writeup; but if he doesn't have Desolidification then I rather doubt he can survive a realistic nuke. YMMV, of course.

[Trebuchet]

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

 

All that is true. However, just because nobody has proven the existance of a thing doesn't mean that you can say it is not possible for it to exist. And my problem is that you were throwing around the term "impossible."

 

If I want to make the assertion that intelligent life exists elsewhere beyond Earth, it is up to me to prove it.

 

Yet, even if I can't prove that such life exists, that does not mean you can assume that it definitely does not exist.

I used "impossible" as meaning "so improbable as to defy description other than as impossible." Yes, it's possible we'll all wake up in a world of unicorns, superheroes, and starships tomorrow. But the odds remain pretty good that none of us who play Champions have or will ever see such things; and I'd say only the possibility of starships in the future are a realistic expectation.

 

Would you be happier if I'd used "Hero must be able to model statistically extremely improbable events and items in order to work"? "Impossible" sure cuts down on the verbage; and is probably quite accurate to boot.