Are tanks really that tough?

[Hugh Neilson]

Yes, they can. Just write up a collareral damage power that does NND damage to unliving objects. Done. Not difficult. And perfectly in genre.

I don't believe there should be a need to trick out an attack power to get a result that is commonplace in the comics. Tricked out bizarre power structures should be reserved for uncommon and unusual effects, not commonplace occurrences. A typical Super should be able to deal with military hardware in game, just as the typical Super in the comics can deal with military hardware in genre.

[Christopher R Taylor]

But are heroes destroying heavy armored military equipment commonplace, or do certain specific heroes do it regularly?  If its the latter, that sounds like maybe a special power they possess.

[bigbywolfe]

It's fairly common place among all high strength "Brick" characters. 

[Hugh Neilson]

I would say it's pretty common among Supers whose schtick includes significant raw power that military hardware poses a limited, or no, threat to them. Let's consider some possibilities:

 

Justice League has a wide mix of characters. From the silver/bronze and satellite ages of the JLA (to limit the numbers):

 

Batman, Aquaman, Hawkman, Hawkwoman the Elongated Man and the Atom will have to use ingenuity and creatively apply their powers/equipment to deal with a tank. They'll still win somehow, probably by accessing the humans within the tank. They will avoid being hit by the military grade weaponry. That's six characters against whom the straight up defenses of the tank should be very effective.

 

Flash, Green Arrow, Black Canary and Zatanna are more middle tier. They will avoid being hit by the weaponry. Their offensive powers (explosive or acid arrows; Canary Cry) will likely tear into the tank very effectively. That's four who are challenged in straight up combat. [in classic silver age JLA, Bats and GA will show up in airplanes vastly superior to the tanks anyway.]

 

Firestorm Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Superman and Martian Manhunter will shrug off anything the military can throw at them, and tear through a dozen tanks without any concerns. That's six for whom tearing through tanks seems pretty commonplace.

 

Avengers - we'll similarly limit the membership (I'm arbitrarily cutting it off at issue #200, which sort of matches the JLA satellite era).

 

Who struggles, needs to be creative and probably has to access the soft targets inside? Probably Wasp, Quicksilver, Black Panther, Black Widow, Black Knight, Swordsman, Mantis, Falcon, Beast and Hellcat.

 

The middle tier is a bit more debateable, and has a wider variety, here. I'd say Giant-Man (depending on the incarnation of Dr. Pym, he could be a struggler or a tank crusher instead; the Clint Barton Goliath probably fits the same mold), Captain America (unlike most of this tier, the shield gives him the defense, but he has to be creative in offense), Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Moondragon (no defense, but she probably mind controls the tank's crew).

 

Thor, Hulk, Iron Man, Hercules, Vision, Wonder Man and probably Ms. Marvel tear through tanks. Note that the Hulk doesn't just easily defeat one tank dozens of time in his own book, but dozens of tanks, planes, helicopters, etc. without ever seeming threatened. Thor, Iron Man, Hercules and Wonder Man are on a similar power level.

 

Fantastic Four Reed has to use his powers to access the inside of the tank, but is probably immune to their attacks. Sue can crush tanks with her force field, and it's an easy match for military hardware. Ben crushes tanks and Johnny melts them.

 

X-Men Again limiting membership to '70s/early '80s, I see:

 

Many characters will struggle as the X-Men, especially the early ones, weren't powerhouse characters. That probably includes Beast, Iceman (although he's probably a step up in some versions), Angel (Archangel is one if not two steps up), Marvel Girl, Nightcrawler, and Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat.

 

A lot of them have the raw offense to tear through tanks (especially in later incarnations) but have to rely on not getting hit by military hardware. This group includes Cyclops, Mimic, Havok, Storm, Banshee and Sunfire. Thunderbird could probably take on a tank, but it would be a tough battle. Lorna Dane/Polaris possesses offense and defense (I waffle between here and the earlier category, and both would fit depending on the timing), but the timeframe we're looking at probably puts her here.

 

Colossus, Wolverine (maybe should be a tier down, but he rarely gets hit, heals rapidly and carves up military hardware), Phoenix (a very different character from Marvel Girl) and Rogue (with Ms. Marvel powers) walk all over the tanks.

 

Let's also remember that this team routinely fights Sentinels, who are touted as being far beyond the power of conventional military hardware, and even characters like Beast and Iceman can hold their own against Sentinels.

 

(Teen) TitansOne more for DC, but we'll ignore the '60s/70's version as a combination of "Junior JLA" and obscure characters. But the '80's team:

 

Robin/Nightwing, Beast Boy (could be a tier up) and Jericho have to find the soft insides.

 

Cyborg, Raven and Starfire all have to rely on not getting hit, while Kid Flash is much like Flash.

 

Wonder Girl and Terra have both offense and defense.

 

OverallThis listing highlights a key difference between comics and the game in that the characters in the comics rely a lot more on not getting hit than on bouncing tank shells off their chests/armor/force fields, and I am ignoring the "combat luck" conceits that could move them into the "immune to military hardware" camp. However, I'd say the majority of these characters possess the offense to destroy tanks in one or two shots. But not in Hero.

 

Yes, we could build customized "only work against inanimate objects" attacks, but then why not pump all the characters' defenses into the hundreds and give them extra DC's that "only work against Supers"? When they miss a villain and hit an object in the background, their "not usable only against inanimate objects" attacks seem pretty devastating to me.

 

And those Sci Fi characters seem able to destroy tanks with their futuristic weapons, but the Sci Fi weapons in the Hero rulebook aren't going to carve through a tank. Ditto magical spells. We can build a 250 STR Godzilla, but it seems to me Supers teams have been able to fight such creatures, so again if we build to spec against the military hardware write-ups, we lose the expected interaction with everyone else.

 

Two of the biggest challenges getting Supers in game to measure up to Supers in comics have been making them resistant/immune to guns, and higher end military hardware, and their inability to damage a tank and similar military hardware. I can't recall anything similar generating nearly the questions and discussion over the years. A Super who's resistant to military hardware has defenses far too high to be challenged by campaign-norm Supers, and one with attacks that can reliably damage, much less destroy, a tank vaporizes campaign-normal Supers. Yet these levels of power are commonplace in the source material. So, to me, the problem stands out as the stats of military weapons and vehicles.

[Hugh Neilson]

ADDENDUM: How would even the ridiculously overpowered Dr. Destroyer hold up against a military assault involving tanks and missiles, as statted under the Hero system? So why, then, did he need to be challenged and defeated by Supers instead of the military?

[Christopher R Taylor]

I think its reasonable to assume that these characters can all destroy a tank, but how often do superheroes actually fight heavy military hardware in the comics?  Is it commonplace?

[massey]

I think its reasonable to assume that these characters can all destroy a tank, but how often do superheroes actually fight heavy military hardware in the comics?  Is it commonplace?

 

That depends on which comics you read, which time period, etc.  Sometimes it is quite common, other times not so much.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah I think you're right.

 

Ultimately, I think tanks really do need to be that tough, so that ordinary weapons do them no harm unless specifically built to kill tanks.  But some device or mechanic to let heroes tear through them would be valid for most games.

[massey]

Yeah I think you're right.

 

Ultimately, I think tanks really do need to be that tough, so that ordinary weapons do them no harm unless specifically built to kill tanks.  But some device or mechanic to let heroes tear through them would be valid for most games.

 

How often do you have games where people shoot normal weapons at tanks?

 

Remember that you've now made tanks so tough that you can drop an Abrams from orbit and it will survive impact.  If it lands on the front, it will not be damaged at all.

[Hugh Neilson]

I see this somewhat differently. I think that the builds for characters (Supers, for example), ordinary weapons and tanks need to logically tie in. In the source material, I don't think Iron Man, Thor or the Hulk have the ability to inflict damage at a level similar to, or even beyond, ordinary/military weaponry. That means an 8d6 killing explosion (36! damage classes) is not appropriate for military weapons if the PC's are capped at 15 DC.

 

Taken another way, if a weapon designed to take out a tank shreds a PC, and typical PC attacks demolish a tank, then typical PC attacks should shred PC's. The last result is not consistent with the source material or the typical desire of the game, so the other two need to fall in to place.

 

If we except the PC's to be as or more powerful than conventional military forces, then the build of those conventional military tech devices(defenses and DC's) has to be consistent with that expectation. Right now, it is not consistent. The fix is to adjust those military builds so they fit within the rest of the standard builds. To me, Damage Negation is a huge boon in that regard, as it can be used to mitigate the usual random chance implications of a damage roll. If we want the tank to generally take no damage from a 4d6 KA, say, then it needs 20+ rDEF to account for high rolls. With 21 rDEF, it can only take 3 BOD from a 4d6 KA.

 

But now a typical Super with no KA can't damage it at all - 14d6 doesn't get 22+ BOD often!

 

However, if we give the tank 10 DC's of Damage Negation and 2 rDEF, that 4d6 KA becomes 1/2d6, and gets no more than 1 BOD past the tank's defenses. But that 14DC normal attack slides 2 BOD through on average. That won't tear through the tank very fast, but it's a lot better than 22 rDEF. As well, if we take away the swings in damage, maybe we can reduce the BOD of those vehicles. We can also reduce that volatility if we decide that conventional weapons do standard damage, and don't get to roll. This also helps out the Supers who should be bulletproof.

[Christopher R Taylor]

How often do you have games where people shoot normal weapons at tanks?

 

 

Not really an issue, the tank is balanced against its self, so it can't shoot through its armor with its own machine gun.

[Grailknight]

Not really an issue, the tank is balanced against its self, so it can't shoot through its armor with its own machine gun.

 

Actually, that's the major issue.  In tanks and other military materiel, we have a minor portion of gameplay that does not perform to genre. I'd rather fix the niche than make changes to the most common usage.

[Hyper-Man]

As a sidenote to the conversation at hand Abrams tanks have a hard time damaging other Abrams with their main guns.

 

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Abrams

 

M829A1 "Silver Bullet" APFSDS rounds from other M1A1 Abrams were unable to penetrate the front and side armor (even at close ranges) in friendly fire incidents as well as an incident in which an Abrams tried to destroy an abandoned Abrams stuck in the mud.[56]

 

[Ndreare]

That is the most enjoyable wiki I have read in a long time.

Excellent share,

[Greywind]

Yep. They're that tough.

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah, that's the stuff I alluded to earlier: they really are very, very, very tough.  However, they're only that tough against weapons, which suggests that weapon attacks maybe should do a different sort of damage (falling 100 feet, having the Hulk yank on a piece of armor, Cyclops' eye blast, etc).

[zslane]

I think we can safely say that MBT armor has surpassed the general expectations of comic book writers and game players alike. If both were aware of just how tough an Abrams was, they probably wouldn't expect the likes of Thor to do more than slightly dent one. Perhaps back in the gold and silver ages tanks were wimpy compared to superheroes, but clearly modern military technology has caught up. So unless we all want to scale up our heroes to match the power curve of modern tank performance, maybe GMs should nerf the tanks in their campaigns to something more akin to what you'd encounter in the 1960s.

[assault]

I admit to a certain fondness for older tanks (and aircraft) in this kind of comparison, but it's kind of a cop out.

 

Thor can trash modern tanks because he should be able to trash them, It's part of the character. Likewise the Hulk.

[assault]

While I sympathise with the argument that it's the vehicles and weapons that are "wrong", as in the easiest to fix, there is an alternative approach: taking another look at superheroic benchmarks.

 

This has the disadvantage of requiring the rewriting of lots of characters, of course, but it could work for new ones.

 

So: Batman is hit by a tank shell. What would happen in the source material, and what should happen in game, according to that?

 

Does he die? No. Why not? Because it doesn't happen. At most he cops a bit of shrapnel. He would, however, get taken out pretty big time - stunned/unconscious.

 

The same thing can happen to him when he is fighting "normals". Not mooks, particularly, but non-powered villains, and maybe some elite hench-types.

 

The same thing happens when he is fighting "real" superbeings.

 

There's a sliding scale. That sounds like Damage Reduction. The bigger the hit, the bigger the effect of Dam Red.

 

A lot of characters seem to work like that. Characters survive big attacks, but get stomped, at least temporarily. Invulnerable ones don't of course, except when they get hit with the kind of attacks their invulnerability doesn't protect them from.

 

On the defensive side, superbeings can be patched up pretty easily. It costs points though, so maybe 500 point characters might be preferable to 400 point ones. There's potentially an issue in terms of movement powers, particularly with respect to aircraft, so 500 helps there too.

 

Anyway, half the problem goes away easily enough. There is a shift in power dynamics - a lot of characters will tend to get taken out by a single attack, but they arguably should.

 

The problem is with superhumans' attacks.

[assault]

So, attacks... this is mostly a tank problem. An issue here is hardened defenses. There are canonical 5e stats for older models of tanks. Up until a certain point, they tend to lack hardened armour. That's a big clue for our would be tank busters. Up until the 60s, a hero can quite reasonably damage them with armour piercing (or penetrating) attacks. It might be necessary to add such attacks to characters that don't have them, but that's why extra points are a good idea. (Incidentally, check out the table showing the effects of Body loss on vehicles. Some of those results are pretty serious. Not one shot kills, but nasty. Any Body damage is serious).

 

Such attacks are going to be hard on Batman - but as I pointed out above, they should be. He can always buy up his Body, if there is serious risk of him dying.

 

The modern tanks are a problem, because their armour is hardened. Something more is needed for them.

[assault]

Bricks can work if they can add HKAs to their Strength. Stick the HKA in a multipower, as usual. It completely blows DC limits out of the water, of course, since characters can end up throwing 8-10 dice HKAs. Nasty.

 

Batman doesn't like it, but I've already covered that.

 

A bigger problem is that this only really works for Bricks. Blasters have to do things the hard way. More thought needed.

 

And, of course, more points. 600 point starting characters, not 400. That's more than a lot of characters really need, so some will be rather bloated. Batman would be fine. Wildcat would look - odd.

[assault]

Oh. The M1 build has Hardened armour - but not Impenetrable.

 

I'm not a fan of Penetrating and Impenetrable powers - they run against my "as simple as possible" ethos, but in this case...

[zslane]

Thor can trash modern tanks because he should be able to trash them, It's part of the character. Likewise the Hulk.

Except that when you compare the energy output of Thor (by any reasonable interpretation of the character in game terms) and the impact resistance of Abrams armor, one quickly notices that Thor can not trash modern tanks, no matter how much it may be "part of the character". The fact remains that modern military hardware has improved to a point where conventional definitions for Bricks (or any superhero archetype for that matter) are no longer adequate. And to make them adequate requires boosts to attack powers that would exceed reasonable campaign limits by a mile.

 

The alternative seems to be to nerf modern military hardware so that it is no longer so campaign-defying...

[assault]

Except that when you compare the energy output of Thor (by any reasonable interpretation of the character in game terms) and the impact resistance of Abrams armor, one quickly notices that Thor can not trash modern tanks, no matter how much it may be "part of the character". The fact remains that modern military hardware has improved to a point where conventional definitions for Bricks (or any superhero archetype for that matter) are no longer adequate. And to make them adequate requires boosts to attack powers that would exceed reasonable campaign limits by a mile.

 

The alternative seems to be to nerf modern military hardware so that it is no longer so campaign-defying...

 

I'll agree that shredding an Abrams with a single hit is impractical for a standard starting character. but doing Body to one is pretty straightforward, and the consequences of that for the tank are pretty serious. I'll copy out the relevant section from Champions Complete:

 

"VEHICLE DAMAGE TABLE

1d6 Roll Vehicle Loses

1 One 2x Noncombat Movement multiplier

2 10m of Combat Movement

3 Vehicle’s largest Power

4 10 STR

5 5 DEX

6 1 SPD

 

Each time a Vehicle takes BODY from an attack (after defenses), roll on the Vehicle Damage Table to determine the effects. When a Vehicle has lost all of its BODY, it stops functioning entirely (via simple breakdown or dramatic explosion, at the GMs option)."

 

As I pointed out above, Penetrating attacks will routinely do Body. A 3d6 Penetrating KA is a 67 AP attack - dangerous, but not all that awesome. And typically, each such hit will cause 3 rolls on the table above.

 

The tank is going to degrade very quickly, even if it doesn't get turned into confetti. And that's within the capability of a 400 point Standard Superhero!

 

Of course, that same hero is going to have trouble handling the main gun, but there are ways around that as well.

[Lucius]

Each time a Vehicle takes BODY from an attack (after defenses), roll on the Vehicle Damage Table to determine the effects. When a Vehicle has lost all of its BODY, it stops functioning entirely (via simple breakdown or dramatic explosion, at the GMs option)."

 

As I pointed out above, Penetrating attacks will routinely do Body. A 3d6 Penetrating KA is a 67 AP attack - dangerous, but not all that awesome. And typically, each such hit will cause 3 rolls on the table above.

If it rolls "each time it takes BODy," then each hit will cause ONE roll on the table.

 

If I hit it for 3 pts of BODy damage, that's 3 pts of BODy taken, but only 1 time that it took body.

 

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindomedary goes first to the store then to the kitchen and puts a dozen rolls on the table.