Fox1

Re: Making Hero more deadly

Cool.

 

How about Force field: 20/20 = 40 points

 

Force field 10/10 + Force field 10/10 (non resistant -1/2) = 33 points.

 

Voila, or some other sort of musical instrument

I've been thinking about doing that. But it's almost overkill, frankly I wouldn't expect them to encounter an attack that invoked the limit unless it was a plot device. Limit that doesn't limit sort of thing.

Re: Making Hero more deadly

I note Fox1's average rPD is 7: I'd wager there is quite a range there though

Not average, typical as in the assumed default for a superhero. And yes, there is a range.

For example, in my Marvel *inspired* X-Men game:

Angel: 7 rPD

Banshee: 32 rPD

Beast: 3 rPD

Colossus armored: 25 rPD

Cyclops: 7 rPD

Emma Frost Telepath form: r7 PD, Diamond form: 25 rPD

Gambit: 7 rPD with limited coverage of 12 rPD

Havo: 7 rPD

Iceman: 12 rPD

Jubilee: 7 rPD

Nightcrawler: 7 rPD

Phoenix: 43 rPD

Polaris: 37 rPD

Pyslocke: 7 rPD

Rogue: 16 rPD

Shadowcat: 7 rPD

Storm: 7 rPD

Wolverine: 7 rPD

Professor X: 3 rPD

The 3 rPD are from combat luck. The 7 rPD are from a combination of 3 points of combat luck and 4 points from costume- typically not covering the head.

If it wasn't for the fact that forcefields are 100% resistant, I would like have somewhat lower resistant values for a few of the characters listed (Banshee, Polaris, Phoenix).

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

Clearly one of the issues with killing something by a small' date=' deep wound (as with a bullet or maybe an arrow) is a matter of *where* you hit it. I've never hunted elephants but I think even with the elephant gun you need a headshot to take it down and preferably right in the face.[/quote']

 

Not completely true actually.

 

Brain shots are favored because they can be taken from front on and thus are nearly your only choice if facing a potentially hostile encounter. It also has the advantage of quick and 'kind' kill.

 

However if you're facing the elephant's flank, a shot to the heart/lung area is quite acceptable and in fact a better roll of the dice as it presents a larger effective target area. Before the arrival of smokeless powder this was in the fact the only practical shot due to low penetration of the older weapons.

 

 

I have read (in The Armory, IIRC, an old Hero weapons compendium) that a powerful elephant gun would deliver a knockout blow through up to a foot of skull material). That's a hell of a lot of bone and even with the super-powerful bullet, it doesn't, apparently, blow the thing's head open like a watermellon.

 

As I've noted before, an Elephant's skull is a very thick honeycomb, filled with fluid. The modern elephant gun takes advantage of this as it allows a nice shock wave to transmit to the brain even if your aim is a little off- effectively stunning the creature.

 

However a elephant's head is huge, and the brain not as huge (double the size of ours I think...). So it's still very easy to not get close enough. I've read accounts of a elephant being head shot 5 times before it finally went down. And other accounts of one getting back up after it was assumed dead, something could provide a less than pleasant result for the over confident hunter. Thus the safe action after a head shot is a follow up heart/lung shot, or two or three.

 

 

There are others--but just comparing damage done by the weapon vs. total damage necessary to destroy the creature isn't going to work real well (even a shoulder fired rocket wouldn't come anywhere near vaporizing an elephant).

 

Actually I know a guy who did fire a LAW into a elephant, one of asia ones I'd admit. Vaporize? No. But it was raining elephant chunks a huge distance away. Course that may have been in large part due to the ammo supplies it was hauling...

 

However I take exception to the your statement about the game mechanics. I use a weapon vs. total damage necessary to *kill* (not destroy, that means too many different things to different people) method in HERO, and I can effectively duplicate a elephant hunt with either spears or elephant guns or LAWs for that matter without issue.

Re: Making Hero more deadly

Maybe the solution should be to make resistant defenses more expensive... I know' date=' you can say that many people shouldn't have them, but in my experience, most people do... sure, not 20 or 30 def worth... but all you need is 14 rDef and you ignore the average roll of 4d6 KAs. [/quote']

 

The typical resistant defense value in my Superhero campaign is 7 points, and not all of that is full coverage.

Re: Making Hero more deadly

Why not switch to lower Def and a flat STUNx?

Agreed.

GM's control the how and what may be purchused. Just don't purchuse high resistent defenses.

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

The original point I was talking against basically said that a small bullet should not kill a large creature - to whit I pointed out an instance in real life where a small bullet did in fact kill a large creature.

But it's not a small bullet, it's a huge bullet in the world of bullets. Not at all the kind that your post indicated you thought on par with those used to kill people. Basically you were giving an example of just the concept you were trying to counter. That's what stuck me as so funny.

I think at this post we've breaten the dead elephant enough. Let's call it quits, I'm sorry for laughing at your post.

(oh and part of the original discussion involved Body Damage and Body Stats of large cretures and one of my other points being that if you want your really large creatures to ignore small, medium and x-large-fries arms fire add more Def, not more Body. but that's neither here nor there.)

Sadly, that wouldn't work. Or rather, wouldn't work if you wanted to represent something like killing elephants.

There are basically two ways of killing a living creature through the application of kinetic energy.

One is by a vital location hit (brain/spine is best although heart/lungs are good too) and that on a elephant requires an elephant level weapon if you want any degree of safety. Basically, to quickly kill big you need big.

The other is just by bleeding it to death. Much slower, but it works. To this end even low-damage low-penetration weapons like thrown spears work just fine although they have to be used in numbers if you want to kill it in a reasonable amount of time. There are reports of hunters even jumping on the critters and taking a light axe to them, it was said to be an effective if highly dangerous method.

Just upping DEF removes the second option from play.

Basically BODY functions fine for both conditions IF you don’t' treat direct BODY damage as cumulative (i.e. only use it for determining impair/disable and for bleeding totals) and IF you apply good bleeding rules and IF you don't overdue it (which HERO has a habit of doing with its BODY values).

Re: Book recommendation for guns?

Guns guns guns is great (if it is still in print!). It doesn't just list gun stats but shows you how to convert guns to games - any games' date=' and has lots of interesting info on how guns and ammo work. I enjoyed it and I'm not even a gun nut.[/quote']

 

 

Sadly it's a Kinetic Energy based system.

 

So it will convert, the result won't be realistic in any shape or form- but it will convert.

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

What exactly is incorrect with that statement?

I'd answer you, but I realize that you haven't really asked the question. All you're doing is venting.

If you really want the answer to that, give it a couple days and ask again. I'm done wasting my time on people who a) don't know what they are talking about but still insist on talking and who are looking for nothing more than a fight.

Edit: What the hell. I go ahead, there may be some here that actually want to know.

The statement is stupid when viewed in context. It's a give that a small projectile can kill a human, so it should be a given that a small projectile can kill elephants. The implied reason for making the statement is that an elephant gun does not fire a significantly larger projectile than a weapon used to kill a human would, i.e. size does not matter.

This implied meaning given the context is absurd in the extreme.

Comparing weapons of comparable effectiveness (say 22 Short vs. human and .458 win mag vs. elephant) we find that elephant gun has a impact area (directly related to the wound channel) 450% that of the human level weapon. The mass advantage is even more significant coming at at 1700%.

The energy difference has already been well pointed out, energy used in penetrating that huge amount of muscle and bone already noted.

In short, he referenced a huge freakn' weapon in a statement saying that size doesn't matter.

Size matters.

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

Elephant rounds are heavy and pack a lot more energy for only one reason: So they can penetrate the dense flesh and bone of an elephant to deliver a killing blow to a vital organ.

For the common head shots, the total density of the bone is actually less than that of a human given the honeycomb like construction of the elephant skull. The concept of dense flesh having a signficant impact is also false. It's pure depth all the way requiring you to reach thru 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 FEET of muscle and bone compared to a human where 12" of penetration allows you to blow thru limbs on the way to a vital organ.

Now there is a significant bone layer in the elephant skull that needs to be dealt with. But that also exists in humans for weapons of the same relative effectiveness. Just like a hit by a .22 short on the human skull can be deflected, an off angle hit on the elephant can have the same result.

Now if you want to represent mass in the game as DEF, you can do that. In fact using DEF to represent a large creature's resistance to minor wounds is likely a good idea.

But to claim that the size of the target doesn't matter in *reality* is a mark of self-created justification producing ignorance and wrong headed conflicts.

And calling an *elephant* a small weapon who's size doesn't matter is just simply laughable.

Re: If you hate Killing Attacks, how would you replace them?

I'm including UMA in there. Building Martial Maneuvers seems to be one of the most common things to do with Martial Arts' date=' and references to such seem to appear quite often even in official answers to questions about the basic system (i.e. questions that are about the basic rules presented in 5ER). So UMA is part of the basic system, and we no longer have a one book roleplaying system.[/quote']

 

I see your point and can agree with it to some extent.

 

However I don't see the MA construction system as core as you do. I don't mind the idea of the ultimate series offering expansion and new options. In fact I think a system 'dies' in a way when there are no longer expansions or new options for it.

 

But I think post costs for killing attacks and the Piercing power are core.

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

I think you need to move on or I'm going to report this post and two or three more from you. You are definitely violating the rules concerning conduct.

And here I thought we had moved on, ghost-angel even went back and edited out the line that caused me to make the post you object to.

Re: If you hate Killing Attacks, how would you replace them?

Ah! Hogwash! If it isn't in the Big Book' date=' it isn't part of the system (and the Ultimate series has thus started to tick me off a bit). (stubborn). I'll hunt through 5ER in the next couple of days and see if it appears anywhere there.[/quote']

 

I don't think it appears there although I could be wrong.

 

This and the fact that Piercing only appears in DC are two things that tick me off. Both should have been in the core book. That way I could have avoided buying DC at all.

 

And I agree, after UMA that series has been going downhill quickly.

Re: Double Knockback, How do you find it?

Or' date=' maybe we could have adders, say 10 points loses one of the 1d6 you subtract from KB.[/quote']

 

That's a idea I like within a very narrow range (say to make a RKA knb equal that of a equal point EB).

 

I wouldn't make it ten points however. It should be more like 7.5

Re: If you hate Killing Attacks, how would you replace them?

Really?! That's great! Did I miss that? Where is it?

Page 95 of Dark Champions is at least one reference.

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

Is there a reason you are incapable of having a conversation without insulting someone?

I'm sorry, but you're... funny. And so classic in today's world. You're like the Sicilian in the Princess Bride, the word you using mean doesn't mean what you think it means- and it funny watching you say it besides.

Really ghost-angel, this isn't rocket science.

People are a given size, what sort of guns are used to kill people?

Elephants are much larger, what sort of guns are used to kill elephants?

A look over a few weapon stats will show you the following truism: Guns used to kill elephants are much bigger than the guns used to kill people. That's why they are called *elephant guns*.

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

EDIT: you know what' date=' nevermind. talking to you is not worth the time or effort.[/quote']

 

At least I'm not the guy who basically said "Size doesn't matter as far as killing something. Elephants are big and people kill elephants with *elephant guns*".

 

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

man you are such a worthless piece of scum.

Oh I know elephant guns exist.

I'm just laughing at someone who has no clue whatever about the actual reality of them and how they relate to whole family of weapons. It's like a blind man having been told of color attempting to tell Leonardo that the Last Supper would look better with more reds.

You're are just funny. Clueless and funny.

Re: Double Knockback, How do you find it?

But my option 2 is as expencive as double KB, and there are always more expenvive ways of constructing powers.

 

Ego blast can be constructed as EB based on ego invisible

The default in the rules is to always go with the specific power if presented. Ego Blast is a presented power.

If no specific method is present, you go with the most expensive possible option.

Really, all just HERO 101

Re: Double Knockback, How do you find it?

My point being that the pure Double Kb adv seemed too expencive for its utility at +3/4

Like everything else in HERO, this perception is likely to be more due to how you run the game and Construct characters than it is the actual pricing structure.

For example, the very fact that you would allow the other options you list is a problem- the rules specify that given two ways of building an effect, you should by default require the more expensive one.

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

So Fox1 quite rightly says it isn't a problem in his world: I'd be interested though to know if you have any huge creatures/heroes/villains and how they play out in practice.

Huge critters certainly exist in my campaigns. Very rarely as PCs.

The primary reason I've avoided any problem along the lines you describe is already presented up on my website: see Miscellaneous Rules -> Hit Location and Damage.

BODY damage is not cumulative in my campaign, thus 8 hits for 1 BODY each does not equal a single 8 BODY hit in any meaningful respect. I've never understood why HERO thought it wise to treat BODY like D&D hit points. Didn't even believe it did until years after I started playing it.

Thus under my house rules BODY functions as a pure damage threshold in my campaign, not as hit points. If you don't do more than half BODY+ in a single attack, the effect is painful and causes bleeding/stun, but is in no other way significant.

Bleeding under some cases could present a danger, however large creatues already have some protection under my house rules and its easy enough to buy more if needed.

Even without this simple 'fix', I don't consider the problem significant. There are a number of things HERO doesn't do well, and the best solution is often to either build around it on a individual basis (any number of powers with proper advantages and limits can protect amorpho-lad from being nicked to death if you wish) or set up your campaign stuff that the problem is avoided from the start (no amorpho-lad in the setting).

Every game system has its strengths and weakness. Not all of them are suited for the same use as a result. HERO at it's heart is for over the top comic book action. Someone wanting more reality at the core of the game system than that should really seek a different game system.

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

And what percentage of Hero gamers do you think your campaign represents? 0.001%? You've made it pretty clear you're not running a "straight out of the book" campaign anyway.

It's lonely at the top end of the bell curve. So very lonely.

The point is that there is no system barrier to BODY = MASS with 2x or any other replacement progression. Any problems in this area are like most problems with HERO- self created.

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

If mass were the sole determinant of how much BODY something should have' date=' then 99% of all supers and heroes should have only 10 BODY because they are normal human size. Clearly this is not the case. [/quote']

 

It is in my campaign.

 

Well actually 9-11, but the concept applies.

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

An elephant gun is a .500 Caliber weapon' date=' kills elephants pretty handily and they're very large creatures compared to humans.[/quote']

 

Re: If you hate Killing Attacks, how would you replace them?

I don't think the 1/6 chance of getting zero on an extra 1d6-1 makes up for it at all! Shouldn't 1d6-1 be worth more points than 1/2d6?

It is.

2 1/2d6K = 40 points

3d6-1K = 42 points

3d6K = 45 points.

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

The ability to Damage is a factor of Offensive vs. Defensive. The ability to get killed has nothing to do with the issue of how big you are or how much Body you have.

The constant ability to redefine reality in order to increase one's own sense of realism is one of the interesting mindset of gamers that never ceases to amaze me.

You guys tell yourself whatever you need to believe in order to use the rules in the book. I'll just play the game and have fun.