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Are tanks really that tough?


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First of all, full disclosure, I know nothing about military weapons and vehicles nor do I know much about physics, which is probably the main reason that I have to ask this.  The defensive stats for a Abrams MBT are listed at 30/20.  According to 6E2 pgs. 196-197, the 30 defense is for the front of the tank and the 20 defense is for the sides, bottom, and top.  If a character with a Strength of 100 punches the front of the tank, he would have virtually no chance of even scratching it.  A character that strong can lift 25,000 tons.  It seems like someone that powerful could make a better showing against the vehicle even when attacking its least vulnerable area.  Hell, I would think he could easily tear it in half.  Even with a Haymaker and allocating all of his Combat Skills to damage, he still is more likely than not ineffective against it.  Yes, I realize he could hit the sides, flip the damn thing over, or pick it up and throw it down the street since it weighs far less than he is capable of juggling, let along lifting, but that isn't the point. I also realize that there are optional rules in Hero System for making things more breakable in settings where real estate (and military vehicles) are commonly treated like paper (e.g. comic book settings) but once again, that isn't the point.  I just want to know are those defense numbers sound?  Is that tank really that tough?  Thanks.   

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6E2 171 puts it at 20/16

Note that the unchanged durability values might work better in heroic games, where weapons/attacks are less strict about AP limits. They might be too tough for Superheroics. Consider writing up your own tanks or apply the Rules from 6E2 170 when Superpowers meet mundane stuff. It might produce more cinematic results.

 

The Vehicles on 6E2 196 (wich you appear to be refering too), seem with 90% propabilty designed for Heroic games.

That Abrams has a 12.7mm machine gun 3D6 RKA, Autofire (10), +1 Stun Multiplier and 1000 Charges. No way that it is written up for Superheroic games!

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On the contrary, tanks and military weapons in Hero have probably been inflated specifically to make them more effective against superheroes.

 

If something is designed to withstand an attack by a 100 STR character, why would you think it was designed for settings in which 100 STR characters don't exist?

 

That said, it's tough to benchmark game values against actual things. I will say if you want to downgrade the tank, make sure you don't reduce it to where a rifle bullet puts a hole in it. Unless you want bullet holes in your tank.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Puts a palindromedary in his tank

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I think this highlights the difficulty of a universal system that has evolved in strange ways rather than having been designed from the ground up.  Obviously the HERO principles are pretty universal but a lot of the background was not always written specifically for a universal system and some of the traditional standards came from different genres that were not based on the same standards.  Those disconnects only appear in certain places.

 

I think one place that was used was the damage dealt by weapons - often making them enough to alarm superheroes.  If those weapons could alarm superheroes then, to retain some elements of verisimilitude, tanks needed to reflect their ability to ignore some of those weapons.  That lead to defensive values that would trouble superheroes.  :-)

 

I think that the response has to be that the system has provided a lot of example values that you can use in most situations without any real problems.  If you want to have a consistent world however, you need to sit down, decide what your personal standards will be and then base everything else from there.  More consistency means more work...

 

Doc

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On the contrary, tanks and military weapons in Hero have probably been inflated specifically to make them more effective against superheroes.

 

If something is designed to withstand an attack by a 100 STR character, why would you think it was designed for settings in which 100 STR characters don't exist?

The MG of the tank alone clocks in at approxmiately 135 AP. (45 Base Cost, around +2 Advantages).

Very high powered supoerheroics caps out at a mere 120 AP and apropirate defenses. So you could not build the tertiary attack it has much less an attack that could defeat it even in that high bracket.

What does Grond clock in at again? 100 STR/20 DC before maneuvers? I don't think there IS a example superheroic level this tank could be balanced for. And writing something up that nobody can use in thier game is defeating the point of writing it up.

 

 

This kind of not even considering AP limits is a clasical sign that it is design for Heroic games (where attacks are not balanced by AP, but wich weapons are availible where and the Weapon Familiarity).

At the same the the clearly heroic weapons (they got real weapon and AP up to 400) M72A3 LAW Rocket, Wire Guided Missile and 57mm M18 Recoilless Rifle from 6E2 208 should be able to penetrate the armor (AP 1-2, 6D6-8D6 RKA) and kill the vehicle or at least the crew.

 

So yes, I feel 90% certain that the writeup on 6E2 196 is for a Heroic games. And is incredibly unlikely to perform (not too) well in Superheroic games.

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Part of the problem is with how killing attacks scale up and how weapons are built.  You want the tank to be able to bounce weapons that it will in real life, so you don't want a 12 gauge shotgun slug to ever, ever, have a chance of punching through that armor (2 1/2d6 RKA; maximum effect 15 body) for example.  A wire-guided missile is written up at 8d6, that's 16 body normal.  So the armor gets pretty high, making it more or less hero-proof as well.

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I think things would scale a lot better if you put some sort of limitation on real world weapons.  Perhaps if they had Reduced Penetration against armored targets that would help.  So a steel wall with 8 Def would be completely impenetrable to a 12 gauge.  A .50 cal machine gun (3D6 or maybe 3D6+1) might theoretically scratch it, but probably not.  But you pull out a rocket propelled grenade (4D6, without the limitation) and you can blast through it no problem.

 

I'd say if the average Body damage for a real world weapon will not penetrate an inanimate target, then it does no damage.  Then you could rescale the higher end stuff to bring it in line.  Then you could have a tank with 15 Def no problem.

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What hasn't been mentioned yet is the fact that lifting capacity doubles every 5 points of STR, but damage only goes up by an average of 1 BODY. This is a very deliberate "nerfing" built right into the damage architecture of the game. The original designers of Champions were very aware that high STR characters would not be doing nearly the amount of damage that you'd get from the forces capable of the associated lifting capabilities. This disconnect from reality was deemed an acceptible game design conceit in the name of making superheroic gameplay more manageable and balanced. The thinking was that if you really wanted Grond to be able to punch holes in battleships, then give him a high DC killing attack (with multiple levels of armor piercing) and the understanding that it will only get used against objects, not characters.

 

The emergence of heroic level gaming had little to do with exposing this apparent flaw, since this flaw long predates the use of the Hero System for non-supers. However, a number of "solutions" have been offered in the wake of heroic level gaming gaining momentum within the Hero community. To my mind, the issue isn't one of power level, but of a fundamental design choice that potentially affects all campaigns regardless of genre. However, some campaigns don't run into this problem very often, if at all, and so it is only natural that solutions tend to be specific to those genres/power levels that need them most, leading perhaps to the perception that the problem actually lies within those genres and power levels, when in fact the problem is completely systemic.

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I don't believe the initial thinking was that Grond would need a high DC killing attack to punch through a battleship.  I think that initially defenses were intended to be lower.  +1 Body doubles the size of the hole punched in an object.  The purpose was to allow guys like Grond and guys like Seeker to exist in the same game without Seeker going splut.  Humans were deliberately made more durable than they are in the real world so that they could survive things like that.

 

The problem is that the system was designed with the idea that +1 DC equals x2 power.  And yet as time went by, different people worked on the game and designed weapons with a more linear view of damage.  This really became obvious in Hero Almanac 2 and the 4th edition Dark Champions books.  You can't really reconcile those two different design philosophies.  Most of the time it doesn't come up in game play -- heroic characters aren't going to be fighting tanks without grabbing an anti-tank weapon, and at that point it doesn't matter what the damage / defense level is.  And arguably it's a good thing for heroic/street level games or for players who love their guns and want to see an in game difference between a .45 and a 9mm.  It's probably not very exciting for a cheapo Saturday Night Special to be a 1 1/2D6 RKA and a .44 Magnum to be a 2D6.

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Yes.  If you want them to be.  It's a flexible system.  Perhaps the problem is that your 100 STR brick is built incorrectly.  Perhaps, it would be better to build it as a 70 STR brick with Armor Piercing, or a 50 STR brick with penetrating and Armor Piercing.

 

For my two bits, I use the sample firearms and other weapons as benchmarks to make my NPC characters.  It is then a relatively easy matter to figure out, "How much rPD is bullet proof?"  "How much DCV is required to be nigh unhittable?"  "Is my character sufficiently tough to walk through a bad neighborhood in Chicago with hundred dollar bills duck taped to him without dying?"

 

We often talk about Damage caps, AP caps, etc. etc.  The fact is that it's all pretty arbitrary and the important thing is to set a standard from which one can extrapolate even if that standard is fails to comport with all the "suggestions" of physics.

 

In your case, it seems that it is important for the brick character to be able to seriously damage or outright incapacitate a tank in one blow.  Throwing another 10 or 20 DC of STR is only one of a great many ways to accomplish that result.  As a GM, I would ask "How often do you punch tanks?  Is it a special effort only possible because of adrenalin or extreme circumstances?  Is it something you do all the time like the Incredible Hulk?  Is it particularly draining on the character?"

 

Some formulations of the Incredible Hulk, for example, give him an absorption feedback loop, where he increases in size and strength as he is hit with attacks.  Perhaps even the Hulk can't punch main battle tanks from a standing start and needs to "get a bit of a mad on" before doing so?

 

Personally, I find it a lot easier to make NPCs and environmental objects "simple builds" and invest hard core thinking stuff into characters.  Being able to punch tanks is a perfectly valid "schtick" but it needs more development.

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There are a couple of factors which I suspect have contributed to stat inflation for real-world weapons and vehicles. One was a desire (notably by Steve Long, gaming gun-bunny extraordinaire ;) ) to make weapons that are instantly lethal for normal humans in real life, work that way in the game. Trouble is, HERO characters are notoriously difficult to one-shot. Even characters who are brought to negative Body don't die immediately; they bleed out. An attack has to do double their Body total to kill them instantly.

 

Another factor is the Haymaker combat maneuver. Before Fifth Edition a Haymaker would do 150% of its base damage, however large that base might be; not the mere +4 Damage Classes it does under 5E and 6E. So for example, Grond's Strength of 90 (up until Fourth Edition) would do 27D6 before Pushing. I think a lot of baseline stats for objects and materials in HERO were originally set with that reality in mind.

 

But the 5E/6E Abrams tank stats raised a lot of controversy among the online community when they were first published. There were certainly plenty of folks who thought supers who could juggle tanks should also be able to smash them. But there were also many, as I call them, Abrams Advocates who claimed the tanks really were that tough. (Chobham armor, etc.)

 

Then there are the supers gamers who prefer more "realistic" supers, without the power extremes of a Thor or Superman. They don't see a problem because that isn't their style of play. But a universal system really should be able to emulate all the established permutations of the genre.

 

But as mentioned in the OP, HERO has optional rules to readily adjust the environment to suit, so it isn't problematic unless one's personal preferences make it so.

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I'd say if the average Body damage for a real world weapon will not penetrate an inanimate target, then it does no damage.

 

 

This is probably the best approach.  A hack I use in fantasy games is that if an attack is not designed to cut through a substance, it does half damage.  So if you try to cut your way through a castle wall using an axe, its not going to work very well.  But a hammer or a pick will do full damage. 

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The purpose was to allow guys like Grond and guys like Seeker to exist in the same game without Seeker going splut.  Superheroes were deliberately made more durable than they are in the real world so that they could survive things like that.

There, I fixed it for you. But you are exactly right. The damage scale was designed to allow different kinds of superheroes to fight against each other regardless of the "real world" forces involved. The problem comes when inanimate objects are defined with real-world performance in mind rather than four-color-superheroic performance in mind. In the early days of Champions, the thinking was that damage against inanimate objects could be embellished a bit for dramatic effect since they were, after all, just inanimate objects and not characters. And if embellishment wasn't your cup of tea, then just give Grond a massive KA "Only against Inanimte Objects"...

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First of all, I appreciate everyone taking the time to reply.  I'm looking through the Hero System Equipment Guide, pg. 89 to be specific, high end weapons (those doing 3 1/2d6 K and up) do seem to scale up really fast and I would imagine tank armor and what not probably scales to accommodate that.  Maybe the simplest thing is to compress those higher numbers somewhat.  That seems to be a rather simple solution for me anyway and one that I can live with.

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The problem with building a game out of superheroes is this: if Superman and his comparable enemies can rip apart tanks, why isn't Batman dead? Buildings errupting, tanks go flying. One piece of shrapnel from that to the chin and Batman's head comes off. Now in the comics, that's not a problem because in the interest of storytelling, Batman never gets hit by that shrapnel. In a game, however, that kind of author discretion is difficult to maintain without it seeming like GM handholding. Therefore, there will always be some form of disharmony between superhero survivability/effect, normals' survivability, and physical objects that exist in the world with both of them. You can choose to put the discontinuity somewhere else if you like, but you can't eliminate it.

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First of all, I appreciate everyone taking the time to reply.  I'm looking through the Hero System Equipment Guide, pg. 89 to be specific, high end weapons (those doing 3 1/2d6 K and up) do seem to scale up really fast and I would imagine tank armor and what not probably scales to accommodate that.  Maybe the simplest thing is to compress those higher numbers somewhat.  That seems to be a rather simple solution for me anyway and one that I can live with.

 

That would work. The discontinuity is that Joe normal with a high body, and maybe some light armor can get hit with an anti-tank weapon and bleed out instead of being killed instantly. If that's where you want to put the incongruity, I'd say it works pretty well for a supers game.

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In our games it hasn't been important enough to completely rewrite a bunch of equipment lists.  I don't think any of my characters have ever been shot at by a tank, or punched a tank, or anything like that.  I've played some very high powered characters, but I don't think we've ever done an "our team vs the military" battle.  

 

We have a few house rules for keeping damage escalation in check, however.

--Bystanders die at zero Body

--Most inanimate objects take 1.5x damage from super attacks

--If you have enough resistant defense so a 'real world' weapon can't do Body to you, then it doesn't do any Stun either

--We just ignore the writeups for the really high powered military equipment

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CC 113 - Real Armor and Real Weapon. No, they don't provide all of the specifics values that some of you post, but it' an RAW option to put those in. (Ex: maybe I say that Real Armor only applies half of the relevant defense against weapons/powers that don't have the Real Weapon limitation.)

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CC 113 - Real Armor and Real Weapon. No, they don't provide all of the specifics values that some of you post, but it' an RAW option to put those in. (Ex: maybe I say that Real Armor only applies half of the relevant defense against weapons/powers that don't have the Real Weapon limitation.)

I've been using that house rule since 4e and it works well. I call it "Tanks vs Supers" (aka "Tanks vs Kaiju", "Tanks vs Alien Death Rays" or "Tanks vs Mecha"). The corolary is that weapons with the Real Weapon limitation count as Reduced Penetration vs defenses that don't have Real Armor.

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I've been using that house rule since 4e and it works well. I call it "Tanks vs Supers" (aka "Tanks vs Kaiju", "Tanks vs Alien Death Rays" or "Tanks vs Mecha"). The corolary is that weapons with the Real Weapon limitation count as Reduced Penetration vs defenses that don't have Real Armor.

 

Ditto, I've used this almost verbatim in my Supers games.

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Part of the problem is with how killing attacks scale up and how weapons are built.  You want the tank to be able to bounce weapons that it will in real life, so you don't want a 12 gauge shotgun slug to ever, ever, have a chance of punching through that armor (2 1/2d6 RKA; maximum effect 15 body) for example.  A wire-guided missile is written up at 8d6, that's 16 body normal.  So the armor gets pretty high, making it more or less hero-proof as well.

I think your math is off. This weapon is designed to kill a modern tank even frontal:

8D6 RKA, AP(x2), AoE (Explosion)

Average BODY before defenses is 28. And that is before you consider stuff like CSL or making the Aimed variant of the Haymaker.

 

Even if the tank has Anti-AP (x1) Advantage, the front armor would only count for 15 points. Side for 10. 13-18 Body go through.

Since this is also an AoE that "overcame the obstacle" of armor, it does full 28 Body to all the people and all the gear inside. Wich is not nearly as tough without the armor protecting it.

At least I think that were the rules.

 

That would work. The discontinuity is that Joe normal with a high body, and maybe some light armor can get hit with an anti-tank weapon and bleed out instead of being killed instantly. If that's where you want to put the incongruity, I'd say it works pretty well for a supers game.

Does the difference actually mater?

People have died from flesh-wounds and the resulting infection, because they could not get proper care in time. Because there WAS no proper care in that age of mankind or in the area they were. And even if you survive that attack, you are knocked out cold. Propably for longer then bleeding out needs...

 

Emergency servics in Australias sparsly populated areas uses Aircraft and have the other side drive towards them, because otherwise you could not render help in a time that would help.

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This is heavily related to the argument if Heroes Damage/Defense system is linear or exponential in nature.

 

It was quite obviously designed with a +1DDC = x2 element in mind, yet this has not always been observed by the games writers as mentioned earlier.

 

When between the 4th edition (which held very closely to the x2 model) and the 5th edition, weapon design got off track and began to ignore the basic rules and thus things got a little wacky.

 

When you design weapons and armor with the exponential guidelines in mind, things stay in the reasonable zone, but they begin to appear weak to those who mainly stick with supers games and who dont routinely consider the exponential guidelines within their writeups.

 

Abrams armor is perfectly fine at 20/16 when you keep weapons to the x2 damage model. With this model its main gun, the M256 Rheinmetal, does around 6D6+1k damage or so, with some of the rounds it can fire being double AP. In The Ultimate Vehicle from the 5th edition, the damage of that gun was raised to 8d6k damage, 32 times more damage than it should have! So in order to sur ive being shot by its own cannon, the armor had to be raised to match, which threw everything off.

 

Those of us who did the research in the effort to simulate military grade weapons for our games came up with damage models that very closely matched the damages in pre 5th versions of the game, but those damagea began to vary wildly with vary wildly with the release of Dark Champions and late, The Ultimate Vehicle.

 

My suggestion is that if you have the time and inclination, play with a few different damage models in your game and settle on one that is the most playable for your group. and from then on, consider this damage model in your character, weapon and vehicle writeups and when deternining dammage, armor and active point limits for your campaigns.

 

When you bother to do this, you will find everything falling into place and making more mechanical sense than simply pulling things out of the books and using them as is.

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