Heroes and Nukes!

[Balabanto]

Re: Heroes and Nukes!

 

Actually, a 20d6 K nuke is retarded. One 20d6 K nuke deals out 70 Body. Well, according to RAW, this means that every structure with 5 DEF and 4 body is completely annihilated, and the size of the hole is equal to...

 

drum roll please.

 

(Ratattatatatatttatattaattatatttatatata....)

 

2 to the 60th power. The light of the explosion could be seen from Pluto, even though it's no longer a planet (Sob). The earth would become a bunch of high powered superbases and objects floating in space. Your collateral damage would be irrelevant, because the EARTH would be GONE!

[Comic]

Re: Heroes and Nukes!

 

Noting as always that if we do go for the 1000s of d6 for nukes, we end up with even more point balance problems when it comes to simulating a genre where Supergirl and Mary Marvel (characters whose defenses would need to be in the 1000s) may be on the same team as Robin and Speedy.

..

Not that there aren't ways to overcome that, but still worth considering.

Enh.

 

DEF much in excess of 40 starts to hit my Translation Folly limits. I don't go in for caps myself, but what effect could possibly justify a resistance to damage more than fifty times that of diamond, for game effect?

 

Sure, if you want to justify someone who can fly through the heart of the sun, you do have to translate this to effects far off the scale of the game, or institute some sort of 'megascale' rule for these godlike abilities.. but they do scale poorly for combat, as you've noted.

..2 to the 60th power

2 to the 54th power, surely?

 

If you're using building damage rules, which I believe were intended only for direct strikes, not AoE attacks (which take into account how far their damage spreads by virtue of their defined area of effect)? I've heard horror stories of how long and brutal threads on that debate got, so will gladly drop the question.

 

FWIW, if it's my game and I'm the GM -- which is unlikely -- of a 300MT explosion, it would be 64d6 Normal Explosion, 64x Extended Area, 16x Knockback, every segment for three turns. This would vaporize what needs vaporization, melt what needs melting, scorch what needs scorching, crush to rubble what needs crushing, and do knockback 30+ times to things that need to be thrown out of the center of the blast. No building damage rules would apply.

 

I'd let the players decide on things like radiation-accident mutations.

[OddHat]

Re: Heroes and Nukes!

 

Your question:

DEF much in excess of 40 starts to hit my Translation Folly limits. I don't go in for caps myself' date=' but what effect could possibly justify a resistance to damage more than fifty times that of diamond, for game effect?[/quote']

And you provide your own answer:

Sure, if you want to justify someone who can fly through the heart of the sun, you do have to translate this to effects far off the scale of the game, or institute some sort of 'megascale' rule for these godlike abilities.. but they do scale poorly for combat, as you've noted.

I'd use "model" rather than "justify"; I have no need to justify any fictional character, but I may choose to model a few.

 

Nuclear blast surviving characters are found most in comics, Silver, Bronze and Iron, but they occasionally show up in Sci Fi as well. HERO can model them well enough now with Desolidification for sun diving (despite Steve's new ruling on falling damage) and very high defenses for nukes as written in the Equipment Guide; pumping up the d6s into the 1000s makes the Desolid answer or a custom Invulnerability power almost unavoidable if you want to let players run those characters in a still recognizable comic book campaign. (Or you could just tell the guy playing Batman "Look, the Kryptonian gets a few thousand more points than you do; live with it").

 

I also don't really see much point in trying to match real world energy to damage; this is a game where people can fly, shape change, teleport and juggle tanks. Realism left the room a long time back.

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: Heroes and Nukes!

 

How very Ozymandias of him

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias_%28comics%29

 

 

LOL

 

 

QM

[Trebuchet]

Re: Heroes and Nukes!

 

Keeping in mind the vaporization area of a 300 MT is pretty small compared to the overall impact zone. Like a tenth of a mile before you'd expect tungsten steel to only liquify.

 

And why are we using KA's, not normal damage, for nukes? It's not like they're more destructive to nonresistant targets than to resistant targets. Unless it's too troublesome to add up 60+d6 normal dice?

 

A real simplist could just take the blast radius (-2d6 for knockback) as about the explosion radius (30 km or so and work back from the explosion how many DC to apply - 30 km = 30,000m = 15,000"=15,000d6 Normal explosion vs ED.

Which works well enough for the first tenth of a mile and well enough for the last tenth of a mile, and even though it is overkill for the zone between those two shells, it's not like there's a lot left standing in that zone it would make much of a difference for.

 

If you want to get a smoother explosion, 15 is a lot like 16, and 16 is a lot like 4 doublings, so you could just use 1000d6 normal explosion with 4x increased AoE.

 

That gives you a pretty fair gradient, and at the blast's outer edge you have about 160 meters between 0d6 damage and 20d6 damage.

 

If you really need a smooth, smooth gradient and are a simulationist, 250d6 Normal explosion with 16x increased AoE is extremely convincing, and satisfies pretty fair models of how much destruction and how it falls off over the area.

Even if that be more accurate (and I don't think it is), that creates obvious problems with game balance. I don't want to make the cure worse than the disease. To use thousands of d6's for nuke damage, you'd have to completely rework the entire system's damage and BODY rules. According to official rules, Earth itself could be destroyed by a single 90d6K EX. Since IRL Earth has experienced dozens of nuclear experiments and two dropped in anger, I think it's safe to assume Earth has a bit more more than 86 BODY. I fact, I think Earth should have BODY in the thousands or tens of thousands.

 

It gets even more complicated because tanks can survive being a mile away from ground zero. The vehicle will be damaged and the crew will probably die soon from radiation which penetrates the hull as gamma rays, but it'd survive. This suggests two things: Hundreds or thousands of dice for nukes is too large, tank's defenses are too low, or (my personal belief) both.

 

I'd like to see tank DEF increased about 50% (giving an M1A2 about 45 DEF Hardened on the front and 30 on the sides) and a megaton nuke at between 50 to 100d6K.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Heroes and Nukes!

 

Even if that be more accurate (and I don't think it is), that creates obvious problems with game balance. I don't want to make the cure worse than the disease. To use thousands of d6's for nuke damage, you'd have to completely rework the entire system's damage and BODY rules. According to official rules, Earth itself could be destroyed by a single 90d6K EX. Since IRL Earth has experienced dozens of nuclear experiments and two dropped in anger, I think it's safe to assume Earth has a bit more more than 86 BODY. I fact, I think Earth should have BODY in the thousands or tens of thousands.

 

It gets even more complicated because tanks can survive being a mile away from ground zero. The vehicle will be damaged and the crew will probably die soon from radiation which penetrates the hull as gamma rays, but it'd survive. This suggests two things: Hundreds or thousands of dice for nukes is too large, tank's defenses are too low, or (my personal belief) both.

 

I'd like to see tank DEF increased about 50% (giving an M1A2 about 45 DEF Hardened on the front and 30 on the sides) and a megaton nuke at between 50 to 100d6K.

 

 

Does Grond then get a STR boost so he can cave in the frontal armor with a pushed haymaker? I already thought that increasing the M1's armor to 30 DEF in a supers game was excessive.

 

I think that, when there's a scaling clash in a supers game between supers, heavy weapons, and armored vehicles, the clash should be resolved in favor of the supers being better able to withstand the heavy weaponry and damage the armored vehicles.

Unless the aim of the campaign is to have fragile, wimpy bricks who flee in terror at the sight of a LAW, or sigh in frustration when they can't break through the top armor of a tank.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Heroes and Nukes!

 

On a side note, the temperature and pressure and associated effects of an atomic bomb should be pretty much the same at ground zero, regardless of yield. A hydrogen bomb, aka thermonuclear device, should have a somewhat more intense effect, but again, the size of the weapon doesn't raise or lower the damage, but merely the area of effect.

[OzMike]

Re: Heroes and Nukes!

 

Even if that be more accurate (and I don't think it is), that creates obvious problems with game balance. I don't want to make the cure worse than the disease. To use thousands of d6's for nuke damage, you'd have to completely rework the entire system's damage and BODY rules. According to official rules, Earth itself could be destroyed by a single 90d6K EX. Since IRL Earth has experienced dozens of nuclear experiments and two dropped in anger, I think it's safe to assume Earth has a bit more more than 86 BODY. I fact, I think Earth should have BODY in the thousands or tens of thousands.

 

I thought I read somewhere sometime that a cubic hex of dirt/ground (1"x1"x1") had 15 BODY, 0 DEF (might have been pre-5th). That would certainly give the Earth's crust a pretty high BODY.

[OddHat]

Re: Heroes and Nukes!

 

Even if that be more accurate (and I don't think it is)' date=' that creates obvious problems with game balance. I don't want to make the cure worse than the disease. To use thousands of d6's for nuke damage, you'd have to completely rework the entire system's damage and BODY rules. According to official rules, Earth itself could be destroyed by a single 90d6K EX. Since IRL Earth has experienced dozens of nuclear experiments and two dropped in anger, I think it's safe to assume Earth has a bit more more than 86 BODY. I fact, I think Earth should have BODY in the thousands or tens of thousands.[/quote']

 

Does Grond then get a STR boost so he can cave in the frontal armor with a pushed haymaker? I already thought that increasing the M1's armor to 30 DEF in a supers game was excessive.

 

I think that, when there's a scaling clash in a supers game between supers, heavy weapons, and armored vehicles, the clash should be resolved in favor of the supers being better able to withstand the heavy weaponry and damage the armored vehicles.

 

And added into this mix, when you're talking about 1000s of d6 and 1000s of points of defense to soak them up, plus extra attack power for PCs and NPCs to get past those 1000+ PDs and EDs, it's time to just step back before the dice inflation crushes the table.

 

HERO damage isn't geometric (it isn't internally consistent either), but it works well enough in play as is. If you really wanted to reflect absurdly high power attacks and defenses, the most playable path probably would be to switch to a point where each extra DC reflected twice the power, and adjust the rest of the system accordingly.

 

And then listen to people whine about the loss of granularity.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Heroes and Nukes!

 

I thought I read somewhere sometime that a cubic hex of dirt/ground (1"x1"x1") had 15 BODY' date=' 0 DEF (might have been pre-5th). That would certainly give the Earth's crust a pretty high BODY.[/quote']

 

Well, 1000 hexes of dirt(a 20 m cube of dirt) don't have 15,000 Body, they have 25 or 35 Body. A million hexes worth would have 10 or 20 more body than that.

 

The Earth's volume is about 10^21 cubic meters(a very rough approximation).

divided by 8, that's about 1.25 x 10^20 hexes worth of dirt. That's about 2^67 hexes, so we'd add about 67 body. I think the standard notion is to call it "rock"(5 DEF, 19 Body for 1 hex), which would mean that the Earth is 5 DEF and 86 Body.

But in order to do damage to the whole planet, you have to target the whole planet, since the whole "wall rule" thing breaks down when you go to megascale objects(and an energy blast, for example, shouldn't be able to do damage to an object beyond even the range of the blast).

You have to do 177 body in order to blow the planet to smithereens. That's about 51d6 KA on average, or 59d6 if using standard effect. Then you have to throw a megascale(1"=100 or 1000 km) area effect or explosion advantage on the attack in order to do the job. It costs several thousand points.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Heroes and Nukes!

 

And added into this mix, when you're talking about 1000s of d6 and 1000s of points of defense to soak them up, plus extra attack power for PCs and NPCs to get past those 1000+ PDs and EDs, it's time to just step back before the dice inflation crushes the table.

 

HERO damage isn't geometric (it isn't internally consistent either), but it works well enough in play as is. If you really wanted to reflect absurdly high power attacks and defenses, the most playable path probably would be to switch to a point where each extra DC reflected twice the power, and adjust the rest of the system accordingly.

 

And then listen to people whine about the loss of granularity.

 

Well, one caveat: STR damage is completely geometric. x2 kinetic energy = +1 d6 of damage. The rest of the damage in game is simultaneously non-geometric and non-linear(IOW, somewhat arbitrary).

 

Could an enraged Hulk cave in the frontal armor of the toughest MBT? There's no doubt in my mind about that. Can that same Hulk survive all but a direct hit from a nuke? Absolutely. Because that's consistent with the genre.

 

I think, once you get past 30 DC or so, that granularity really shouldn't be a concern.

[OddHat]

Re: Heroes and Nukes!

 

Well' date=' one caveat: STR damage [i']is[/i] completely geometric. x2 kinetic energy = +1 d6 of damage. The rest of the damage in game is simultaneously non-geometric and non-linear(IOW, somewhat arbitrary).

 

STR damage, throwing and leaping are linear, lifting power is geometric. "Arbitrary" for the sake of being playable is about right.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Heroes and Nukes!

 

STR damage' date=' throwing and leaping are linear, lifting power is geometric. "Arbitrary" for the sake of being playable is about right.[/quote']

 

I'd rather it were a bit more consistently geometric, at least at the higher end of things.

[OddHat]

Re: Heroes and Nukes!

 

I'd rather it were a bit more consistently geometric' date=' at least at the higher end of things.[/quote']

 

I go back and forth on it, but I'd generally like to see a geometric scale throughout the system. Unfortunately, that would both require a complete re-working of the game and cause some problems at the lower end.

 

In the end I remind myself that the rules are only a rough model of a complex system. There comes a time when we have to just shut up and throw the damn dice.

[Metaphysician]

Re: Heroes and Nukes!

 

Part of me thinks that for large objects, size doubling should increase the *defense*, rather than the Body, for purposes of determining damage against the whole object ( as opposed to a single hex of it ). That way, you don't run into the problem of nukes blowing up the Earth.

 

It would also increase the value of Armor Piercing, as it'd allow you to much more readily damage large objects.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Heroes and Nukes!

 

Does Grond then get a STR boost so he can cave in the frontal armor with a pushed haymaker? I already thought that increasing the M1's armor to 30 DEF in a supers game was excessive.

 

I think that, when there's a scaling clash in a supers game between supers, heavy weapons, and armored vehicles, the clash should be resolved in favor of the supers being better able to withstand the heavy weaponry and damage the armored vehicles.

Unless the aim of the campaign is to have fragile, wimpy bricks who flee in terror at the sight of a LAW, or sigh in frustration when they can't break through the top armor of a tank.

Oh, in terms of playability I completely agree. I'm just talking about realism, which is kind of moot in a game with spandex-clad creatures of myth. The Hero system just doesn't scale particularly well, especially at the higher ends. My biggest problem is with the idea that a 86d6K EX will destroy Earth. That's just way too small given the supposed defenses Earth has. No 90d6K attack? Just hit it 5 or 6 times with a 20d6K attack instead.

 

Maybe the best way to handle tanks in a Champions games would be to create fictional ones with "cardboard" armor light enough that major-league bricks can smash them with relative ease. If you think about it, the Marvel universe still had American soldiers using 1960's era hardware well into the 1990's. I don't doubt the Hulk could have eaten Sherman tanks for breakfast. The problem comes that if you give tanks low enough armor that brick can crush them, you end up with many martial artists having higher defenses than a supposed main battle tank.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Heroes and Nukes!

 

+10 DEF, only vs. attacks of less than 50 Active Points

[megaplayboy]

Re: Heroes and Nukes!

 

Oh, in terms of playability I completely agree. I'm just talking about realism, which is kind of moot in a game with spandex-clad creatures of myth. The Hero system just doesn't scale particularly well, especially at the higher ends. My biggest problem is with the idea that a 86d6K EX will destroy Earth. That's just way too small given the supposed defenses Earth has. No 90d6K attack? Just hit it 5 or 6 times with a 20d6K attack instead.

 

Maybe the best way to handle tanks in a Champions games would be to create fictional ones with "cardboard" armor light enough that major-league bricks can smash them with relative ease. If you think about it, the Marvel universe still had American soldiers using 1960's era hardware well into the 1990's. I don't doubt the Hulk could have eaten Sherman tanks for breakfast. The problem comes that if you give tanks low enough armor that brick can crush them, you end up with many martial artists having higher defenses than a supposed main battle tank.

 

well, an untrained normal can put between 100 and 250 joules of kinetic energy into a punch(based on lifting 100kg 1 or 2 m, or running at 4m/sec, and given that arm strength = about 1/3 of leg strength). A 60 STR brick could presumably put about 1000x that much kinetic energy into a punch--and Grond might clock in somewhere between 3 and 15 megajoules--about in the ballpark of discarding sabot kinetic penetrator anti-tank weapons. So it's not all that unrealistic to think someone who can overhead press a trawler or destroyer could at least dent or deform tank armor.

[Comic]

Re: Heroes and Nukes!

 

It's simple for me.

 

You're welcome to read the rules differently than I do, of course.

 

How much Body does the planet have in combats I GM?

 

None.

 

None at all.

 

The planet is not on the table.

 

The planet isn't available.

 

No matter what the players do in combat, they aren't touching the planet.

 

The planet is not a wall, and wall breakage rules do not apply to it.

 

Where a wall ends, the damage stops.

 

The biggest area a character can destroy might be the Great Wall of China, in its longest uninterrupted section, which is a few only miles or tens of miles.

 

Otherwise, if they hit a hex of ground, they make a fist-sized hole. They want to do more damage to the ground? Buy AoE.

 

If they want the damage to run past a reasonable range of the combat? Well, they can't. It's not on the table when I GM. Their megascale AoE damage fades out and fizzles once it goes past the farthest participant in the combat away from them. Sooner, if there's anything complex enough in the way, like a city or .. the planet.

 

Sure, if there's a Phoenix or Superman or Dr. Manhattan in the mix, their _concept_ might justify it. They can march that concept to the curb, or curb their concept to something playable and balanced with the other characters in the campaign, and suited to the setting. And sorry, settings I run just don't include planet-smashing as a player option. It's too much work to GM, and I am extremely lazy.

 

If we start play at 1000 pt. base and disads are unlimited and there are no caps on anything and XP is given out at 100 xp per session and we have four sessions a day for thirty years, the answer is still going to be the same.

 

The planet is not in play.

 

If someone wants to build a sun-diver, then for 5 pts they can buy 'Safe movement, trans-stellar environments.' But if they get hit with a 300MT nuke while on the sun (an impossibility, since the nuke wouldn't survive there), they still take nuke damage.

 

Why?

 

Because the sun is an environment, and the nuke is an attack.

 

And Superman will have DEF well below 100, in my campaign.

 

So I'll never tell Batman's player, "Sorry, Superman's player has to have 1000's more points than you."

 

If all of my players one day want to play Jar-Jar Binks piloting Death Stars zipping around snuffing out planets, then I suppose I may have to rethink this approach.

 

I use the tool for the purpose it was built to achieve: roleplay.

 

If I need to model the real universe, I'll use physics.

[bjvargas]

Re: Heroes and Nukes!

 

I think I have a simple answer to this:

 

Since there would be obvious fallout affecting the rest of the world (the nuke being so large and all as mentioned above), there has GOT to be someone in your game world with some precognition who could pass that info on.

 

Even if real Precogs are so rare as to be thought of as complete nut jobs, word only has to get back to ONE 'appropriate ear', who could foil the whole plot.

 

I mean, even a villainous super who gets the word might not like all the fallout (pun intended) and this one time only cooperate with the 'good guys'.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Heroes and Nukes!

 

well' date=' an untrained normal can put between 100 and 250 joules of kinetic energy into a punch(based on lifting 100kg 1 or 2 m, or running at 4m/sec, and given that arm strength = about 1/3 of leg strength). A 60 STR brick could presumably put about 1000x that much kinetic energy into a punch--and Grond might clock in somewhere between 3 and 15 megajoules--about in the ballpark of discarding sabot kinetic penetrator anti-tank weapons. So it's not all that unrealistic to think someone who can overhead press a trawler or destroyer could at least dent or deform tank armor.[/quote']Yes, particularly since tank armor is designed specifically to defeat antitank rounds and might well have less resistance to other types of attacks. IRL, (assuming supers existed) the concussion from Grond hitting a tank might still injure or kill the crew.) I have no problem whatsoever with Grond smashing tanks. I do have a problem with him Haymakering the Earth a half dozen times and reducing it to rubble, which is what the rules as written allow.

 

I totally agree with comic: Earth isn't a wall, and isn't subject to breakage rules for walls or equipment. If in the unlikely event I bothered to assign it BODY at all, it would be in the tens of thousands or higher.

[Inu]

Re: Heroes and Nukes!

 

It's simple for me.

 

You're welcome to read the rules differently than I do, of course.

 

How much Body does the planet have in combats I GM?

 

None.

 

None at all.

 

The planet is not on the table.

 

The planet isn't available.

 

No matter what the players do in combat, they aren't touching the planet.

And in most games, it's the same. The 'BODY of the Earth' discussion arose because HERO is supposed to also be a universal game, and as such, it supports a wide variety of genres. The rules appeared in Star HERO, a genre that very much does support planet destruction.

 

And yes, handwaving does work for me. But for people who want a game where they have planet-destroying weapons, but also ships that can resist that damage (say, inspired by certain Original Star Trek eps), then they might just want to know how much defence is required. Hence, an official answer appeared, and it's been debated (to use a polite term) ever since.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Heroes and Nukes!

 

Planet smashing is appropriate when planet smashing is appropriate. Other than those times, the way to deal with it is to say "no way".

 

If you're running a Star Hero game involving Berserkers or Death Stars or Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulators, then by all means, allow those attacks with appropriate special effects to destroy a planet. Otherwise, it's gonna take a HELL of a lot of work.

[OddHat]

Re: Heroes and Nukes!

 

And Superman will have DEF well below 100, in my campaign.

 

So I'll never tell Batman's player, "Sorry, Superman's player has to have 1000's more points than you."

 

Which is fine, and certainly the way most people play. You suggested nukes doing damage in the 1000s of d6s range; if your Superman has defenses well below 100, and you want your Superman homage to survive a nuke (not saying that you must; it is however a classic bit, even in the Iron Age), then you're either going to have to give the character a custom out (I've used Desolid as Invulnerability plus LS vs Radiation) or drop the idea of 1000+ d6 nukes. "Realistic" doesn't enter into it; 1000+ d6 damage is not playable.

 

And of course, in your campaign, there's no reason you have to deal with it. I haven't had a nuke go off in mine over 25+ years of gaming. The HERO System, on the other hand, is meant to be universal. There are players and GMs who will want to simulate these effects, and the system should be (and is) able to handle them.

[Metaphysician]

Re: Heroes and Nukes!

 

If your going to use 1000d6 attacks and characters that vary in point total by several orders of magnitude, you might as well be playing GURPS.