Are tanks really that tough?

[NuSoardGraphite]

Well, if you go by the front armor being defense 20 with double hardened armor, the 6d6+1k 120mm cannon does an average of 21.5 body, meaning only 1 or 2 body damage will penetrate per hit, on average. adding only +2 more defense makes the average shot bounce with no damage getting through.

[massey]

There are real world examples of an Abrams  surviving its own cannon fire because of that incredible armor, so its a bit tough to build in terms of damage and armoring.  They are very, very tough, so I could buy them being difficult for even a big time strong guy to hurt.

 

They are designed to resist anti-tank weapons.  But... let's say you could attach a cable to one of the armored plates on the front of the tank.  Do you think the Abrams could be suspended in the air from that cable, supported only by whatever is holding that plate on?  It weighs 70 tons.  A 60 Str brick can lift 100 tons.  I think if he stood in front of the tank and started yanking on things he could probably tear it to pieces.

[Christopher R Taylor]

A 60 Str brick can lift 100 tons.  I think if he stood in front of the tank and started yanking on things he could probably tear it to pieces.

 

 

That is true, an Abrams has to have at least hardened defenses.  And this brings up an aspect that's really hard to simulate in games, how things can be really tough but be damaged anyway, in various ways.  In Hero you can do it by making some parts of a tank foci, so they are separate from its heavy armor.  And certainly while an Abrams can shrug off just about any weapon, if you dropped it 20 feet, it would be destroyed.

[Ndreare]

I normally use the penetrating advantage to represent such high levels of supernatural strength. I also don't allow the arms race so only one level of hardened and only one level of impenetrable can be selected. this generally allows for the superheroes who can resist everything at the same time it allows for the super heroes with super strength you can always do some damage. I know it doesn't address the primary topic but it does address the way it feels and play to match expectations.

[NuSoardGraphite]

I normally use the penetrating advantage to represent such high levels of supernatural strength. I also don't allow the arms race so only one level of hardened and only one level of impenetrable can be selected. this generally allows for the superheroes who can resist everything at the same time it allows for the super heroes with super strength you can always do some damage. I know it doesn't address the primary topic but it does address the way it feels and play to match expectations.

Which works perfectly for being able to dismantle tanks and other military grade vehicles.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Another way to do it is buy a brick trick of "transform item to dismantled and broken down item" with some time involved.  That way the brick is able to tear just about anything apart, given time.

[zslane]

I kind of feel that there's a sweet spot in the Hero damage model where DCs and real-world forces intersect, and beyond a certain point, the disconnect between lifting capability and the corresponding damage output becomes untenable. Pre-Crisis Superman has a STR of at least 125. The astronomical lifting capacity of that STR (nearly one million tons) yields a "modest" 25 DCs of damage output. Most starting heroes can easily buy enough PD to shrug off the average BODY damage of a 25D6 attack. Yet nobody would be surprised to read a comic book and see pre-Crisis Superman use his million-ton STR (or his heat vision) to tear open, say, one of Braniac's starships.

 

The truth is that when the target is a character, the Hero System does not by default want to see realistic levels of carnage, and if that makes damaging inanimate objects harder, so be it. You'll have to hack the system a bit to deal with this, but I think that's okay. I find this far more workable than, say, the GURPS approach in which the core of the system is grounded in realism and superheroic levels of STR, damage, defense, and skill breaks everything.

[WistfulD]

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.

 

The answer to that is, of course, does it matter to you?

[WistfulD]

Another way to do it is buy a brick trick of "transform item to dismantled and broken down item" with some time involved.  That way the brick is able to tear just about anything apart, given time.

 

Or dispel (rPD).

[zslane]

Armor piercing STR works too, no?

[Christopher]

That is true, an Abrams has to have at least hardened defenses.  And this brings up an aspect that's really hard to simulate in games, how things can be really tough but be damaged anyway, in various ways.  In Hero you can do it by making some parts of a tank foci, so they are separate from its heavy armor.  And certainly while an Abrams can shrug off just about any weapon, if you dropped it 20 feet, it would be destroyed.

20 feet is only 6 meters.

British Mark I Tanks survived that. They knocked out most of the crew doing it, but they did survive that.

When driving fast through rough terrain the chasis must be able to withstand much higher forces then a mere 20 feet drop.

 

Dangling it on an armor plate? Of course not!

The armor is designed to survive impacts, not pulling. Because under no normal battlefield condition is getting the armor plates pulled off a serious issue (getting them shoot through is much more of an issue).

However this goes down to it beng a real vehicle with real vehicle weakpoints. Because superheroes can apply unrealistic amounts of force or energy at unrealistic places.

 

I kind of feel that there's a sweet spot in the Hero damage model where DCs and real-world forces intersect, and beyond a certain point, the disconnect between lifting capability and the corresponding damage output becomes untenable. Pre-Crisis Superman has a STR of at least 125. The astronomical lifting capacity of that STR (nearly one million tons) yields a "modest" 25 DCs of damage output. Most starting heroes can easily buy enough PD to shrug off the average BODY damage of a 25D6 attack. Yet nobody would be surprised to read a comic book and see pre-Crisis Superman use his million-ton STR (or his heat vision) to tear open, say, one of Braniac's starships.

I am pretty sure normal damage is desigend to not cause BODY on an average roll vs equal target.

If two default humans (10 STR, 3 PD) were to engage in a fistfight, next to no body damage could be transmited. It needs a 1:36 roll to even get one BODY through. Maneuvers excluded.

So this only shows us that Normal Damage is doing what it is supposed to do. Not that Hero characters are unusually tough.

 

If your goal is to make body damage, anythng other then R/HKA is not even a starting point.

If so allowing bricks to automatically do Killing damag vs inanimate, non-super proofed objects is a simple fix. As well as all the other solutions. And not jsut using the Herioc Equipment in a superheroic game.

[Christopher R Taylor]

20 feet is only 6 meters.

British Mark I Tanks survived that. They knocked out most of the crew doing it, but they did survive that.

When driving fast through rough terrain the chasis must be able to withstand much higher forces then a mere 20 feet drop.

 

 

Yeah but the Mark I tanks were 28 tons.  The Abrams is 68 tons, and that's a whole different ballgame.  At the very least its going to be undrivable.  I don't have the skills to calculate that kind of energy, but its gigantic.

[zslane]

I am pretty sure normal damage is desigend to not cause BODY on an average roll vs equal target... If your goal is to make body damage, anythng other then R/HKA is not even a starting point.

If so allowing bricks to automatically do Killing damag vs inanimate, non-super proofed objects is a simple fix. As well as all the other solutions. And not jsut using the Herioc Equipment in a superheroic game.

I don't think this issue is restricted to normal damage. We can apply this analysis to DCs of any kind, really. 25DCs is 8.5 Killing dice, which still yields an average of 25 BODY. Tanks, battleships, starships, and superheroes with Armor (or FF) all have defenses that provide rPD which is equally effective against killing damage as it is against normal damage. It doesn't matter whether Superman's 125 STR is rolling 25 normal damage dice or 8.5 killing damage dice. On average he's going to do 25 BODY, and against the kind of rPD we're talking about, it just isn't going to cause the sort of destruction that a megaton of concentrated force ought to be capable of. And the main reason for this is that the system wants to make characters more survivable in combat against the likes of Superman, even if that makes inanimate objects implausibly strong as a result.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Well, a large part of this is that when you get into the 30+ range of stats, you've moved into superhero territory.  And let's be honest, comics don't make sense.  Superman would accidentally murder people by sneezing with his level of strength.  Comic books routinely depict stuff that works one way against one target, and another way against another.  So the fact that 100 STR will not turn the average martial artist into a fine pink mist the way it ought to is a feature, not a bug.  The only problem is the other side of the equasion: it should rip through armor like nothing.  So any one of the tweaks mentioned here would probably work fine to fix that little glitch - even the "I don't bother with inanimate objects, they just behave they way I figure the should" approach.

[zslane]

Definitely. The "Paper Scenery" approach has its merits so long as everyone is on board with a comic-booky campaign. But even in a supers campaign, there's always the Realism Fetishist who can't resist pointing out how "wrong" the comic book physics are and how wrong the Hero System damage model is. If the whole group is like that, well, something more than a simple hack or two may be in order...

[megaplayboy]

Just to inject some real physics into the equation. Lifting capacity, AIUI, roughly corresponds with the amount of weight the character can lift off the ground and stagger with for a few steps before dropping. So let's posit that it means that the full-body-strength of the character equals lift capacity in kilos, times standard gravity, times about 1 meter of height. So a normal 10 STR equates to about 100kg x 9.8 m/s^2 x 1m= 980 joules of potential energy. A punch or strike is effectively a conversion of a portion of this full-body-strength-energy to kinetic energy. A haymaker is supposed to represent an "all-out" attack with the character putting everything they have behind it. A 60 STR character could therefore put about 100 kilojoules of kinetic energy into one haymaker, so 100kJ ~ 16d6 damage. A 110 STR character could put 100 megajoules of KE into a single haymaker.

 

Now, how does this compare to actual KE anti-tank rounds? Well, most of them have KE in the ballpark of 5-12 megajoules. However, the long rod kinetic penetrator only has a diameter of 2 to 3 cm, while an average fist is about 3x wider and will distribute the kinetic energy across an area maybe 10x larger. Even so, that 110 STR character should be striking the tank with an impact comparable to a very good modern sabot round. A 160 STR character should be capable of generating a haymaker of 100 gigajoules, or enough to punch an Abrams into instant metal-and-ceramic confetti.

 

The other absurdity in the official vehicle write-ups is that an Iowa class BB has a DEF of 10! Portions of the armor on that ship are around 18 inches thick.

[massey]

Probably close enough for government work, but there are problems with that type of logic.

 

First, I think your math is a little off.  You've got a 10 Str character being able to exert 980 joules of energy.  I'm going to trust you on that part.  I'm going to also round up to 1 kilojoule.  A 60 Str character is approximately 1000 times as strong as a 10 Str character.  So he should be able to put out about 1000 kilojoules, not 100.  That changes things by about 3 DCs.

 

Anyway, going on from that, you're presuming a couple things about how damage is dealt and how it interacts with targets.  

 

1)  Modern weapons don't always transfer all of their energy into a target properly.  Bullets waste energy by going through people.  So they might have XYZ muzzle velocity, their propellant might create so many joules, but that doesn't mean they can effectively deliver all of that energy.  Sabots deform or shatter, depending on the material.  So they might have 5-12 megajoules of energy, but they waste some of that (potentially a lot of that) because they aren't strong enough to survive delivery.  The Abrams penetrator is supposed to fracture lengthwise instead of bending, but that still indicates a material that isn't strong enough.  It's similar to the idea that you can use an object as a club, and it can do total damage equal to Def + Body.  A sabot is specially made, yeah yeah, but it's still carrying more energy than it can effectively deliver.  A brick's fist is normally pretty invulnerable, and doesn't have that problem.

 

2)  Military weapons generally travel along a straight line.  I know there are anti-tank missiles that go over tanks and explode down, and they are actually extremely effective.  But we're basically talking about tank shells, and those go straight.  They hit armor straight.  Armor is generally sloped to protect the vehicle.  A brick doesn't have to worry about that.  He can run up and punch the tank at a weird angle.  Even without doing it purposefully, he's unlikely to hit the tank at the same angle that a tank round would.  The tank isn't a solid block of Def 30 material.  It has carefully shaped plates designed to resist force from a very specific type of attack.  If the brick runs up, grabs it by the barrel, and jerks on it, he is exerting a lot of force against a generally unarmored portion of the vehicle -- where the turret and the main body connect.

[zslane]

If the Ultimate Hulk can tear Stark's Hulkbuster armor apart piece by piece to get to Tony, then he can tear an Abrams apart piece by piece to get at the soft chewy center. The problem there is that a GM is going to have to figure out how to adjudicate "tearing apart" vs. "punching through", and one could reasonably argue that the Abrams shouldn't get all of its PD/DEF against a "tearing" attack, but the rules don't exactly have a lot to say on the matter.

 

But I think this is why we have abstractions in our games. Trying to tunnel down into the myriad complexities of "real" materials and "real" object construction makes the game a whole lotta not fun. So we need a simple, but equally satisfying way of allowing the Hulk to tear apart an Abrams without also allowing him to tear apart Capt. America.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Just flipping over a tank would pretty well disable it.  And at about 70 tons, you can flip an Abrams at 57 strength or so without pushing.  If a GM is being reasonable, probably could do it at 45-50, since you aren't trying to deadlift the whole thing.

 

But yeah, I liked the scene in the Hulk when he ripped the turret off one and beat the other with it.

[zslane]

Disable? An enraged Hulk would not want to merely disable a tank. He would want to tear it to little pieces. As would psychotic supervillains and wartime enemies (conventional military tactics would disable a tank merely as a forerunner to setting it up for a kill shot). I am unconvinced that nudging players towards "flipping the tank over" as a means of avoiding this issue would meet with their approval.

[megaplayboy]

Probably close enough for government work, but there are problems with that type of logic.

 

First, I think your math is a little off.  You've got a 10 Str character being able to exert 980 joules of energy.  I'm going to trust you on that part.  I'm going to also round up to 1 kilojoule.  A 60 Str character is approximately 1000 times as strong as a 10 Str character.  So he should be able to put out about 1000 kilojoules, not 100.  That changes things by about 3 DCs.

 

Anyway, going on from that, you're presuming a couple things about how damage is dealt and how it interacts with targets.  

 

1)  Modern weapons don't always transfer all of their energy into a target properly.  Bullets waste energy by going through people.  So they might have XYZ muzzle velocity, their propellant might create so many joules, but that doesn't mean they can effectively deliver all of that energy.  Sabots deform or shatter, depending on the material.  So they might have 5-12 megajoules of energy, but they waste some of that (potentially a lot of that) because they aren't strong enough to survive delivery.  The Abrams penetrator is supposed to fracture lengthwise instead of bending, but that still indicates a material that isn't strong enough.  It's similar to the idea that you can use an object as a club, and it can do total damage equal to Def + Body.  A sabot is specially made, yeah yeah, but it's still carrying more energy than it can effectively deliver.  A brick's fist is normally pretty invulnerable, and doesn't have that problem.

 

2)  Military weapons generally travel along a straight line.  I know there are anti-tank missiles that go over tanks and explode down, and they are actually extremely effective.  But we're basically talking about tank shells, and those go straight.  They hit armor straight.  Armor is generally sloped to protect the vehicle.  A brick doesn't have to worry about that.  He can run up and punch the tank at a weird angle.  Even without doing it purposefully, he's unlikely to hit the tank at the same angle that a tank round would.  The tank isn't a solid block of Def 30 material.  It has carefully shaped plates designed to resist force from a very specific type of attack.  If the brick runs up, grabs it by the barrel, and jerks on it, he is exerting a lot of force against a generally unarmored portion of the vehicle -- where the turret and the main body connect.

D'oh! That's what I get for posting while exhausted.

Another way to think about the baseline kinetic energy generated by an "ordinary" human. A 100kg human traveling at 4m/sec(running around 9mph) has a kinetic energy of about 800 joules.

Leg strength is about 3x greater than arm strength. So, think of that full-body-strength divvied up 8 ways, with each arm holding about 12.5%, and each leg about 37.5%. Now imagine that an untrained human throwing a punch has some natural inefficiency in energy transfer/form and can only put about half of that strength into a punch. So that kilojoule ultimately becomes about 64joules. In the event of a human martial artist trained to maximize the power and efficiency of their strikes, they can run that percentage up all the way and transfer up to 16x as much energy(+4d6).

 

If you want to get hyper-realistic(which would be ironic considering we are talking about superbeings punching tanks), there might be mechanical advantage complications, due to tank armor potentially being as thick as the hero's forearm is long.

[Christopher R Taylor]

From what I can dig up online, they are saying a karate punch runs around 100-450 joules, probably only getting that top end with someone like Jet Li or Bruce Lee.  That 450 is close to half a 9mm bullet's energy, although spread out over a larger area.

[Doc Democracy]

Are we really talking here about a limitation of real world defence? Definition being that they are strong and tough when exposed to the usual forces applied to them but have little or no defensive value against unusual forces?

[Christopher]

I don't think this issue is restricted to normal damage. We can apply this analysis to DCs of any kind, really. 25DCs is 8.5 Killing dice, which still yields an average of 25 BODY. Tanks, battleships, starships, and superheroes with Armor (or FF) all have defenses that provide rPD which is equally effective against killing damage as it is against normal damage.

But the perecentage of total defenses that can be made Resistant is limited. Based on setting. Heroic settings are around 50%. Superheroic ones go up to 80% of total defenses.

A large part of the viability of Killing Damage is based on there being less defenses.

 

If the Ultimate Hulk can tear Stark's Hulkbuster armor apart piece by piece to get to Tony, then he can tear an Abrams apart piece by piece to get at the soft chewy center. The problem there is that a GM is going to have to figure out how to adjudicate "tearing apart" vs. "punching through", and one could reasonably argue that the Abrams shouldn't get all of its PD/DEF against a "tearing" attack, but the rules don't exactly have a lot to say on the matter.

Or we just assume that all the Example Vehicles and Example Weapons are written up for a Heroic game, rather then a superheroic one.*

And just take the durability values from breaking stuff, with the Toolkitting applied to it. Or make proper, power Level capped writeups.

 

The best way to work around a problem, is to just stop running into it.

Write the Abrahams for your game up as a Mook of the 175, 225  275 point brackets. With all the proper caps for Defenses and attacks a Mook of that powerlevel has.

 

 

*I still don't get why there is so much resistance to that whole idea. It's like me saying "the sun rises in the east" and everyon answering "we agree it does not rise in the north, south or west. But don't dare to say it rises in the east!" or "but what about the north and south pole?"

[Lucius]

*I still don't get why there is so much resistance to that whole idea.

Then you haven't been paying attention. You might want to go back and re-read the thread.

 

edit: My apology, I'm conflating this thread with others in which the question has been addressed.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

or ask the palindromedary to explain it.