6E What happened to HKA?

[Nevenall]

Re: 6E What happened to HKA?

 

It's funny that many people see this an immediately think "A 6d6 dart / penknife? Ridiculous", because personally, I'm the reverse. I always thought that the "doubling only" rule was the ridiculous one, because I used a different example ... brass knuckles. Say you've got your tough brick. He can punch down a stone wall or splatter most people with a single strike. Now he puts on a pair of spiky gauntlets. Suddenly, his strikes can barely break a wooden plank, and any superhuman foe just laughs them off.

 

For some weapons, limiting the amount of strength makes sense. For others, it does not. In most cases, people are going to define their HKAs in a way that makes sense and isn't stupid. When they don't, that's what GM discretion is for.

 

I agree with you very much on this point.

[JPicasso]

Re: 6E What happened to HKA?

 

Ice, the difference is KA vs normal damage.

 

The brick puts on brassknuckes and gets a 1d6 added to his punch. OK, I'm cool with that.

 

The same brick picks up a pairing knife and suddenly he can cut down a door with it?

No. He should just be punching. The difference is using STR which normally does normal damage vs paying 5 points to make your 55 STR all killing.

 

Maybe "killing" ought really be an advantage? Hmmm, this is turning out very heavy.

 

I think I'll stop here and just keep my x2 STR adder with Killing damage, but I do recognize that arguments against it are founded.

[Ice9]

Re: 6E What happened to HKA?

 

Spiky brass knuckles. HKA.

 

If we're really going for realism, the amount of force a weapon can sustain (max DCs added by Strength) is a separate factor from its base damage. You could easily have two swords that both do 1d6 HKA as a base, but one is a willowy fencing saber that could only go up to 1d6+1 at max, and the other is a heavy broadsword that could easily go up to 2d6 or above with enough strength. In many campaigns, this is detail overkill, and is better dealt with by the players picking reasonable weapons for the strength and the GM keeping an eye on it. But if you do want that much precision, then two factors may be the way to go.

[RexMundi]

Re: 6E What happened to HKA?

 

One could always go the adder route where you have to factor in just how tough your thumbtack or brass knuckles are in comparisson to the force being exerted on it.

 

~Rex

[prestidigitator]

Re: 6E What happened to HKA?

 

You really think that someone who can punch down brick walls with their bare hands is going to benefit from brass knuckles? I'm sorry, but I don't think so. That's like saying wrapping a leather cover around your aluminum baseball bat is going to significantly increase its damage potential. Not even in the comics, man (not unless they're some kind of special radioactive enchanted alloy or some mumbo jumbo like that).

[Armitage]

Re: 6E What happened to HKA?

 

You could always use some sort of adaptation of the rule for performing a Move/By/Move Through with a weapon on 6E2 72.

If the BODY damage of the attack exceeds 3x the base DC of the weapon, it shatters. You could similarly limit the damage added to an HKA.

e.g. a greatsword has a base damage of 2d6 KA, 6 Damage Classes. The maximum damage it could do is 18 BODY, which is the average roll for a 5d6 KA, for +9 DC with a 45 STR.

A dagger has a base damage of 1d6-1, 2 Damage Classes. The maximum damage would be 6 BODY, approximately 2d6-1, +3 DC.

If the maximum damage is exceeded, the weapon only does that much damage and shatters. Or maybe some set amount over the maximum. I don't know; I'm coming up with this as I type.

 

As a digression regarding steamtek and super-strong characters throwing coins, I always figured it like this:

A character who can lift 50 tons can accelerate 50000 kg to 9.8 m/sec^2 against gravity, for a total force of 490000 Newtons. If that same force is used to accelerate a 5.7 g US Quarter, it will impart an acceleration of almost 86000 km/sec^2. Even if only 1% of the character's lifting force is applied, that's still more than 800 km/sec^2.

I'm not sure if the physics for that would actually work...

For a superhuman punch to do increased damage, it would need increased kinetic energy. Assuming the character's mass hasn't dramatically increased, that would require an increase in the velocity of the punch.

[RexMundi]

Re: 6E What happened to HKA?

 

It's probably going to break down to something like: Which method, doesn't break the game. I've allowed the coin trick and similar with a Powers Skill roll......And tend to use a mechanic similar to the above to keep it resonable so you don't have people carving up main battle tanks with thumbtacks.....

 

~Rex

[randian]

Re: 6E What happened to HKA?

 

The brick puts on brassknuckes and gets a 1d6 added to his punch. OK, I'm cool with that.

 

The same brick picks up a pairing knife and suddenly he can cut down a door with it?

A paring knife you didn't pay points for is just a paring knife. One you paid points for is made of unbreakable handwavium and can easily cut down both doors and main battle tank armor.

[randian]

Re: 6E What happened to HKA?

 

It's probably going to break down to something like: Which method' date=' doesn't break the game. I've allowed the coin trick and similar with a Powers Skill roll......And tend to use a mechanic similar to the above to keep it resonable so you don't have people carving up main battle tanks with thumbtacks.....[/quote']

You still haven't explained why paying 55 points to do 4d6+1 with a thumbtack is broken while paying 55 points to do 4d6+1 with a sword isn't. I think your obsession with special effects is misplaced. If player A said "I'm doing 4d6+1 because of my super-heated plasma blast" and player B said "I'm doing 4d6+1 because I'm warping gravity in the local vicinity of the target", I doubt you'd spend more than a second pondering the special effects involved or spend any time at all worrying that "gravity is a broken special effect". Why, then, is there any reason to care what the special effect of a character's HKA is, when it has no mechanical effect and doesn't save the player any points building the character?

[Hyper-Man]

Re: 6E What happened to HKA?

 

Correct. There was some effort to simplify the "adding damage" rules' date=' and one of the ways that happened was the HKA doubling with STR. GM still has the option to cap at 2x base DC.[/quote']

 

And to further speculate on this I imagine that Steve Long may have gotten a bit tired of the repeated rules questions about damage adding which influenced his decision to put the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of GM's so he can focus on writing and selling more cool books.

[Ice9]

Re: 6E What happened to HKA?

 

You really think that someone who can punch down brick walls with their bare hands is going to benefit from brass knuckles? I'm sorry, but I don't think so. That's like saying wrapping a leather cover around your aluminum baseball bat is going to significantly increase its damage potential. Not even in the comics, man (not unless they're some kind of special radioactive enchanted alloy or some mumbo jumbo like that).

1) Why wouldn't a superhero brick have adamantine/polycarbon/whatever knuckles? They've got hyperstrength armor and clothes, after all.

2) More importantly, how would someone with that strength benefit from a normal steel greatsword? If brass knuckles are going to be pulverized in one hit, that sword would be about as useless as a cardboard tube. Either bricks use special equipment, or else you just handwave it, but it's not like a big sword is "more logical".

[RexMundi]

Re: 6E What happened to HKA?

 

Hmm.....I'm trying to think of a good way to explain it in a mechanical sense, because in HERO, Special Effects is as much a part of the game, as just the numbers. Take the Rogue and Coin example, sure, it got chucked through the Helicarrier.....

 

But it really didn't do much.....and physics wise....one could apply that it functioned much like the penetrator rounds do for anti armor munitions.....*shrug* Six to one half a dozen to another.

 

As for Thumbtack vs Sword. At least in the world of comics, it makes sense, comic book wise, one could cleave a main battle tank with a sword, and with enough strength (not counting comic book weaponry that could do so on it's own right)....comparing the Sword over Thumbtack SFX, to Plasma vs Gravity isn't apples to apples......

 

Back in the old Marvel Heroes game, If one were Super Strong, you never wanted to hit anyone with anything Other then your fist, because the damage yield was limited to the Toughness of what you were Hitting the guy with. To much strength used, the telephone pole just explodes when it hits the car, that sort of thing. A lot of other supers games were like that as well (DC HEROES (pretty much any company version), while others simple added the Object as a damage Adder via Mass or otherwise ( Hmmm...Superworld, V+V), so multiple games do it multiple ways....

 

Going back to HERO though, a Thumbtack, should not be able to do more damage then a sword, regardless of how strong the guy is using it, because it's a Thumbtack. Sometimes the GM has to step in and go, OK, Thumbtacks won't kill anyone, hell Wrestlers make a career sticking themselves with them, and have shown there's no real difference between landing on thumbtacks from 6 feet up, or 20 feet up....it just a tack. Same can be said for HERO as well.

 

That's why I lean towards the no more then double, combined with the Power Skill Mechanic to do fun things like flick a coin through the Helicarrier, and maybe even boosting damage up to the level of potential destruction of said object itself.....

 

Everything else is all in the special effect.

 

~Rex

[Guest steamteck]

Re: 6E What happened to HKA?

 

As a digression regarding steamtek and super-strong characters throwing coins, I always figured it like this:

A character who can lift 50 tons can accelerate 50000 kg to 9.8 m/sec^2 against gravity, for a total force of 490000 Newtons. If that same force is used to accelerate a 5.7 g US Quarter, it will impart an acceleration of almost 86000 km/sec^2. Even if only 1% of the character's lifting force is applied, that's still more than 800 km/sec^2.

I'm not sure if the physics for that would actually work...

For a superhuman punch to do increased damage, it would need increased kinetic energy. Assuming the character's mass hasn't dramatically increased, that would require an increase in the velocity of the punch.

 

 

The increased damage I can give a pass, although I always assumed there was lots of wasted energy. It was an immovable object slamming into its target so to speak, the total damage delivered might even depend on your knockback resistance. Anyway doesn't break the story for me. The mach 20 coins on the other hand, just break my suspension of disbelief

[randian]

Re: 6E What happened to HKA?

 

Going back to HERO though, a Thumbtack, should not be able to do more damage then a sword, regardless of how strong the guy is using it, because it's a Thumbtack.

Then you should be equally as dismissive of a player wanting his character to have a super breath power like Superman's, because a human-sized being simply doesn't have the lung volume to blow out any fire larger than a match no matter how hard he expels the air in them. You should never treat items purchased with points as real-world objects or limit their game mechanics because of how you think their real-world counterparts work. It is no more absurd to have the Thumbtack of Doom than it is to have an earbud with planetary transmission range or armor that protects you as well as tank armor while being light enough that it can be worn by a normal without crushing him to death.

[prestidigitator]

Re: 6E What happened to HKA?

 

1) Why wouldn't a superhero brick have adamantine/polycarbon/whatever knuckles? They've got hyperstrength armor and clothes, after all.

2) More importantly, how would someone with that strength benefit from a normal steel greatsword? If brass knuckles are going to be pulverized in one hit, that sword would be about as useless as a cardboard tube. Either bricks use special equipment, or else you just handwave it, but it's not like a big sword is "more logical".

1.) The knuckles can be a bigger HA then. One the brick can more fully utilize.

2.) Agreed. Swords and knuckles (or more to the point, Killing Attacks and Normal Attacks) both should be limited similarly. That was the whole point.

[prestidigitator]

Re: 6E What happened to HKA?

 

As for the hurled coin thing, to me that would be better accomplished with something like Blast, IIF (small thrown objects of opportunity). Inobvious because you've got a huge attack coming through a little object that may not even be seen and certainly isn't expected to do that kind of damage....

[Folded]

Re: 6E What happened to HKA?

 

OK, simple arithmetic then. The following 2 characters both have a 10d6 Normal HTH Attack and a 3.5d6 HKA.

 

Character 1:

50 STR - 40 Character Points

1pip HKA - 5 Character Points

TOTAL COST - 45 Character Points

 

Character 2:

10 STR - 0 Character Points

+8d6 HA - 32 Character Points

+3d6 HKA - 45 Character Points

TOTAL COST - 77 Character Points

 

On top of which, Character 1 gets the other benefits of a high STR, and Character 2 does not. Yes, Character 2 can limit his abilities (focus, real weapon, etc) and get the point costs to be similar. But he is still paying more base points for less effective abilities. I am willing to accept some discrepancies in different builds of similar characters resulting in different point costs, but paying 32 more points for less effective abilities seems a little unreasonable. I'm not generally a minmaxer, but I'm certainly going to think twice about the build when the differences are that extreme.

[Chris Goodwin]

Re: 6E What happened to HKA?

 

You still haven't explained why paying 55 points to do 4d6+1 with a thumbtack is broken while paying 55 points to do 4d6+1 with a sword isn't. I think your obsession with special effects is misplaced. If player A said "I'm doing 4d6+1 because of my super-heated plasma blast" and player B said "I'm doing 4d6+1 because I'm warping gravity in the local vicinity of the target"' date=' I doubt you'd spend more than a second pondering the special effects involved or spend any time at all worrying that "gravity is a broken special effect". Why, then, is there any reason to care what the special effect of a character's HKA is, when it has no mechanical effect and doesn't save the player any points building the character?[/quote']

 

Thumbtack Man, when he puts down the thumbtack, still has 50 STR. Sword Man, when he puts down the sword, has 25.

 

Or, to put it another way: Thumbtack Man paid 55 points for his 4d6+1 HKA, and got 50 STR for free. Sword Man didn't.

[Vondy]

Re: 6E What happened to HKA?

 

In terms of logic: the physics of superhero comics has never been, shall we say, logical, sensible, or reasonable. Indeed, it wholly depends on suspension of disbelief. A good deal of this discussion applies strictly to heroic games. In my opinion, of course.

[casualplayer]

Re: 6E What happened to HKA?

 

It's mostly just pounds per square inch. STR exerts the pounds pressure, wide areas like fists and clubs and hammers do Normal damage, narrow or slashing surfaces like whips and blades do Killing and pointed objects do Penetrating or Piercing, high velocity ones do Armor Piercing.

 

The brass knuckles used as an example just accomplishes two things: it reduces the surface area that the force is being exerted on to that of the brass knuckles rather than the fist and it also has less yield than mortal flesh so you aren't trying to tenderize meat with another piece of meat. When flesh meets bone, bone gets bruised but the flesh ain't happy. If your character's flesh isn't Real Weapon, brass knuckles are just and affectation.

 

In 6th for the minimal cost of a Killing Attack you are essentially buying an killing slot for your STR "Multipower," even if before you bought that slot your "MP" only had a single assumed option of normal damage.

[Talon]

Re: 6E What happened to HKA?

 

As Folded pointed out, it's the cost structure that is problematic (apart from realism/heroic fiction modeling/etc.). A character can convert their STR to killing for almost no cost -- and this has particular benefit for bricks, since it is giving them another top-level attack for that cost.

 

I would have preferred to see the doubling rule remain the default.

[RexMundi]

Re: 6E What happened to HKA?

 

I kept it, it's still in the book after all and Like I said, I'll allow a Power Skill roll and stunt to exceed the doubling Rule up to the level where the object is destroyed in the process.

 

~Rex

[Tom Carman]

Re: 6E What happened to HKA?

 

I'd like to point out that Rogue tossed a quarter through the SHIELD heli-carrier (IIRC)' date=' and Larry Niven stated that you could punch a marshmallow through a battleship under the right conditions. So having a guy who can lift tons be able to toss a small knife with incredible power makes sense. And all it needs is the use of Real Weapon for the GM to say A) yo can't double the base damage, and that knife still isn't going to harm the MBT over there.[/quote']

 

Yeah, so? I can accept that, with enough power behind it, a quarter might acquire enough Armor-piercing to punch all the way thru the heli-carrier. But it's still a quite small object, doing strictly localized damage (unless it hit something critical). If feeling generous, I might allow an AoE Hex from shrapnel in compartments along the quarter's path; but I'd still cap the damage at each point at twice the base.

[RexMundi]

Re: 6E What happened to HKA?

 

It really didn't do much other then cause a Two Front Shriek of *Rogue Fans* Holy Crap that was Cool! ..... *Ms. Marvel Fans* Death to Rogue!!!!!

 

~Rex

[Susano]

Re: 6E What happened to HKA?

 

Yeah' date=' so? I can accept that, with enough power behind it, a quarter might acquire enough Armor-piercing to punch all the way thru the heli-carrier. But it's still a quite small object, doing strictly localized damage (unless it hit something critical). If feeling generous, I might allow an AoE Hex from shrapnel in compartments along the quarter's path; but I'd still cap the damage at each point at twice the base.[/quote']

 

Have you seen the images of what happens when a small object (say, a BB) hits a metal plate? The hole after a few plates can be huge.

 

Look while the rules are open ended, the "HKA stops at double the base" is still in the book, Real Weapon can allow the GM to say "now this weapon can't do that", and common sense/play balance can allow you to say "no." My initial point was that in some cases, a small object can do immense amounts of damage, and in supers settings this is often par for the course. As was pointed out before Superman's "super breath" is pretty impossible, but he does it. Why? It's supers.