Military Applications of Superhumans

[Cassandra]

June 4th, 1942

 

Five Japanese Aircraft carries steam in the waters just a few hundred miles from the strategically important U.S. base on Midway Island. Joining the America drive and torpedo bombers on their attack on the enemy task force are the superheroes Helldiver and the Human Torpedo. While the squadrons from the Enterprise, Hornet, and Yorktown concentrate on the Akagi, Kaga, and Soryu, the pair of heroes go after the Amagi. Helldiver attempts to blast the planes on it's deck with a burst of flame after dodging the intense anti-aircraft fire, but the Japanese Naval Supervillain Zero Fighter rises up from the carrier's deck, and engages him in battle. Meanwhile the Human Torpedo tunnels his way through the thin steel in the Amagi's keel, smashing it's engines and causing the Amagi to begin to list, preventing it's aircraft from taking off . . .

 

 

 

In a world were superhumans exist, there would be a number of uses for them in any conflict. The above is an example based on history. The Amagi was a real aircraft carrier the Japanese were building, but it was damage beyond repair by the 1923 Tokyo earthquake. In the scenario provide, one might surmise that a Japanese superhuman called the Sumo managed to shore up the ship and prevent the damage.

By this means, we add a layer to history that allows the heroes to be involved in historical events and battles, with altering the outcome as we know it.

 

Another point it the use of powers that seem to have little use. I deliberately used the word "Tunnel" in the above because that is the power the human torpedo would have used to burrow into the Amagi's hull. Just tunnelling would have caused heavy damage to the machinery, and caused flooding that would have threatened the ship.

 

Superhumans would have been used by both sides on stragetically important targets. The ability to take out such important installations without inflicting collateral damage would make the recruitment of superhumans a top priority. Individual enemy generals could be targeted for capture (or assassination, an option more used by the enemy), and valuable enemy weapons and equipment can be destroyed without risking mass cassualties.

 

More to come . . .

[Beast]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

in general most super humans are large amounts of firepower in a small package

while on board a ship vs men with rifles,pistols, and smgs ,most supers will kick butt

outside where 5" AA are exploding not so much

 

tunneling cannot be used to cause damage

you could use it to get inside the ship

it just won't cause any serious flooding

this is what Killing attacks, high Str, Blast and Drains are for

 

most uses of supers in WW2 where either home front defense vs the mob or enemy agents

Or going behind the lines and stopping the enemy's secret plans

 

I for one leave the front lines of battle to the true heroes of WW2

[Vulcan]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

It depends heavily on the power level of supers vs. the power level of firearms.

 

If you go by Dark Champions, an assault rifle is the rough equivalent of a 20+d6 E-blast at 100+ active points. A 105 howitzer is around 7d6 Killing Explosion. Very few supers can withstand that sort of firepower straight out of the book.

 

So unless you decide all 'real' weapons do half- (or less!) damage vs. supers, they are not going to be out on the front line. Instead they will be held back for those missions too crucial to fail, or to defend targets too valuable to loose. Supers would be just too valuable to risk catching an 88mm antitank round in the face.

[Pizza Man]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

The cold war is where supers would come in real handy. Black ops. Spy work. asaulting targets before the enemy knows they're there.

 

The advantages of supers are such that a paranoid cold war govt would draft them against their will and essentially enslave supers. No retirement...you know too much. Bang.

 

It would also fuel anti-super technology...drains, NND killing attacks. Squads designed to fight supers. Every installation that could be hit will have a trained anti-super squad to at least slow the heroes down until super villains can show up.

 

Supers would force technology to ratchet up or be left defenseless.

[kahuna's bro]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

interesting thoughts all

i think supers would mostly be kept on the homefront because the war dept. would see them as monster types rather than mystyery men as supers were called in that era

[Badger]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

(Depending on power level of course) I;d leave the supers to fighting other supers as much as possible. Some big time supers tearing through infantrymen would be boring. Why are there always supers there to oppose enemy supers, you might ask? They just are, ok.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

Of course, most superhuman writeups are oriented towards a fast-paced tactical battle at relatively close range. What you generally won't see in writeups are characters with massive area effect attacks, highly accurate ranged attacks that can hit from very far away, low-powered KAs that can affect large target groups, and slow-activating attacks that can punch through massive defenses. IOW, pretty much the wishlist for military apps. Other things that would be useful include:

1. healing powers

2. mass teleport powers, both short and long range

3. invisibility and any other kind of "stealth" power

4. hypersenses, mind scan, telepathy and clairsentience

5. images and mental illusions, shapeshifting and any other kind of deception ability

6. mind control, transform, NNDs, any kind of "I win instantly" power

7. barriers, entangles, reflection, deflection, em jamming, etc.

 

A "military-oriented" group of characters, built on a mid-level amount of points(say, 500) could be quite formidable. A dozen high-end to epic-level military supers(650-1000+ points) would wipe out whole combat brigades at a time, particularly if they had a lot of training in tactics and teamwork.

[Badger]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

And of course, if you got DBZ characters, you got just yourself a living nuke launcher.

[David Blue]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

I played for years a one power superhero whose power has now changed for good. He could see through all barriers except high energy fields, he could see through total darkness, and he had enough range modifiers with sight perception rolls that nothing within thousands of miles of planet Earth caused him to take any range modifiers. As for the rest, he was fit and smart, and eventually learned pistol, which didn't stop him being bullied by football players in high school, punched around by girls in military super school and so on.

 

He volunteered to serve in the U.S. Government super squad. Generally the government kept him cooped up (awaiting orders) with other one note supers who had highly effective short-range powers and sometimes few inhibitions about using them. He did not have an especially good time.

 

The government had a variety of means of controlling the super kids. The first was chemical blinding, and the threat of it. The next was lock-on blindness hoods. The next was the kids being moved everywhere in high-energy sight proof vehicles. The next was keeping the kids always in high energy sight proof bases.

 

The main base the government team super kids lived in doubled as Stronghold. The difference between the cells the volunteer super kids lived in and the cells the captured villains lived in was a lot more theoretical than practical. Over time some of the kids started to go stir crazy. This was not to the advantage of the kid who didn't have a power that wasn't negated by the sight-proof environs. He started to go stir-crazy too.

 

He requested that he would get a chance to look over any prisoners before they were released, so he could recognize them again. He also requested that he be told when prisoners were unexpectedly released, so he could catch up with them visually, and see where they went, who they hooked up with and what projects they resumed. He got patted on the head, and what he asked for did not happen. What mattered to the military was that proper procedure was followed and the super-kids were prevented from obtaining any information other than on a strict "need to know" basis.

 

He went to his superiors and pleaded to be allowed to learn to use his power in an offensive manner: directing artillery and special drones he intended to build, coordinating widely separated friendly units on the basis of complete real-time observation, and finding "hidden" enemy units in caves, jungles, ocean depths and so on. He got patted on the head, and what he asked for did not happen. But he did learn to use a Springfield Rifle (which he did not have the Strength for) and a 1911 pistol, and participate in unarmed combat training (where he did a lot of getting hit, falling down and not getting back up) like a real soldier. He was also allowed to start on the skill track that would eventually have led to his being allowed to direct standard drones in standard ways - not the special drones he was asking to build, to be used in ways that would leverage his power, in other words not according to standard procedure.

 

Even the Special Forces guy called in to lead the super-kids never really "got" what the Eye of God wanted to do with that power of his. EoG continued to make suggestions, and he continued to get patted on the head.

 

Eventually EoG's power changed in a "radiation accident" defined as long term residence in a new sight-proofed compound with his eyes being battered by higher anti-sight radiation fields than ever before. (By the way, you know you're in the government team when your new "home" is surrounded by electrified barbed wire, guard dogs that don't like you, armed guards you are forbidden to try and get friendly with, and permeated by high energy fields to knock out your power.)

 

After months of no power at all, the U.S. government's most trusted super-kid, now leader of the squad, developed some super-strength and associated PD etc., and now he does the "Hup-two-chree-four!" thing with confidence, as he always has the STR Min for his issued weapon. (When he is issued a weapon.)

 

This is probably quite a realistic take on what the military would do with a patriotic kid with a devastatingly effective superpower.

[Starcloud]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

Kind of reminds me of Hyperion in JMS's retelling of the story.

[David Blue]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

I hadn't thought of that. But yes. And don't get me wrong: Hyperion's story is great, as a comic though not as a bare series of events, and I have had years of huge fun playing EoG.

 

But it had nothing to do with getting the maximum potential military effectiveness out of the character's power in either case. And I don't really object to that in terms of "realism". I see no reason to think that the actual military applications of supers would have anything to do with their real potential. 99% indoctrination and control, and 1% use, probably disgustingly unimaginative use from the super's point of view, is a much more likely scenario.

[Starcloud]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

That.. honestly depends on the timeframe AND which branch of service. The regular Army, yes, it's very rigid. It has to be. And certainly after Vietnam and the massive drawdown that followed, everything was very much by the book, and the book was very much an effed up list of conflicting policies.

 

More modern takes on it; Yes, indoctrination to a degree, control to a degree, and use is very minimal. But a halfway decent officer can organize a team of supers to take advantage of strengths and minimize weaknesses.

Intelligence gathering, information gathering, knowing where the enemy IS so you hit him most precisely, is of supreme importance now. Frankly, the abuse the "see anything/everything" character took smacks more of Vietnam-era draftee treatment than modern era battlefield tactical doctrine.

[csyphrett]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

Any military branch with superhumans are going to use those superhumans to accomplish objectives with the minimal loss of allied life. Someone who can see halfway around the world would be used to locate targets. After all that was what they were trying to do with remote viewers.

 

Your character being disregarded like that, Dave, shows a GM who didn't know what he was talking about unless their was an implicit underage thing going on.

CES

[sinanju]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

Any military branch with superhumans are going to use those superhumans to accomplish objectives with the minimal loss of allied life. Someone who can see halfway around the world would be used to locate targets. After all that was what they were trying to do with remote viewers.

 

Your character being disregarded like that, Dave, shows a GM who didn't know what he was talking about unless their was an implicit underage thing going on.

CES

 

Ditto this. Treating superhumans as prisoners instead of assets--barring actions by the superhuman in question that demonstrate that he's not to be trusted--is a stupid waste of manpower. Any real world military commander worth his stars/bars/whatever would give his left arm for a guy with the powers (and the desire to help) that David's PC displayed. Treating him with contempt and dismissing all his suggestions was arrogantly, aggressively, abysmally stupid.

[David Blue]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

All I can say is, eventually it worked out well for me, the player, in artistic terms, though the character felt very frustrated at the time. Like the story of Hyperion (thanks to Starcloud for pointing that out for me) it had, in retrospect, a sad resonance that was worth everything.

 

Except... I would have liked to rescue Gilad Shalit.

 

That's something I think supers would like to do, and soldiers would be OK with them doing: rescuing soldiers of their own or allied nations, in captivity. This kind of operation can be impossibly awkward for even very powerful conventional forces. ("Where is he!?") But it can be simple for the right super.

 

After EoG had built up his range enough, or even earlier if he could have scored a plane ride over the Middle East, say a short few hundred miles from the target area, it would have been simplicity itself to search every tunnel and basement, looking for the face of a victim matching a file photo. The same for any Americans in captivity too, of course: "Give me a photo and the general area to look, and I'll give you the man, or the woman. Where they are, what shape they're in, what security is like, any explosives or traps, what you're going to need to get through any locks, bars or cages, how many guards and how they act, where they sleep and relax - easy as watching ants in an ant-hive. Just tell me when you do the raid, so I'll be awake. I want to give you real-time on any surprises, and I love to see the looks on the faces of the victims when they get freed."

 

I find it plausible that military supers would be very under-utilized because soldiers would be scared of what they could do (especially Hyperion!), and officers and politicians would be much more eager to insure themselves against mishaps and the perception of having made a mistake than they would be to encourage the freaks to extend their abilities in disturbing, scary ways.

 

But I think the rescue of friendly prisoners in enemy hands could be an exception, even though the military benefit is objectively minor. I think soldiers would like the "all-seeing eye" or whatever it was backing them up. I think any senior officer who had ever been a prisoner himself (though that doesn't happen much any more) would be more likely to risk being seen to bend the rules a little to make this happen. ("Give the kid a 'vacation' in the area, why not?") Next scene: yellow ribbons, champagne corks popping and: "We found you. Just don't ask how."

[csyphrett]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

It's okay but its not plausible Dave. The mil and intel communities were trying to train psychics to do what your character could do. They might not have given you a drone or remote controlled vehicle, but based on actual real world efforts they would have used your ability until your eyeballs fell out.

CES

[David Blue]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

It's okay but its not plausible Dave. The mil and intel communities were trying to train psychics to do what your character could do. They might not have given you a drone or remote controlled vehicle, but based on actual real world efforts they would have used your ability until your eyeballs fell out.

CES

Well, that's the other concern of course. We also had in our band of one-trick-pony children a healer (with laying-on-of-hands), who quit before the military took over from the Department of State. Some of us were concerned that she would get stuck in a basement and told to heal, heal, heal. When you have unique healing abilities, there is always someone more important than you in official terms, whose need to be healed is more urgent than your need to date, grow up and have a real life.

[David Blue]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

By the way, the military did a lot right in this game.

 

One thing they perfected was the use of (massive, one-trick) mind control for interrogations. The kid mind controller had Christian inhibitions about forcing people to do things against their conscience, so they didn't fight that. Instead, they set it up like a police interrogation, with mind controller boy behind one-way glass. Mind-controller boy would put the subject into a mind control trance, and telepathically order him to answer all questions truthfully and cooperate fully. Then they would wheel him away. The interrogator would do the interrogation. Then mind controller boy would be told to cancel the power, and the interrogator would do the interrogation again, but this time be utterly defeated by the steadfast subject, who would then of course remember having been asked about X, Y and X, but having held out. Mind control boy never learned any unauthorized information, including what he had made people reveal or do. He was troubled about it, but he didn't know - like the guy in the firing squad who might have had the one blank round.

 

I think this probably how the military would do mind control interrogations, keeping all as in all the information for high-ranking, authorized "top men", not the "talent".

[Major Tom 2009]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

Ditto this. Treating superhumans as prisoners instead of assets--barring actions by the superhuman in question that demonstrate that he's not to be trusted--is a stupid waste of manpower. Any real world military commander worth his stars/bars/whatever would give his left arm for a guy with the powers (and the desire to help) that David's PC displayed. Treating him with contempt and dismissing all his suggestions was arrogantly' date=' aggressively, abysmally stupid.[/quote']

 

 

Kind of sounds like the military toads in the campaign failed to read the section

of the Superhero Relations Manual titled "How To Create An Embittered Super-

villain"...

 

 

Major Tom 2009

[David Blue]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

They didn't need to read the chapter on "How To Create An Embittered Super-villain", they just did it all naturally.

 

This is all a campaign feature, though it took years for me to recognize it. We're now "the good ones" who stuck with the program, even if for years growing up we felt like the new movie Captain America / Steve Rogers. (Lab rats and performing monkeys, or worse.) Once you say: "It's OK Sir. You thought you were doing the right thing. And now it's our turn to try to do the right thing." you've got your hero concept all laid out. Only I think you have to play out those formative years, and take the gaming years to do so.

 

Our enemies list includes an all star cast of embittered former program inmates. This is something the GM wanted: that in years to come we would remember: "I went to school with that guy!" The GM took the needed time (years) and used every military trope to build his foundations right, and it worked. I love this campaign!

 

The main thing I would say about "Military Applications of Superhumans" is that it's a terrific field to explore in a roleplaying sense. I used to think that this was a bad way to build a heroic team. I've seen what a good GM can do with the military / Teen Champions concept, and now I'm a believer. Go for it!

[David Blue]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

Having chewed over this for years (in character), some general thoughts on military powers...

 

First, "damage is free". The military doesn't need supers to blow stuff up. They can blow stuff up. Your job is to help them.

 

Example one: the military will certainly grab "Electrocution Lass" but that doesn't mean they have anything interesting for her to do. All that's going to happen is that she's going to get bored, bored, bored. Example two (theoretical): you don't use tunneling to dig holes in ships, even if you could. It's dangerous. One depth charge with unhappy timing and there goes Tunneling Tom. And it's pointless compared to what you can do, which is dig useful holes. Herbert Plumer's colossal mine, the blast from which could be heard in England, could have been dug as a quick, simple operation, and all the casualties taken during the long, long grind could have been saved. Example three (theoretical): if you lack a friend to tell you where your teleportation portals would be safe and effective for raids, you could still take your chances, but you might not do much damage before your luck ran out, whereas rescuing friends is a sure thing. The defense of the Bataan peninsula was a six months horror without hope or relief, but Portal Lass could have brought almost everybody back to the United States safely.

 

As a rough rule, the more a (one trick) super is good at punching your face in at school, the less he has to offer in actual, all-out war. It's the guys who "can't do anything" on the playground but can change the weather in a large area or read minds or find minds that can turn wars topsy-turvey. For this reason, just dumping a bunch of kids together and "letting the natural leaders emerge" in conflict is not necessarily a smart idea. Exception: there is one power that is equally great face to face and in all-out war, and both the boys who had mind control and no inhibitions about making themselves maximum dude at school are now enjoying great careers as super-villains.

 

I haven't seen animal control pushed, but for African style wars of banditry my impression is that it could be a formidable weapon, especially for an insect swarms specialist. A lot of countries would have no real defense to quite moderate military force plus a Lord of Locusts or a Mosquito Master.

 

Mind Scanning can easily become the most dominating power of all, but it depends on who you are with and who you are up against. ("Khalif to Madhi: there are no unfamiliar minds in the area. We are safe. Excuse me, I have an incoming call. Hello?" "Reapers don't have minds, moron." *BOOM!*)

 

Telepathy is one of those powers that are so good they can look better than they are. What do you do after you let your telepath wander around your insurgent war zone for a while, and he reports that you can't trust anybody? He can identify some bad guys for you. You can tear up their networks. With his help, you can find out every trail to the end of the trail. But after you kill the bad guys there will still be a completely inadequate supply of good guys. Just about everyone will sell you out. Will you quit? The experience of our main telepath was that, no matter how well you understand why someone will shoot you they still will, and, presented with bitter truth, nearly everyone will start inventing reasons why the kid must be wrong. To a strong enough telepath, "received wisdom" = "obvious untruths that non-telepaths don't have the courage to abandon".

 

Transformation powers in general have a severe tendency to get out of hand, and vampires make magnificent elite soldiers. The process can also save war heroes, elite politicians with enough clout, personal friends with fatal diseases, and so on. For what it was worth (nothing) EoG urged that "Condition H" never be spread, no matter what the temptation...

 

One trick ponies built on super-senses also have a tendency to turn godlike. Super-sight is not the worst power you can have, though it's close. The worst is an array of analytical-everything, including obscure detects, plus friends with good mobility and preferably invisibility usable on others to get you around for a good look at everything. I don't want to even think about what extensive analytical danger-sense could do.

 

Another nasty option is global super-sight plus massive mind control usable by others, but our Christian mind controller wisely feared that if he pushed to develop "usable by others" it wouldn't be his good buddy with super-sight fixing all the world's problems (though that would be frightening enough), but rather he would be required to "hand over his power" and he might be the first one it was used on. So he was less than zealous about developing his power in that direction.

 

In our bitter experience, super-luck is the most useless power for anyone but Mr. or Miss Lucky. Two rules of thumb: don't stand next to Mr. Lucky in a firefight, and the mission after Mr. or Miss Lucky surprisingly leaves the team or otherwise becomes unavailable to go will be bloody.

 

The second most useless power (at least it doesn't hurt anyone else) is: precognition / future cannot be changed. "I've seen how this war ends. We lose. Nothing can stop it. I've also seen how this conversation ends. You're going to keep fighting anyway. But it doesn't matter to me. I know there's a bullet with my name on it, and inside a week I'm gonna be gone."

[Badger]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

Ditto this. Treating superhumans as prisoners instead of assets--barring actions by the superhuman in question that demonstrate that he's not to be trusted--is a stupid waste of manpower. Any real world military commander worth his stars/bars/whatever would give his left arm for a guy with the powers (and the desire to help) that David's PC displayed. Treating him with contempt and dismissing all his suggestions was arrogantly' date=' aggressively, abysmally stupid.[/quote']

 

I'd give my right arm (but I'm left-handed). But, trying to speak as a pretend commander, I'd be drooling on my shirt to pick up the guy for my HQ. (should have called him the "Human Satellite" though)

[David Blue]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

I'd give my right arm (but I'm left-handed). But, trying to speak as a pretend commander, I'd be drooling on my shirt to pick up the guy for my HQ. (should have called him the "Human Satellite" though)

OK, I'll accept the consensus that in real life he would indeed be used.

 

He wasn't the "Human Satellite" though. I'm not sure what satellites could have done about the "Iron Triangle" tunnel complex in Vietnam. EoG could have "monstered" it in the most atrociously one-sided fashion. "They're there, and there, and there, and there. Put one bomb there and one there, and all those guys will be trapped. The only exit for those guys is here..." Functionally, Viet Cong tunnel rats would be in "darkness and hiding" only in the way that blindfolds would put them in darkness. Earth walls would keep them from moving freely, but they'd still be 100% exposed to observation and attack.

[David Blue]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

I think if people had seriously used what we could have done in war, and the bad guys had taken the same approach, it might have developed like flying in World War I.

 

Zeppelin raids and bombers were scary and destructive, yeah. But the real threat of flying was what spotter planes and zeppelins did for the effectiveness of artillery. Basically everybody who is in an open trench is in a lot of trouble, subjected to perfectly accurate artillery fire, and (given barbed wire and machine-guns) with nowhere to go. That pressure is intolerable, so both sides send up fighters to get rid of the hostile spotters (and when possible bombers and even fighters).

 

In the same way, supers could do some spectacular things with big powers like weather control, but the key effect of supers would be in the combination of conventional military force and super-senses (or mental powers that can act like super-senses, such as mind-scanning). That would be unbearable pressure, so people would start sending out "fighter" teams of invisible ninjas, Delta Force vampires and so on, to knock out those enemy spotters at any cost. That would lead to super-bodyguards and "interceptor" squads.

[sinanju]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

They didn't need to read the chapter on "How To Create An Embittered Super-villain", they just did it all naturally.

 

This is all a campaign feature, though it took years for me to recognize it. We're now "the good ones" who stuck with the program, even if for years growing up we felt like the new movie Captain America / Steve Rogers. (Lab rats and performing monkeys, or worse.) Once you say: "It's OK Sir. You thought you were doing the right thing. And now it's our turn to try to do the right thing." you've got your hero concept all laid out. Only I think you have to play out those formative years, and take the gaming years to do so.

 

To quote the Mythbusters (usually while standing over a completely destroyed machine), "Well, THERE'S your problem!"

 

I'm not willing endure years of having my character treated like crap in order to set-up a scenario where my reward is NOT being treated like crap. If you're enjoying the game, that's great. But I think you're going to find that most folks wouldn't be so forgiving of the GM's behavior.