Kristopher

Originally posted by J4y

How fast does a character have to be before you consider them eligable of dodging bullets? I understand that in more cinematic campaigns, characters often duck and cover, or find shelter from flying munitions due to luck, but I'm curious as to how fast a person would have to be to be able to avoid bullets without having to find cover, or even throw themselves to the ground.

 

Lots of good answers, for a purely superheroic viewpoint where someone like Wonderwoman can block bullets "because she can" you just buy the power. If you're trying for "realism" and saying someone needs to actually be able to react and move fast enough before they could have the option of buying a bullet immunity skill/effect/power/ability , then if you assume close range bullets can be going mach 2 up to mach 3, about 1km/s. I'd be inclined to say any speed + movement combination that lets players go a significant fraction of that speed, say 600m/s combat (ignoring acceleration...), could "easily" avoid bullets so could buy desolid. Bullets slow down quickly so the further from the gun the slower the bullet will be going and the more time the player will have to react so if you're willing to have a limitation that you can't do it when close to the gun, you could cut the speed you need down by quite a bit.

Those would be rifle bullets, correct? The speed of sound is about 1050 fps (320 m/s). While rifle muzzle velocities are about Mach 2 to Mach 3.5+, pistol velocities aren't close.

38 Special ------- 710 to 995 fps

45 Auto ---------- 835 to 1000 fps

9mm Luger ------ 990 to 1155 fps

10mm Auto ------ 1150 fps

40 S&W ----------- 985 to 1205 fps

357 Magnum ---- 1145 to 1295 fps

357 Sig ------------ 1350 fps

44 Magnum ------ 1610 fps

454 Casull -------- 1625 fps

Originally posted by Yamo

I dunno. You can fit a HKA 1d6 DS with Penetrating under most AP limits fairly easily.

Shouldn't have to slap a second Advantage (Pen) on to make the first Advantage (DS) effective. DS should be effective in its own right, and at a total of +1.5, it's not.

According to Steve it was a clarification not a change...

Game designers say that kind of thing quite often. When Justin Achilli took over one of the product lines at White Wolf and CHANGED the way XP was spent to increase various stats, he insisted on and on that it was a clarification.

That's the kind of thing that would start a firefight within the PC group, either on the spot or later, in most groups I've been in.

From a Champs prespective...

The problem with making DS so expensive is that an affordable number of normal (5d6) or killing dice (1.5d6) won't, on average, do -anything- to most opponents in a superheroic compaign. Unless the super is fighting agents, it's not worth the END.

I can see making DS +1/2 for normal and killing attacks, and +1 for all the special cases.

Oh, I refute the thread's premise, too.

I'm just wandering off on my own with some other stuff tangentially related to whatever it was the original post said.

One important thing to note about firearms and KE. It's not the KE at the muzzle that matters, it's the KE at the other end of the flight you have to worry about...

I'm trying to recall some ballistics data I once read, specifically as to whether, in general, there is an increasing or diminishing return in damage as KE is increased.

Originally posted by Arthur

The original thread starter's interpretation of Coordinated Attacks is incorrect. Others have already pointed that out.

 

However, the geometric damage scale of Hero DOES cause some odd effects, but you have to extend the analysis a bit.

 

Our Hero has 14 BODY. Assume Killing Damage and no resistant defenses. You shoot OH with a 1d KA. It takes four shots to put him at 0 BODY, and four more (a total of eight) to kill him.

 

"That's too many shots!" we cry. Let's use a weapon that does eight times as much damage! However, 8x as much damage from the characters' POV is only 2d or twice as much in points of damage due to the exponential nature of the system.

 

Our Hero is put to zero BODY by two shots, and killed outright by four shots (he's having a rough day). Eight times as much KE, but it takes only half as many shots.

 

You can do a similar analysis of points of BODY, making certain assumptions (IIRC, +2 BODY = x2 mass) and show that also gives counter-intuitive results.

 

Is Hero broken this way? Yes. Is there any game system that doesn't have similar problems? Not that I've ever found.

The BODY multipliers for the hit locations sometimes make it easier to kill someone with small KAs. A heavy pistol is about 2d6 RKA, doing an average of 7 body. Two average hits leave the 14 BODY character dying. Now, shoot him in the head. ONE average hit leaves him dying.

I don't find that at all unrealistic.

Now, as for the "doubling," I see no reason to assume that it applies to anything but lifting. There's nothing to imply that the game mechanics of damage, BODY, STUN, or defenses are anything but linear.

The "muzzle energy" example doesn't hold up to a quick glance at the weapons chart in Hero 5th, or a little knowledge of firearms. A .50 BMG is listed as a 2d6+1 RKA, which is about the same damage as a very heavy pistol, which is too anemic for the .50 BMG. A .50 BMG hit to the body or head should be, on average, overkill -- about 3.5d6* RKA if the average person has 10 BODY. The .50 BMG, fired from the typical weapon made to fire that round, also has many times more energy than any pistol round, including the .50 AE that's listed as doing the same damage. If you don't understand why the idea of both weapons doing the same damage or having the same energy is a joke, find someone who has handled both a .50 BMG and a .50 AE round (or better yet, someone who has fired both) and ask them to explain it.

* "Three and a half D6." 3 1/2d6 looks like gibberish.

Originally posted by CrosshairCollie

I'd probably go with 10 points of Mental Def, since you have to have 5 points to have any (minimum cost and all that).

A) I never paid any attention to that rule. No one I've ever played with has paid any attention to that rule.

A 10 EGO and 5 APs of Mental Defense would be 7 total Mental Defense, right? At that point, leave it at 5, and who cares.

Why Mental Awareness?

Mental defense would be more appropriate. Psychic Invisibility would be a power that affects the mind. Mental Defense protects the mind from powers.

Mental Awareness would tell a character that a mental power is being used "over there," but wouldn't necessarily counteract the actual invisibility, depending on how the Psychic Invisibility is explained.

Maybe it would be too cumbersome, but somehow basing the effect on ECV might be another solution.

Parody of RPG video games...

http://www.rpgworldcomic.com/

Originally posted by Lord Mhoram

Most of these were mine, back in the day.

 

One of the old Enemies had an RKA and EB linked... and I asked the GM about linking an RKA to an EB. The EB was a plasma wave and the RKA was a laser that lased within the beam. 15d6 EB, 5d6 RKA. RKA had beam. Linked attacks are the same to hit roll/CV. Ran into the major DCV based baddie, spread the EB for OCV and got +14 OCV with my RKA. Oh yeah they were two slots in the same EC.

I would have ruled that both, or neither, would have to have the Beam limit.

After reading the thread, I have to say it...Wow, that's some creative cheesiness. Kraft would be proud.

Let's see...I can't think of any really cheesy moments in our Champs games. Some people might consider these cheese, but I was rather impressed by them.

1) 1d6 NND 1-hex AoE x5 Autofire on charges, in an OIF "Grenade Launcher on Power Armor."

2) A martial artist with light power armor to add defenses and STR and Flight.

Originally posted by Catacomb

WAAAYYYY too nasty for anyone to have.

I haven't seen that, I don't have it here to look it up, but I'm not sure how NND would matter for an Entangle. It's still an Entangle, and would still have DEF and BODY based on the roll. Entangles don't act against the target's PD or ED anyway, do they?

There's always the character so overflowing with power that he can barely contain it. I had an NPC named Carnage (no relation) who -couldn't- hold back...12d6 EB Double Knockback, AoE Line, Beam. It was all or nothing. He only showed up once, and was off screen on one other occasion, but he made quite an impression.

Originally posted by Agent X

Well, what does your interpretation of Superman have to do with the premise of using a character like him as an icon? Are you saying you don't like the character and therefore wouldn't have a Supermannish Icon?

No, but my Superman-template NPC suffers from the same personal flaws I mentioned. I just wanted to point it out because it's not something that gets talked about for that character often enough.

Coming in late...

The problem with Supes is that he doesn't just have the "Code of the Hero," PsychLim, he also has the "Heroically Stupid" PsychLim. His raw power gets him through so often that he seldom stops to think until it's brutally obvious that he has to. He throws himself into situations at the drop of a hat, and sometimes gets in over his head for it, when a little thought would have samed him a lot of pain and trouble.