Hero is broken

[zornwil]

Re: Hero is broken

 

I'm not sure which part of the rules that you are getting this from, or does this statement only represent your idea of how things should work?

 

I can point to a number of places in the rules which contradict that statement.

A standard 51d6 RKA? Not megascaled, not explosive - does it hit in more than one hex?

[zornwil]

Re: Hero is broken

 

I think what Zornwill might be getting at is that that no matter how big an attack is in terms of raw damage dice' date=' it still only hits the target, and doesn't cause any collateral damage, unless you attach an advantage to it.[/quote']

Just to be clear, I didn't go quite that far. There's clear collateral damage in that (let's say) one hits a 12-hex vehicle, not using hit locations, targetting it in a hex where just its wheel, say, is, but the BOD damage is so high it disables it, well, in that instance there can be said to be collateral damage. But the shot itself really landed in one single hex, yes. (Just being precise here)

[zornwil]

Re: Hero is broken

 

And on that last note, that's a question I have that I think is more practical...

 

let's say you are a single character and you are going up against a classic Death Star or for that matter simply an HQ. Setting aside that it simply isn't genre (which is good enough reason in that this is why people don't do it), how would one deal with shooting a 20d6 RKA against a Death Star of 40 BOD and 20 DEF and has a mass corresponding with the 40 BOD? On average, the Death Star is out in a shot. But that really isn't sensible, IMHO, as a personally-scaled weapon, even at 20d6 RKA, isn't going to disable this massive, planet-sized object no matter how hard it hits in a confined area (unless of course that confined area has something duly sensitive in it). Instead of a Death Star maybe it's just a massive vehicle. Or a mountain. Sub-planet level, I think on the large scale one can say such an issue exists. One can easily enough work around such as even these situations aren't common, but I'm wondering as to thoughts people have on this if we ramp down from the planet level but still stay with huge objects.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Hero is broken

 

I believe that you are thinking on the wrong end of the scale. . . .

 

Doing 1 BODY is not hard, no matter what the target is (assuming it has low defenses or course).

 

Doing 10 BODY is much harder.

 

Doing 20 BODY is One Million times as hard as doing 1 BODY.

 

Doing 30 BODY is One Billion times as hard as doing 1 BODY.

 

If the object in question has 30 BOD, and each BOD is 2x as "hard to destroy" as its predecessor, than the difference between 29 and 30 BOD = the difference between 0 and 29 BOD.

 

If the first shot inflicts 1 BOD, the target now has 29 BOD (assuming we can agree 30 - 1 = 29). Since going from 29 to 30 made the object twice as durable, another identical hit must wipe out the remaining 29 BOD.

 

To illustrate, assume it's a 1 hex block of material with 29 BOD. We double its size, so +1 BOD. A single hit inflicts 1 BOD, so the target now has the same 29 BOD as an object which started out half the size of the 30 BOD. It should not take another 29 shots to destroy the remaining half of the object (cutting it in half each time). It should take 1 more shot.

 

And I agree with Kristopher - we don't need various levels of wounds, and X wounds here = 1 of the higher level, etc etc etc.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Hero is broken

 

Exponential systems are less intuitive for most people than linear systems.

 

But they do have some advantages in dealing with big numbers, assuming that you want to deal with big numbers in your game.

That's an interesting point, and worthy of consideratio9n. But how many Champions or Star Hero games deal with that kind of attack damage? Not many, and for more typical Champions/Star Hero games I suspect linear progession represents genre far better.

 

And they actually simplify calculations in many ways.

 

The stuff I had to go through to do everything for the meteor impact was messy but most of that whould have had to been done for a linear system as well. If I hadn't had to figure the mass, things would have been much easier. If things were already in game stats, it would have been trivial.

 

For example the optional velocity damage chart works on an exponential scale. I will use that to show you how simple things can be.

 

Using the Optional Velocity Damage Chart, what is the damage of a Tank hitting a target at Mach 3?

 

A tank requires 55 STR to lift, so you get 11 DCs there, and from the Velocity Chart we can see that Mach 3 has a velocity factor of 17. The end damage is simply 11+17 or 28 DCs. And that result is as accurate as if you'd run the numbers through a KE formula.

 

A car being thrown at Mach 1 would be 6 DCs from weight (30 STR to lift the car) and a Velocity Factor of 14, for a total damage of (6 + 14) or 20 DCs.

 

That probably doesn't convince you that the exponential system is "fun and easy" but it does have a few advantages.

 

But IMO in the end the most important thing is consistency. If you want to go linear then stick with that, if you are going to do things exponentially then make sure that everything is done on that scale.

Agreed. However, I still think it's fairly clear that while attack energy was originally based on exponential scaling the results are quite clearly linear. BODY is also clearly linear in nature; a character with 15 BODY is not exponentially harder to kill than one with 10 BODY. He's 50% harder to kill. We have to go beyond mathematical theory and examine actual game and real-world results.

 

I'm not entirely certain we haven't been looking at this bass-ackwards: That rather than each BODY representing more and more mass, instead it should be thought of as each doubling of mass becoming correspondingly less and less efficient at adding BODY (and hence survivability). And that's all BODY is in HERO: A Characteristic to rate survivability. It is not an indicator of mass. Face it, in the real world very few large objects are homogenous in structure, and in any object with an interior structure such as a living body or a vehicle sooner or later you're going to hit a critical system no matter how large the target is. Even a whale can be killed with a relatively tiny hole through the heart.

[Warp9]

Re: Hero is broken

 

A standard 51d6 RKA? Not megascaled' date=' not explosive - does it hit in more than one hex?[/quote']

I really don't think that it has anything to do with hex measurements.

 

As I understand the rules, such an attack hits one target. That one target could be a mouse, a housefly, or a Borg Cube.

 

In many cases the attack may hit much less than 1 hex. If you hit a housefly you do not get to damage the other fly which is sitting 5 mm to its left.

 

The rules also do not limit you to making a small hole in a large target, the fact that you can completely destroy an object (even a large object like an aircraft carrier) by doing double its BODY give evidence for this position. The rules for damaging walls also indicate that you can create a vast hole with a single normal attack, if you exceed the BODY of the wall you have created a human sized hole in it, for every extra BODY the size of that hole doubles. A 51d6 RKA could create planet sized holes in most walls.

[Warp9]

Re: Hero is broken

 

And on that last note, that's a question I have that I think is more practical...

 

let's say you are a single character and you are going up against a classic Death Star or for that matter simply an HQ. Setting aside that it simply isn't genre (which is good enough reason in that this is why people don't do it), how would one deal with shooting a 20d6 RKA against a Death Star of 40 BOD and 20 DEF and has a mass corresponding with the 40 BOD? On average, the Death Star is out in a shot. But that really isn't sensible, IMHO, as a personally-scaled weapon, even at 20d6 RKA, isn't going to disable this massive, planet-sized object no matter how hard it hits in a confined area (unless of course that confined area has something duly sensitive in it). Instead of a Death Star maybe it's just a massive vehicle. Or a mountain. Sub-planet level, I think on the large scale one can say such an issue exists. One can easily enough work around such as even these situations aren't common, but I'm wondering as to thoughts people have on this if we ramp down from the planet level but still stay with huge objects.

(I put the part of your quote in bold that I want to focus on)

 

I can appraoch this either from a "realistic" perspecitve or an "in-game" perspective.

 

 

The "Realistic" Perspective:

 

In reality there is no such thing as a "personally scaled" attack. Assuming an exponential scale something like a 20d6 RKA would have the power of a 4 giga ton (or 4,000 megaton) explosion. All that energy is not going to just vanish after hitting one hex. "Realistically" such energy would move outward and do massive damage on a far larger than personal scale.

 

 

The in-game perspective:

 

It is clear from the rules for breaking objects (both the rules for general objects, and the rules for making holes in walls) that a normal attack can take out a large object (even the Death Star) or make a Planet Sized hole in a wall. Area Effect attacks do not give any special abilities to damage large objects. By the rules, the Death Star will not take any more damage from a 2d6 RKA UltraMega Scale attack than it would from a normal 2d6 RKA.

 

There are no "personally scaled" weapons in HERO. Any attack can be used on any target (all the way from DeathStars to houseflies).

 

 

In sort, I believe that it is indeed sensible (from both a realistic perspective and a HERO game system perspective) that a 20d6 RKA could destroy a huge object.

[Warp9]

Re: Hero is broken

 

If the object in question has 30 BOD, and each BOD is 2x as "hard to destroy" as its predecessor, than the difference between 29 and 30 BOD = the difference between 0 and 29 BOD.

 

If the first shot inflicts 1 BOD, the target now has 29 BOD (assuming we can agree 30 - 1 = 29). Since going from 29 to 30 made the object twice as durable, another identical hit must wipe out the remaining 29 BOD.

 

To illustrate, assume it's a 1 hex block of material with 29 BOD. We double its size, so +1 BOD. A single hit inflicts 1 BOD, so the target now has the same 29 BOD as an object which started out half the size of the 30 BOD. It should not take another 29 shots to destroy the remaining half of the object (cutting it in half each time). It should take 1 more shot.

 

And I agree with Kristopher - we don't need various levels of wounds, and X wounds here = 1 of the higher level, etc etc etc.

Are you wanting to track how much damage the object has taken or how much damage it has left?

 

On an exponential scale those are totally different things.

 

I'll give you a concrete example:

 

Imagine that an object has 40 BODY (or One Trillion BODY in linear terms).

 

Imagine that the object is hit with a 20 DC attack (that would be One Million Damage in linear terms).

 

If it gets hit once, it has taken 20 BODY (1,000,000 in linear terms).

 

If it gets hit twice, it has taken 21 BODY (2,000,000 in linear terms).

 

If it gets hit four times, it has taken 22 BODY (4,000,000 in linear terms).

 

After the 4th hit we can say that the target has taken 22 BODY total. However, you can NOT subtract that 22 damage from the target's total BODY and get an accurate result. If we tried to do that we'd get 40 - 22 or 18 BODY (which would be 256,000 BODY in linear terms).

 

To put it in linear terms for you: An object with One Trillion BODY will not get knocked down to 256,000 BODY by 4 shots from a One Million Point attack. One Trillion - Four Million = 999,996,000,000 It is not 256,000

 

The object may have taken 22 points of damage, but that is not the same thing as saying how many points it has left.

 

It you want to know that, you can use the formula I gave you before an derive a linear percentage from that.

 

From my formula ( 2^(40 BODY - 20 DC Attack) ), you can see that in the example above it will take 2^20 (or One Million) 20 DC shots to destroy the target. Which means that we can say each shot will do .0001 of a percent of the object's total BODY.

 

So after 4 shots (and 22 BODY taken), the object will have 99.9996 percent of its original BODY left. And that 99.9996 is not an exponential value, it is just a straight percentage of what it has left.

[Warp9]

Re: Hero is broken

 

That's an interesting point, and worthy of consideratio9n. But how many Champions or Star Hero games deal with that kind of attack damage? Not many, and for more typical Champions/Star Hero games I suspect linear progession represents genre far better.

I guess that would depend on the specific game. But it seems like most supers games could run into problems sometimes. How much damage does my character do when he drops a 50 ton metal block on another character? Linear damage on that would seem pretty high to me.

 

 

Agreed. However, I still think it's fairly clear that while attack energy was originally based on exponential scaling the results are quite clearly linear. BODY is also clearly linear in nature; a character with 15 BODY is not exponentially harder to kill than one with 10 BODY. He's 50% harder to kill. We have to go beyond mathematical theory and examine actual game and real-world results.

 

I'm not entirely certain we haven't been looking at this bass-ackwards: That rather than each BODY representing more and more mass, instead it should be thought of as each doubling of mass becoming correspondingly less and less efficient at adding BODY (and hence survivability). And that's all BODY is in HERO: A Characteristic to rate survivability. It is not an indicator of mass. Face it, in the real world very few large objects are homogenous in structure, and in any object with an interior structure such as a living body or a vehicle sooner or later you're going to hit a critical system no matter how large the target is. Even a whale can be killed with a relatively tiny hole through the heart.

I agree with you that "2 X Mass should not necessarily mean 2 X hard to kill."

 

At the same time I question that it would follow a linear model. A 100 ton monster (1,000 X the mass of a 220 lb person) might not be 1000 times harder to kill than a normal person, but I bet it would be much harder than twice as hard to kill.

 

And something like a Borg cube, which has no localized critical systems, might be much more likely to fit the 2 X Mass = 2 X BODY model.

 

I do think that the point you are making is important, I will have to give the matter more thought. . . .

[Trebuchet]

Re: Hero is broken

 

I guess that would depend on the specific game. But it seems like most supers games could run into problems sometimes. How much damage does my character do when he drops a 50 ton metal block on another character? Linear damage on that would seem pretty high to me.

I've always operated under the assumption that dropping a multi-ton object on a character does the same damage as the STR needed to lift it (regardless of the inherent AoE effects of a large object).

 

I agree with you that "2 X Mass should not necessarily mean 2 X hard to kill."

 

At the same time I question that it would follow a linear model. A 100 ton monster (1,000 X the mass of a 220 lb person) might not be 1000 times harder to kill than a normal person, but I bet it would be much harder than twice as hard to kill.

 

And something like a Borg cube, which has no localized critical systems, might be much more likely to fit the 2 X Mass = 2 X BODY model.

 

I do think that the point you are making is important, I will have to give the matter more thought. . . .

I think others in this thread have already made a pretty good case for the BODY of major characters and vehicles being wholely arbitrary within the limits of what is needed for the story. I'm more than OK with using mass as a starting point to calculate for a largish object; I just don't consider that the final word. I'd increase or decrease it as I saw fit, within reason (I can't see giving the USS Nimitz only 12 BODY).

 

A Borg cube would be an excellent example of something which has increased BODY beyond just that suggested merely by its mass. Its decentralization would make it very hard to destroy or even incapacitate for long.

[Super Squirrel]

Re: Hero is broken

 

I hate vehicles. In an upcoming article for Digital Hero I briefly contemplated building a vehicle in addition to the character I included. After trying to approach it six different ways, I just decided it wasn't going to happen and stopped trying to make the vehicle.

[zornwil]

Re: Hero is broken

 

I really don't think that it has anything to do with hex measurements.

 

As I understand the rules, such an attack hits one target. That one target could be a mouse, a housefly, or a Borg Cube.

 

In many cases the attack may hit much less than 1 hex. If you hit a housefly you do not get to damage the other fly which is sitting 5 mm to its left.

 

The rules also do not limit you to making a small hole in a large target, the fact that you can completely destroy an object (even a large object like an aircraft carrier) by doing double its BODY give evidence for this position. The rules for damaging walls also indicate that you can create a vast hole with a single normal attack, if you exceed the BODY of the wall you have created a human sized hole in it, for every extra BODY the size of that hole doubles. A 51d6 RKA could create planet sized holes in most walls.

Yes, I agree with all that and see what you mean in terms of larger damage. I alluded to such in the response to Treb re collateral damage.

 

But the discussion gets more complicated when you strike "dirt". How is dirt different from a planet? It isn't. But the rules discuss how dirt in a hex works with damage. And it also gets more complicated with Hit Locations - (edited, was thinking of some non-rules options! (whoops)) the location gets damaged and even blown off, and the person may die but that's more likely the effect of the immediate trauma, not because the rest of the body is affected.

 

So I think a conundrum inherently exists.

[zornwil]

Re: Hero is broken

 

(I put the part of your quote in bold that I want to focus on)

 

I can appraoch this either from a "realistic" perspecitve or an "in-game" perspective.

 

 

The "Realistic" Perspective:

 

In reality there is no such thing as a "personally scaled" attack. Assuming an exponential scale something like a 20d6 RKA would have the power of a 4 giga ton (or 4,000 megaton) explosion. All that energy is not going to just vanish after hitting one hex. "Realistically" such energy would move outward and do massive damage on a far larger than personal scale.

 

 

The in-game perspective:

 

It is clear from the rules for breaking objects (both the rules for general objects, and the rules for making holes in walls) that a normal attack can take out a large object (even the Death Star) or make a Planet Sized hole in a wall. Area Effect attacks do not give any special abilities to damage large objects. By the rules, the Death Star will not take any more damage from a 2d6 RKA UltraMega Scale attack than it would from a normal 2d6 RKA.

 

There are no "personally scaled" weapons in HERO. Any attack can be used on any target (all the way from DeathStars to houseflies).

 

 

In sort, I believe that it is indeed sensible (from both a realistic perspective and a HERO game system perspective) that a 20d6 RKA could destroy a huge object.

Re in-game, see my other response.

 

Re realism, that needs to be analyzed in the scale of "what if the attack is really that contained"? Some are, some aren't. What about a 51d6 beam attack? Why should it inherently destroy a massive wall? A lot of the energy is going to go past the affected point and simply continue on.

 

Bear in mind, we're not dealing with realistic attacks.

 

I think that there are de facto personalized scale attacks. The rules on hitting dirt imply such. Consider this differently...there's a difference between a weapon intended to destroy a planet and one intended to vaporize a city. Both may actually carry the same amount of damage, but the one for the city will be "normally" focused (like our contemporary atomic weapons) whereas the latter will be focused more towards some sort of specialized piercing, cutting attack, something intended to slice into the planet, or otherwise target the planet and not a piece of it. Here I'm speaking more realistically and what would be SFX of a Hero weapon.

[Toadmaster]

Re: Hero is broken

 

Actually' date=' you just confirmed my point rather nicely: There's much more to damage than just how many megajoules of energy it's delivering downrange. Whether it be because the tip has melted, because armor plate is specifically designed to bounce such attacks, or some other factor, energy is only the beginning of damage calculations.[/quote']

 

While I am a big supporter of energy as a base to determine damage I agree completely that there is much more to damage than just energy. In fact that is one of the things I think HERO does very well, it simulates various methods of delivering that energy from low velocity blunt impact (normal attack) to high velocity projectiles that dump their energy quickly (hollow points: RKA, + stun, RPen), ones that penetrate better than average (Armor Piercing: AP or Piercing) and even ones that don't get alot through but are hard to completely block (HESH, HEP: Penetrating)

 

and thanks, its good to be back, it is weird being away from computer access for an extended period, you really don't realize how much you use computers these days until you don't have one available (like when its in storage).

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Hero is broken

 

Are you wanting to track how much damage the object has taken or how much damage it has left?

 

And therein lies the problem.

 

On an exponential scale those are totally different things.

 

I'll give you a concrete example:

 

Imagine that an object has 40 BODY (or One Trillion BODY in linear terms).

 

Imagine that the object is hit with a 20 DC attack (that would be One Million Damage in linear terms).

 

If it gets hit once, it has taken 20 BODY (1,000,000 in linear terms).

 

If it gets hit twice, it has taken 21 BODY (2,000,000 in linear terms).

 

If it gets hit four times, it has taken 22 BODY (4,000,000 in linear terms).

 

After the 4th hit we can say that the target has taken 22 BODY total. However, you can NOT subtract that 22 damage from the target's total BODY and get an accurate result. If we tried to do that we'd get 40 - 22 or 18 BODY (which would be 256,000 BODY in linear terms).

 

To put it in linear terms for you: An object with One Trillion BODY will not get knocked down to 256,000 BODY by 4 shots from a One Million Point attack. One Trillion - Four Million = 999,996,000,000 It is not 256,000

 

The object may have taken 22 points of damage, but that is not the same thing as saying how many points it has left.

 

It you want to know that, you can use the formula I gave you before an derive a linear percentage from that.

 

From my formula ( 2^(40 BODY - 20 DC Attack) ), you can see that in the example above it will take 2^20 (or One Million) 20 DC shots to destroy the target. Which means that we can say each shot will do .0001 of a percent of the object's total BODY.

 

So after 4 shots (and 22 BODY taken), the object will have 99.9996 percent of its original BODY left. And that 99.9996 is not an exponential value, it is just a straight percentage of what it has left.

 

Now sell this game model to gamers looking for an alternative to the "math intensive" Hero system

 

Your example uses a 40 BOD object, but the mechanics would be no simpler for a 15 BOD PC or NPC.

 

Then we get down to game balance. Should a 2 point ependiture on BOD make your character require twice as many hits to kill? Should a 10 point expenditure multiply the number of hits to kill by over 1,000? Probably not.

 

Should we apply the same logic to Stun and END? Should we call them linear because they're figured? But PD and ED must be exponential- each point blocks one more BOD, right?

 

Better to simply revisit the "x2 mass = +1 BOD" statement in light of the "1 hex of earth has 10 BOD" statement. If one interprets the latter to mean "1 hex of earth has 10 BOD, so 10 hexes of dirt have 100 BOD", and "x2 Mass = +1 BOD" to mean "For complex systems which can be rendered non-functional, though not disintigrated, by damage to fairly small, but critical, areas, doubling mass adds 1 BOD. For homogensous masses, which can really only be "destroyed" by being disintigrated, 2x Mass means 2x BOD. For items in between, the ratio between mass and BOD is also in between".

 

Thus, the high CON, durable SuperGuy has 20 BOD. He's a complex system (an organism) and doubling his mass would add 1 BOD. After he has taken 40 BOD< his critical systems are harmed beyond repair - "he's dead, Jim".

 

What's left? A mass of component parts (flesh, bone, etc.). Assuming he weighs in at 100 kg, let's call that 10 BOD. It doesn't matter how good his heart was, or how strong his will to live - 100 kg of human parts is 100 kg of human parts. If that falls to 0, it's torn asunder. At -10 it's disintegrated.

 

Of course, now the Earth needs truly masive BOD to represnet the magnitude of an impact it would truly take to destroy it. But you don't need to apply complex mathematics to figure out how much damage you took from that gunshot, and how much more you can sustain without being incapacitated or killed. Seems a fair tradeoff to me.

[Warp9]

Re: Hero is broken

 

Yes, I agree with all that and see what you mean in terms of larger damage. I alluded to such in the response to Treb re collateral damage.

 

But the discussion gets more complicated when you strike "dirt". How is dirt different from a planet? It isn't. But the rules discuss how dirt in a hex works with damage. And it also gets more complicated with Hit Locations - (edited, was thinking of some non-rules options! (whoops)) the location gets damaged and even blown off, and the person may die but that's more likely the effect of the immediate trauma, not because the rest of the body is affected.

 

So I think a conundrum inherently exists.

I agree with you on the hit location thing.

 

As for the rules for destroying hexes, I don't really see that as being incompatable with treating the whole planet as an object. My point of view on the matter is as follows. I would allow a character to attack a wall, however, a character with a very small attack might instead choose to attack a single brick, or even the morter between two bricks.

 

I would just allow the attacker to pick specifically what he is aiming at (be it a specific brick or the wall as a whole).

 

If damage was handled in the exponential manner that I would suggest, a character standing by a mountain side might choose to attack a small part of the landscape (like a specific hex of rock), or the mountain, or the planet.

 

But, unless you had a HUGE attack, choosing to attack the mountain or the planet would be pretty much pointless.

[Warp9]

Re: Hero is broken

 

Re in-game, see my other response.

 

Re realism, that needs to be analyzed in the scale of "what if the attack is really that contained"? Some are, some aren't. What about a 51d6 beam attack? Why should it inherently destroy a massive wall? A lot of the energy is going to go past the affected point and simply continue on.

The "wall example" was based on an "in-game perspecitive" not a realism one.

 

The in-game perspective generally doesn't deal with "blow-through" and gives the attack that benefit of the doubt on that matter (other than the hit-locations thing).

 

Bear in mind, we're not dealing with realistic attacks.

 

I think that there are de facto personalized scale attacks. The rules on hitting dirt imply such.

My response to "hitting dirt" rules is in my previous post.

 

 

Consider this differently...there's a difference between a weapon intended to destroy a planet and one intended to vaporize a city. Both may actually carry the same amount of damage, but the one for the city will be "normally" focused (like our contemporary atomic weapons) whereas the latter will be focused more towards some sort of specialized piercing, cutting attack, something intended to slice into the planet, or otherwise target the planet and not a piece of it. Here I'm speaking more realistically and what would be SFX of a Hero weapon.

I'm not sure that I understand your example with the atom bomb like weapon.

 

Is it your position that a weapon which is, as you say: "normally" focused (like our contemporary atomic weapons) , would be incapable of destroying a planet no matter how much energy it has?

[zornwil]

Re: Hero is broken

 

The "wall example" was based on an "in-game perspecitive" not a realism one.

 

The in-game perspective generally doesn't deal with "blow-through" and gives the attack that benefit of the doubt on that matter (other than the hit-locations thing).

 

 

My response to "hitting dirt" rules is in my previous post.

 

 

 

I'm not sure that I understand your example with the atom bomb like weapon.

 

Is it your position that a weapon which is, as you say: "normally" focused (like our contemporary atomic weapons) , would be incapable of destroying a planet no matter how much energy it has?

 

In game-speak, absolutely yes, because game-speak requires other constructs (explosive, area effect, what's targeted, to name a few) to effect such a change. In game-play, let's say, for whatever reason, I launch a 100d6 RKA at another character. If it hits, nobody else and nothing else is affected, except of course a GM may add on some sort of effects for drama/SFX/color, but the game system requires/advises nothing. Even if it hits, all it does is damage what it strikes, and if that is the Earth, it is only, according to regular rules, just some hexes thereof (a lot, to be sure, but nothing threatening to the planet).

 

In real terms overlapping with the game, also yes but less absolutely, I need to qualify this statement. Re real-world terms, even a relatively massive explosion set off just above the ground or even at the ground is going to have a very different effect than the same amount of energy focused, say, on cutting through to the core and damaging the planet's coherency. In other words, we would probably choose different tools even if they used the same amount of energy. Even with nuclear weapons, we have those approaches, with the "blast bomb" (old terminology, from the '80s, no idea if it's still called that) detonated directly on or very near the ground and creating more damage than it does a radiation zone while the so-called neutron bomb does the opposite, maximizing radioactive and civilian damage but relatively minimizing direct damage.

[Warp9]

Re: Hero is broken

 

And therein lies the problem.

 

On an exponential scale those are totally different things.

Well, I'll admit that an exponential system may take some getting used to for some people.

 

Now sell this game model to gamers looking for an alternative to the "math intensive" Hero system

 

Your example uses a 40 BOD object, but the mechanics would be no simpler for a 15 BOD PC or NPC.

You are correct, the mechanics would be the same for 40 BODY or 15 BODY.

 

But that is why I suggested the damage/wound chart, that would be much simplier to deal with.

 

If you don't like the "wound concept" there are alternative charts.

 

Side Note: this chart will always use the target's total BODY not current BODY.

 

Result = (Target's BODY + DEF) - Damage Rolled in attack

 

You should also note that the result will actually be higher with less damage because you are subtracting the damage from the Target's BODY

Result		Damage Percent Done
8+		No Damage
7		1%
6		2%
5		3%
4		6%
3		12%
2		25%
1		50%
0		100% (dying)
-1		200% (destroyed)

And because these results are in a linear form you can add them up in a linear fashing, 25% + 25% = 50% damage.

 

You can also say that if a target has taken 25% damage then that target has 75% BODY left.

 

 

Then we get down to game balance. Should a 2 point ependiture on BOD make your character require twice as many hits to kill? Should a 10 point expenditure multiply the number of hits to kill by over 1,000? Probably not.

 

Should we apply the same logic to Stun and END? Should we call them linear because they're figured? But PD and ED must be exponential- each point blocks one more BOD, right?

Yes, those things should all be exponential. In fact, IMO one of the problems with the current method of doing things is that it is easy to have a character who could not be hurt (in terms of actual BODY) by a 120 mm tank gun shell, but still take significant STUN from a .44 magnum.

 

And as for the "balance question" that is more complex, but if the character is doubling in destructive power for every X points, then it is not unbalancing to double in resistance for every Y points.

 

Better to simply revisit the "x2 mass = +1 BOD" statement in light of the "1 hex of earth has 10 BOD" statement. If one interprets the latter to mean "1 hex of earth has 10 BOD, so 10 hexes of dirt have 100 BOD", and "x2 Mass = +1 BOD" to mean "For complex systems which can be rendered non-functional, though not disintigrated, by damage to fairly small, but critical, areas, doubling mass adds 1 BOD. For homogensous masses, which can really only be "destroyed" by being disintigrated, 2x Mass means 2x BOD. For items in between, the ratio between mass and BOD is also in between".

 

Thus, the high CON, durable SuperGuy has 20 BOD. He's a complex system (an organism) and doubling his mass would add 1 BOD. After he has taken 40 BOD< his critical systems are harmed beyond repair - "he's dead, Jim".

 

What's left? A mass of component parts (flesh, bone, etc.). Assuming he weighs in at 100 kg, let's call that 10 BOD. It doesn't matter how good his heart was, or how strong his will to live - 100 kg of human parts is 100 kg of human parts. If that falls to 0, it's torn asunder. At -10 it's disintegrated.

 

Of course, now the Earth needs truly masive BOD to represnet the magnitude of an impact it would truly take to destroy it. But you don't need to apply complex mathematics to figure out how much damage you took from that gunshot, and how much more you can sustain without being incapacitated or killed. Seems a fair tradeoff to me.

If you assume that doubling the mass of a living organism would add +1 BODY while doubling the mass of a homogensous mass is 2 X BODY per 2 X Mass, you still run into problems.

 

For example: a character with 600 points of growth would be so big that the Earth would be microscopic by comparison. But by your method, the Earth would have Billions of times more BODY. That would be like saying that an average microscopic peice of dust has Billions of times more BODY than a normal person because it is a solid homogensous mass. That line of reasoning doesn't work for me.

 

I can understand the concept that an object with a very simple homogensous inner structure would be tougher than one with complex inner structure (although this does contradict HERO's stance on the matter). That still does not justify applying an exponential scale to one type of object while applying a linear scale to another.

[Warp9]

Re: Hero is broken

 

In game-speak, absolutely yes, because game-speak requires other constructs (explosive, area effect, what's targeted, to name a few) to effect such a change. In game-play, let's say, for whatever reason, I launch a 100d6 RKA at another character. If it hits, nobody else and nothing else is affected, except of course a GM may add on some sort of effects for drama/SFX/color, but the game system requires/advises nothing. Even if it hits, all it does is damage what it strikes, and if that is the Earth, it is only, according to regular rules, just some hexes thereof (a lot, to be sure, but nothing threatening to the planet).

 

In real terms overlapping with the game, also yes but less absolutely, I need to qualify this statement. Re real-world terms, even a relatively massive explosion set off just above the ground or even at the ground is going to have a very different effect than the same amount of energy focused, say, on cutting through to the core and damaging the planet's coherency. In other words, we would probably choose different tools even if they used the same amount of energy. Even with nuclear weapons, we have those approaches, with the "blast bomb" (old terminology, from the '80s, no idea if it's still called that) detonated directly on or very near the ground and creating more damage than it does a radiation zone while the so-called neutron bomb does the opposite, maximizing radioactive and civilian damage but relatively minimizing direct damage.

There is no question that energy can be used more or less effectively toward specific goals. But especially with bombs, having enough raw energy tends to compenstate.

 

Lets say you had a bomb with the full energy of a super nova, but it was set off in a way that was "normally focused like our contemporary atomic weapons." Would you agree that such a weapon would still destroy the planet?

[zornwil]

Re: Hero is broken

 

There is no question that energy can be used more or less effectively toward specific goals. But especially with bombs, having enough raw energy tends to compenstate.

 

Lets say you had a bomb with the full energy of a super nova, but it was set off in a way that was "normally focused like our contemporary atomic weapons." Would you agree that such a weapon would still destroy the planet?

Of course, that's why I qualified the statement.

 

But most larger weapons in Hero are not "real world" explosives and don't release energy like in the real world, nor are they supposed to. Once one is in the sci-fi and supers worlds, the rubber science takes hold more and more.

[Warp9]

Re: Hero is broken

 

Of course, that's why I qualified the statement.

 

But most larger weapons in Hero are not "real world" explosives and don't release energy like in the real world, nor are they supposed to. Once one is in the sci-fi and supers worlds, the rubber science takes hold more and more.

I'd say both "yes" and "no" on the energy release thing.

 

Zapping one mouse with a 200d6 EB does nothing to the mouse right next to your target.

 

But, at the same time, a 200d6 EB in HERO can make planet sized holes in walls, and destroy Death Stars, so it is kind of a trade off.

[Mister E]

Re: Hero is broken

 

I would like to direct your attention to a new Thread I started...

 

"Planetary: Size Template"

 

(... please ignore the fact that the title of the thread is spelled wrong. Thankyou. )

 

The build so far, is very solidly based in the game system, and I'm very pleased with it... but it's severely lacking in any real "Planet-Scale" special touches... and I would really like any kind of feed-back, suggestions, or criticisms you can throw my way.

 

I think the idea is super cool on it's own merits; and I think it might help us conceptualize visually, and system-wise, what attacking a target that big is all about.

 

~ Mister E

[TaxiMan]

Re: Hero is broken

 

Warp9 is dead-on correct about the problem of exponential vs. linear conflict in Hero.

 

Hugh Neilson is dead-on correct that a game system has to be playable, or no one will play.

 

I think you could fix the "problem" by nailing down the definition of "target". The GM defines what a target is, not the player. Here's my proposal -

 

If it's larger than a truck, you're probably only hitting a hex of the overall "thing". Essentially, the hex is the target.

 

Area effect attacks can obviously hit more than a hex, and should work better on giant things. Target the Death Star? Sure, but as GM I rule you're only truly targeting some random hex on the surface. Your 20d6 RKA obliterates a chunk of metal.

 

If you want to hurt the Death Star, you need some serious AOE or a good weak point.

 

This tends to make Growth a broken power now. Still, it might be a lot easier to explain how Growth works in the description of the Power (i.e. the same way it works now), rather than have all the rest of the universe wonky.

[Guest Black Lotus]

Re: Hero is broken

 

Now look, if a semi-perfectionist maroon like me can pick up the rules and then have fun working and playing with them, anyone can -- and if you knew me, you'd know I am insufferably picky about my roleplaying games. (Not to mention I am super-anal about keeping my gaming books in as close to mint condition as humanly possible. Naturally, this means I have "loaner" copies of most core/ character-aid rulebooks.)

 

Hero does have its downsides, but even those can be ironed out or overlooked without too much trouble. No system is perfect, but Hero aspires to be something amazing. It falls slightly short -- it's only your everyday excellent -- but that's all right by me. (Sorry, just never have seen a system that lets me build/ do/ create whatever I want before Hero.)

 

Side note: If you spill a drop or three of sweat, water, or another water-based clear substance on your gaming book, stay calm. Do not rub the spot with your shirt hem, which will be your first impulse. Swiftly get up; go to the restroom; grab a square of fluffy toilet paper (or two squares folded together if you have the flat, scratchy orphanage kind); then place the square gently on the drip. Let the square settle down. Now close the book, and then place a ten-pound stack of magazines (or books, or anything clean and flat) on the gaming book over the area where you placed the toilet paper. Wait about an hour, and... good as new! Works every time!

 

If you spill glue, coffee, or other such vile materials on your gaming book, you can use the toilet paper, but a stain will remain -- except for glue! With that, take a dry cloth and rub as much of the glue off (on both sides) as you can. Then, place a new cloth underneath the glue-d page and let it sit OPEN till the glue dries. If you close your book on the glue, you're screwed.

 

WOW! This turned into Gaming Obsession Advice Corner! I should start a thread about this....