Sun's damage

[Tom McCarthy]

Wimpy numbers

 

Here's some thoroughly unimpressive numbers.

 

The sun generates about 3.9 x 10^26 Joules per second.

The sun's diameter is about 1.392 x 10^9 metres. That pegs the surface area at about 2 x 10^18 metres squared. For my hero, floating near the surface and exposing 1 metre squared, I get about 192 MW of radiant energy every second. According to "The Flavor of the Game" (http://www.herogames.com/FreeStuff/dharchives/flavor.htm), that's only 23 DCs.

 

Of course, I've over-simplified. I'm ignoring the fact that he's immersed in super-heated gases (5500 degrees Celsius or 9900 degrees F, ballpark), subjected to gravitational stresses, and sucking vacuum. But 23 DCs is a long way from the agreed upon 60 DCs for a nuclear explosion.

 

Admittedly, this is the corona. The core is about 25% that radius, 1/16th the surface area, and if it's the source of the energy, radiates at a rate closer to 27 or 28 DCs. The temperature's a killer (15.6 million Celsius ?), but it's all hydrogen and helium (no oxygen), so we can safely assume it's a 'dry' heat.

 

Obviously, there's something drastically wrong with my calculations, since I'm orders of orders of magnitude off from Jim Cambias's numbers in Star Hero.

[Monolith]

Re: Wimpy numbers

 

Originally posted by Tom McCarthy

Obviously, there's something drastically wrong with my calculations, since I'm orders of orders of magnitude off from Jim Cambias's numbers in Star Hero.

You forgot to take into account the Canadian exchange rates.

[Bartman]

Re: Wimpy numbers

 

Originally posted by Tom McCarthy

Obviously, there's something drastically wrong with my calculations, since I'm orders of orders of magnitude off from Jim Cambias's numbers in Star Hero.

 

I've always figured that Jim didn't know or forgot about the logrithmic nature of Hero. After all his bacground is on the GURPs side and 1000d6 would be about right for the Sun in GURPs.

 

And frankly people tend to overstate the DCs for all attacks over about 10-15 DCs. If you look at FREd. All the hand guns and rifles follow the logrithmic rule. Then for some reason it jumps. The Abrams gun should be around 5-6d6 killing instead of the 8d6 Steve gave it. By the log rule nukes should be between about 30-40 DCs rather than the 60 they were given. And frankly that bugs me. High level supers should be able to take a nuke. I can think of several who have done so. Heck, hundreds of thousand survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki (although not unprotected at 'ground zero'). By exagerating the strength of these attacks you exagerate the defenses you need to defend against them. And whenyou do that you lose one of the great strenghts of Hero, the ability to cover such a huge range of genres with a single ruleset.

[CorpCommander]

Re: Re: Wimpy numbers

 

Originally posted by Bartman

Heck, hundreds of thousand survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki (although not unprotected at 'ground zero').

 

I like your point concerning exaggerated effects and sticking to the log effects. In some cases one does have to consider some of the other rules impacting such as range. In order to make a 120mm penetrator round for a tank I had to make it a 12d6 RKA decreased with range. That allowed me to reach out 1800 hexes with sufficient effect at the middle ranges. (3dk at max range, about 5-6d6 at the mid-range which seems to work well.)

 

About Hiroshima and Nagasaki - as one can see in the pictures of the striken cities almost no structure was left without massive damage. Survivor tales that I know of were of people in cellars with a good surrounding of dirt. That would stop all the alpha and beta particles. The Gamma particles, though, are a different matter and would penetrate quite a distance. While there were thousands of survivors the Gamma (or Ionized Radiation) left many with long term radiation sickness and eventually cancer. Hero does a great job of letting us represent this. Gradual Effect 5 years (about -3 limitation). (The Gradual Effect listed here is probably too long actually. Many near the hypocenter that survived the blast died within 6 weeks.)

 

Your point was that nuclear weapons of the size used in Japan don't destroy everything - it is possible to survive. I think that is a good point. Here is a great site on survivor stories: Voice of Hibakusha

[Gary]

Nuclear explosions of 30-40 DCs, or tank MA's of 15-18 DCs are silly in a game system where a terminal velocity fall is 30 DC.

[Arthur]

Originally posted by Gary

Nuclear explosions of 30-40 DCs, or tank MA's of 15-18 DCs are silly in a game system where a terminal velocity fall is 30 DC.

 

That just means that the falling rules should be modified as well. A quick horseback estimate:

 

Terminal velocity is rougly around 180 MPH, IIRC. That's about 80 m/s, or about 1000 m/Turn = 500" per Turn. Applying a "standard effect" rule (that's what I use, anyway) of SPD 4 for translating RW effects, that's about 125" per phase. Divide by 3 for a Move-Through, and you get about 40d N.

 

Hmmm. A little analysis shows the problem: Move-Through damage is proportional to the square root of KE, since KE is proportional to the square of velocity. It is therefore on a curve that is not linear, but goes up faster than the geometric expansion of other types of KE damage.

 

Man, once you open a can of worms, you need a bigger can to re-can them.

 

Even if you go with SPD 6 as a standard effect, you still wind up with 30d N.

 

I was rather hoping that this calculation would yield something along the lines of 20d. Silly me.

 

Are you pondering what I'm pondering?

[Vondy]

Originally posted by Gary

Nuclear explosions of 30-40 DCs, or tank MA's of 15-18 DCs are silly in a game system where a terminal velocity fall is 30 DC.

 

David: Hello, my name is David and I'm a hand-waver.

 

Hand Wavers Support Group: Hi Dave!

 

David: I've been hand-waving upper end mechanics and declaring plot device caveats for thirteen years now. It all started when I realized hero's mechanics were set on a bell curve, but their supplements, and many gamers, didn't adhere to this rule on a consistent basis.

[Vondy]

Originally posted by Arthur

That just means that the falling rules should be modified as well. A quick horseback estimate:

 

Terminal velocity is rougly around 180 MPH, IIRC. That's about 80 m/s, or about 1000 m/Turn = 500" per Turn. Applying a "standard effect" rule (that's what I use, anyway) of SPD 4 for translating RW effects, that's about 125" per phase. Divide by 3 for a Move-Through, and you get about 40d N.

 

Hmmm. A little analysis shows the problem: Move-Through damage is proportional to the square root of KE, since KE is proportional to the square of velocity. It is therefore on a curve that is not linear, but goes up faster than the geometric expansion of other types of KE damage.

 

Man, once you open a can of worms, you need a bigger can to re-can them.

 

Even if you go with SPD 6 as a standard effect, you still wind up with 30d N.

 

I was rather hoping that this calculation would yield something along the lines of 20d. Silly me.

 

Are you pondering what I'm pondering?

 

You could just assume a fall does maximum damage (it doesn't miss and hits everything).

 

20DC would be 40 Body. Certain death, even for the hardiest of men!

[Bartman]

Originally posted by D-Man

David: Hello, my name is David and I'm a hand-waver.

 

Hand Wavers Support Group: Hi Dave!

 

David: I've been hand-waving upper end mechanics and declaring plot device caveats for thirteen years now. It all started when I realized hero's mechanics were set on a bell curve, but their supplements, and many gamers, didn't adhere to this rule on a consistent basis.

 

Well what's the fun in that? Why, that's downright sane and reasonable. I therefore disregard it out of hand completely.

 

But you have a good point D-Man. I remember a growth based character I made back in 3rd Ed. Back then growth was based on a logrithmic scale but the stretching associated with it was on a linear scale. At low levels his arms apparently grew faster than the rest of him. At mid levels it was about the same. But at the high levels he would be hundreds of meters tall but would only have arms a couple dozen meters long. In fact strictly speaking he shouldn't have even been able to reach up and touch his own head. So there has always been a mix of both of scales in the system since the begining. I just hope with enough grousing we'll get Steve to explicitly follow the logrithmic format and change the few things that don't follow it, to do so.

[CorpCommander]

Originally posted by D-Man

You could just assume a fall does maximum damage (it doesn't miss and hits everything).

 

Skydivers have survived chute failure from several hundred feet. One man I saw survived a 4 story fall because he landed on a stopsign and was arrested by the pole impaling him. I don't think he was perfectly well after that but... yeah he lived.

 

Falling damage has been brought up a bunch of times as unrealistic. The biggest problem is that if you try to do the fantastic the reality of life gets in the way everytime. You are better off chaining reality to the radiator in the basement and ignoring its cries while you game.

[SSJ Archon]

A bomb

 

While people may have survived the bombs dropped in japan, would they survive todays nukes? The things were like 50 Kilotons, and todays can be up to 300 Megatons! Maybe the nuke listed is modern? Could superman survive one of those at point blank? Even though he is superman, i mean, thats 300 megatons! That will take out a state 3 times faster than the speed of sound can travel across it! And lets not even go to antimatter! Lets see him try to catch some of that! The sun should be about 3 times worse than a 500 megaton nuke, at the center. The temperature is about the same, but now its not conveyed in one Atm, but in what maybe 20? Like sound and other chain reactions, that makes it more powerful. I mean at that level no known substance can even come close to surviving, and to produce a field effect to protect you, you'd need another star to power it! Lets not even mention that that would not be healthy for the Sun.

[Lord Liaden]

Bartman, I hope you don't mind, but since the discussion has brought in logarithmic progression of damage in HERO, and the old DH article "The Flavor of the Game" was cited, I thought people might appreciate seeing your fine "Damage Class to Real World Conversion" chart from the old boards. I've found it to be a useful guideline:

 

http://www.herogames.com/oldForum/HeroSystemDiscussion/000836.html

[Agent X]

Originally posted by Gary

Nuclear explosions of 30-40 DCs, or tank MA's of 15-18 DCs are silly in a game system where a terminal velocity fall is 30 DC.

You are right. Guess I'll have to fix terminal velocity in my games. Or I won't worry about it because it doesn't annoy me the way that having to build "cheat" powers for Superman does.

[Gary]

Originally posted by Agent X

You are right. Guess I'll have to fix terminal velocity in my games. Or I won't worry about it because it doesn't annoy me the way that having to build "cheat" powers for Superman does.

 

If you want to "fix" terminal velocity to match the rest of the system, then a terminal velocity fall from a 100 kg man would be about 4 DC more than a .50 cal mg round. A .50 cal is 9 DC, so a terminal velocity fall would be 13 DC. Every doubling or halving of velocity would add or subtract 2 DC.

 

Thus falling damage would be:

 

1" 3 DC

2" 5 DC

3-4" 7 DC

5-8" 9 DC

9-16" 11 DC

17-32" 13 DC

33-64" 15 DC

 

Etc.

[Bartman]

Originally posted by Lord Liaden

Bartman, I hope you don't mind, but since the discussion has brought in logarithmic progression of damage in HERO, and the old DH article "The Flavor of the Game" was cited, I thought people might appreciate seeing your fine "Damage Class to Real World Conversion" chart from the old boards. I've found it to be a useful guideline:

 

http://www.herogames.com/oldForum/HeroSystemDiscussion/000836.html

 

No of course I don't mind. And thank you I never can find any of the stuff from the old boards.

[Bartman]

Re: A bomb

 

Originally posted by SSJ Archon

While people may have survived the bombs dropped in japan, would they survive todays nukes? The things were like 50 Kilotons, and todays can be up to 300 Megatons! Maybe the nuke listed is modern? Could superman survive one of those at point blank? Even though he is superman, i mean, thats 300 megatons! That will take out a state 3 times faster than the speed of sound can travel across it! And lets not even go to antimatter! Lets see him try to catch some of that! The sun should be about 3 times worse than a 500 megaton nuke, at the center. The temperature is about the same, but now its not conveyed in one Atm, but in what maybe 20? Like sound and other chain reactions, that makes it more powerful. I mean at that level no known substance can even come close to surviving, and to produce a field effect to protect you, you'd need another star to power it! Lets not even mention that that would not be healthy for the Sun.

 

First- The largest bomb ever exploded in the whole history of mankind was the Tsar Bomba. It had an effect of 50 Megatons and was done only as a proof of concept by the Soviets. Currently the single largest warhead in the world is the 4-5 Mt warhead on the Chinese DF-5A. But that is missleading as the vast majority of warheads are in the 100kt range. So I don't know where you got your numbers of 300Mt and 500Mt weapons but there have never been any and never will be.

 

Second- Who is talking about reality? You mention that no known substance can survive in the sun. Well yes you are right. But we are talking about comics and Sci-fi here. It is most likely that we will never make a material that is stronger than the equivalant to 25-30 def, ever. What does that have to do with the survival capabilitys of completely impossible characters like Superman?

[Ndreare]

Originally posted by Arthur

That just means that the falling rules should be modified as well. A quick horseback estimate:

 

Terminal velocity is rougly around 180 MPH, IIRC. That's about 80 m/s, or about 1000 m/Turn = 500" per Turn. Applying a "standard effect" rule (that's what I use, anyway) of SPD 4 for translating RW effects, that's about 125" per phase. Divide by 3 for a Move-Through, and you get about 40d N.

 

Hmmm. A little analysis shows the problem: Move-Through damage is proportional to the square root of KE, since KE is proportional to the square of velocity. It is therefore on a curve that is not linear, but goes up faster than the geometric expansion of other types of KE damage.

 

Man, once you open a can of worms, you need a bigger can to re-can them.

 

Even if you go with SPD 6 as a standard effect, you still wind up with 30d N.

 

I was rather hoping that this calculation would yield something along the lines of 20d. Silly me.

 

Are you pondering what I'm pondering?

 

I believe your mistake was that you should have gone with a speed of 12 as the earth is always moving.

 

That would make it closer to 10 or 13 DC a perfectly reasonable damage level considering falling should be killing damage any ways.

 

I worked in a rehabilitation hospital in Albuquerque were we often had fall victims and even once had man who’s Para shoot did not open. There is a butt load of bone and organ damage associated with falling (i.e. killing) a 10DC killing attack will likely have you dieing soon after impact but it would still be possible to get "lucky" and live withy a couple of dozen broken bone.

 

The system I have fallen on is just looking at the STR chart for nukes and saying a Nuke dose killing damage based on its size and adding the Armor piercing advantage to it. If I wanted perfect reality I would go out side but I don't so I play a game were a man can take a nuke to the chest. and live like the hulk did back in his pantheon days. Or “Supes†has done on more than one occasion.

 

 

The surface of the sun according to "Ask.com" is 6000 degrees Celcius. I don't see it as any more unreasonable for a character to be able tolerate that than I do for him to throw fire from his eyes.

[SSJ Archon]

Those numbers are old, and I don't remember where i got them. Though, there is no reason a nuclear weapon couldn't do that. The upper limit for nuclear fission is around 600 Megatons, and for Fusion its about 2 Gigatons. I'm getting my major in nuclear physics, so i'm pretty sure on those. Thank you for correcting my old numbers, (though I do remember them building more powerful weapons, not nessesarily testing them.)

 

Antimatter is the wave of the future when is comes to big bombs, though they're not really needed anymore.

 

It has nothing to do with silver age superman. I never liked him in the first place. There are ceramic theoretical compounds which could take up 25,000 F, but after that you need magnetic fields or something to make an armor strong enough. Maybe some matter from a neutron star.

 

The point is, weapons kinda slide off of logarithmic, and armor doesn't. Thats the problem.

[pinecone]

Just jumpin in to up my post count...I don't beleive you need to make falling damage into killing...the avg person only has 2 PD so a 12D6 fall does an Average of 10 body! Seems plenty lethal to me....I always figured they upped terminal velocity to 30D6 so they could scare Supers not because it was Real but because it was Dramatic......

[Ndreare]

Originally posted by pinecone

Just jumpin in to up my post count...I don't beleive you need to make falling damage into killing...the avg person only has 2 PD so a 12D6 fall does an Average of 10 body! Seems plenty lethal to me....I always figured they upped terminal velocity to 30D6 so they could scare Supers not because it was Real but because it was Dramatic......

 

That is pbobly the whole truth of it.

 

All tyo often have game designers made a rules change simply to create a player intimidating situation.

 

Realism is often over looked by me as a GM in order to create the "Propper" feel of a situation and maybe that is what Steve was looking to do here.

[Gary]

Originally posted by pinecone

Just jumpin in to up my post count...I don't beleive you need to make falling damage into killing...the avg person only has 2 PD so a 12D6 fall does an Average of 10 body! Seems plenty lethal to me....I always figured they upped terminal velocity to 30D6 so they could scare Supers not because it was Real but because it was Dramatic......

 

Except that people will just walk off 10 story falls with just bruises. And virtually everybody could survive a terminal velocity fall if they receive medical attention within 2 minutes of the fall. Not nearly lethal enough for falling damage.

 

If you want falling damage to "feel" real without skewing the rest of the system, then the fix would be to lower the body for the average person to 5 along with logrithmic falling damage. That would also have the side benefit of making normal weaponry more lethal and realistic.

[Lord Liaden]

I've found it useful to roll for Hit Locations in landings from uncontrolled falls. It allows for both instantaneous death for most normals, and for "miraculous" survivals, depending on the roll. Assuming you want either possibility, of course.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Originally posted by Arthur

[b

 

I get the distinct impression that George MacDonald and his cohorts had a solid grounding in math and physics. They appear to have set out to create a game with an underlying consistent mathematical model. Logarithmic was undoubtedly chosen to cope with the vast power spreads in comic-book stories without huge numbers being necessary (GURPS has the opposite problem: it's a linear system, and large weapons do hundreds or thousands of dice).

 

It seems that DOJ is only somewhat interested in maintaining the integrity of the mathematical model; they seem to be pushing the system more toward the ad hoc "make 'em up" paradigm. [/b]

 

I'd have to agree with Arthur here. My research during the 4th edition of Hero came up with the same conclusions he did (+1DC=X2KE/+2Def=X2protection) and this was reflected in the damage of many of the weapons in published supplements during that era.

 

In the 5th edition, the numbers are close to that model, not exact, as they almost always were in the 4th edition, but on the high end of the scale, the 5th edition seems to ignore this concept completely, even though the system works (nearly) perfectly when the model is adhered to.

 

Its not a big deal to me though, as I generaly have my own way of doing things in any system I run, and I have no problem with changing published stats to something that fits my perception of the system better...

[CorpCommander]

Further Details?

 

Originally posted by Bartman

No of course I don't mind. And thank you I never can find any of the stuff from the old boards.

 

The table looks interesting. Could you further define what you mean by point, 1-hex and explosion in the table?

 

For example, the Point column doesn't even see any value until DC12.

 

Thanks

[Bartman]

Re: Further Details?

 

Originally posted by CorpCommander

The table looks interesting. Could you further define what you mean by point, 1-hex and explosion in the table?

 

For example, the Point column doesn't even see any value until DC12.

 

Sure. Frankly the three different numbers for TNT are because of the assumption used in the rule books that TNT is always area effect/explosion. Because of this the official numbers for TNT don't match up with the muzzle velocity of the guns. In fact they are 12DCs different. This makes sense as the energy of an explosion is more spread out. However there are a number of sittuations where it is possible to get TNT to act over a smaller area than an explosion. Shaped charges are one example.

 

So the point value is what the equivalant energy of TNT would be if were somehow shaped, focused and directed into a single point. Basically it is like a bullet. A gun focuses all the energy of a small amount of explosive and imparts that energy to a bullet. Another idea would be something too small to make an 'explosion', like a heavy firecraker, but could do some damage if someone held it in their hand.

 

1 Hex represents an explosion which is contained within a 2 meter sphere. An example for this case would be like shaped charges which focuses all its energy into a bank vault.

 

And the reason I didn't go below 1/64th of a pound of TNT is that it didn't seem likely that anyone would need or use less than 7 grams or 110 grains worth of TNT. And second I had already formated my fixed width table and 1/125th was a character to long and it messed up my formatting, so I removed anything with more characters than 1/64th.