Warp9

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? Good Points! I'd like to see a HERO system which can really handle even things like BBZ, but I can definitely respect your position on the matter.

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"?

Re: What is HERO about?

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? It seems that we agree on this point. I'm not sure why we are getting into "absolutes" here. For me there is a huge difference between talking about "being immune to ALL heat based attacks" and being immune to a specific finite physical attack (like being able to always bounce the bullets from a .38 special). A 100 megaton nuke is not infinite, and compared to many other events in the Cosmos, it is actually a pretty minor manifestation. The real question here is: how much damage will a nuke do? If HERO damage follows an exponential pattern, then 2 digit defenses should be fine, at least for the BODY (but not for the STUN) . If it follows a linear pattern, like the Expolsives in the FAQ, then you'd need 6 digit defenses. If it follows some other pattern, I'd sure like to know what that is. Obviously you can proceed without any pattern, and just make numbers up as you go along. However you are likely to run into inconsistencies if you do things this way. You may even end up with a bunch of sticks of dynamite do more damage than a nuke Well, considering the linear explosives in the weapons FAQ you'd need more than 1,000,000 points to build Superman. Assuming an exponential damage progression, you'd be able to do it on much fewer points (probably 1500 or less). Here's a question that, for me, comes to the heart of the issue: Lets say I want to run DBZ style game (with DBZ characters that can throw planet-vaping attacks). Lets say that I'm considering running it in HERO. And lets say that I go to you for advice on how to set that up. What would you tell me? Would you really suggest that I allocate 50,000+ points for each PC? Or would you just suggest that HERO can't handle those power levels?

Re: What is HERO about?

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? After reading some of these statements I am left with the following question: why wouldn't you want to stat things out if possible? I can see that you might not care about minor factors, like how much damage it takes to crush a plastic cup. But I'd kind of like to know if my character can survive a nuke, or the inside of the sun. That could be of major importance to me. In many cases the answer might be an obvious "NO," but in a cosmic-power Super-Hero game, I believe that it could become a legitimate question.

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? I agree. It seems to me that, if we don't track these factors, then the only fair assumption is that they remain equal between cases.

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? I guess that this point is important to me because to be the term "impossible" implies that it simply can't happen, or at least it contradicts things which we specifically know to be true. There are many strange things in Star Trek which I consider unlikely. But having sound effects in space actually contradicts my understanding of how things work. You can use basic physics to model strange and totally hypothetical events with no problem. For example, I can give you very specific data on the functioning of a Rail Gun from my sci-fi game. IMO we can model improbable events with results which are reasonable considering the situation. It may be improbable that a person could bounce a a neutron star off of his skin, but if he could do that, then it seems reasonable that he'd be able to survive a a large number of sticks of dynamite.

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? All that is true. However, just because nobody has proven the existance of a thing doesn't mean that you can say it is not possible for it to exist. And my problem is that you were throwing around the term "impossible." If I want to make the assertion that intelligent life exists elsewhere beyond Earth, it is up to me to prove it. Yet, even if I can't prove that such life exists, that does not mean you can assume that it definitely does not exist.

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? Yes, basically. The idea is that I agree that HERO allows you to buy things that are totally unrealistic (assuming that the GM will let you get away with it). They don't exist in your experience--that doesn't meant that they do not exist somewhere. Can you prove that magic doesn't exist? I'm not saying that it does, simply that I can't prove it does not. I'll have to give that one some more consideration. . . . But for now I'll say the following: IMO there is no reason why a purely effect based game system should link the abilities of lifting, throwing, punching, and jumping. If your character can lift a great mass, then buy "lifting." If your character can punch really hard, then buy a no-range attack to represent this ability. If your character can jump high, then buy "leaping." Currently the system does link these abilities together for you. Therefore I do think that there is a legitimate question about the relationship between each ability: does lifting power currently match to punching power? I'm just not as sure as to what is "impossible" as you are

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? I believe that you'd change the specific play experience by going fully linear or exponential, but I don't think it'd be unplayable. If you were to go linear, you'd probably keep bricks to a smaller scale of power. At 80 STR you'd be ten times stronger than Joe Average, and as long as everything else fit to this same scale, everything would be fine for many gamers. IMO, the gamers who'd have an issue with this limited scale would be those who want their character to be able to preform specific feats--like having a Mega-Blast which hits like 1,000 sticks of dynamite. Of course, you can't really do that very easily with the current system anyway. If you wanted a linear game with high power characters you could always just have really high stats like 10,000 STR. You have pointed out that the resulting 2,000d6 damage would be too much, but there are alternatives. You could roll 10d6 and multiply that by 200 for the damage. A fully exponential game would require the gamers to always remember that they are dealing an exponential scale. However, I think it would still be playable. And you would have to get rid of dice, but you might want to limit the range of randomness. Instead of: 10d6 (range 10 - 60 : Avg 35) You might have: 28 + 2d6 (range 30 - 40 : Avg 35) Or, if this is still to random, you could just limit the randomness to the "to hit" action. That way your damage could be based on how good a hit you got. You could also bring BODY in line with STR. Instead of doubling every point BODY could double every 5 points (like STR does). My issue here is that this is not a literal interpretation of the rules. A non AE attack can hit one target. To my knowledge, the rules do not say how big a single target can be. As far as I know, there is nothing in the rules that allows a galaxy sized character/object to ignore non-AE powers. If you wanted to impose limits on what you can hit with a non-AE power, where would you start? Area Effect:1 Hex is an existing power. So I assume that an non-AE power would not be able to impact a whole hex; it would then have to be limited to a much smaller space than 1 hex. Maybe you should only be able to make a tiny "bullet hole" in an object if you don't have AE on your power? But that would really limit a non AE power from doing much damage in many cases.

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? I can agree with this concept. And I'd add that there is nothing in HERO which keeps you from creating the following power: Chocolate Cream Pie Throwing: 10d6 RKA AP Are you saying that these things can not exist within reality, or are you saying that they do not exist within your experience of reality? To me that is a big difference. I can still apply basic laws of physics to many hypothetical situations. Although I'll agree that trying to apply physics to a wizard's rules of summoning is useless. A sci-fi gun that fires 100 gram metal spikes at 1000 m/sec by using magnetic acceleration may not currently exist on Earth. But we can still make a fairly good educated guess at what it would be like damage wise. I can give you specifics about the projectiles energy and momentum. There are better and worse guesses. There are guesses are not perfect but that are good enough for a game (ball park estimates), and there are IMO guesses which are not good enough, even for a game.

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? Let us assume that strengh relates to Force. And let us assume that the relationship betweeen Force and Mass tells us how quickly you can get your hand moving. Then Strength relates directly to the factors of "body mass and how fast you can move your fist." I would aruge that strength plays a big part in damage. The part I put in bold confuses me a bit.

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? Hmmm. Those are some things to think about It seems like you are saying that it falls upon the person building a character to make sure things are built in a realistic manner, rather than expect the rules to enforce realism directly. I can definitely get behind that idea. But going back to targeting the Planet with a high power (non-AE) EB--where does that fit in to your statement?

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? Greater Mass can also help with the damage. An arm that is a bigger and heavier weapon does more damage. The specifics such things can be very complex, and are more than I think we need to worry about for a game approximation. I'd just go with : Acceleration = Force / Mass Not infinite; but it would move at the speed of light. And if it had negative mass it would exceed light speed (at least that is the theory behind tacheyons, at least as I understand it). But again, I don't think we need to get too far into things like worrying about the mass of each character's arm. True, but that has to do with the specific limited design of the forklift rather than the laws of physics. IMO a forklift is not a good model for a super-strong character. A character designed like that would not be able to throw anything, no matter how light the object was. You still would have to deal with the question of what happens when a strong character drops a super-heavy object on a target. I agree that no game system is perfect, but it is likely that we could come close enough for "ball-park" approximations. Basic Physics is actually pretty simple. If you assume that Energy = Damage, and Strength = Power, then IMO you get a system that works well enough for a game.

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? Force = Mass X Acceleration And from this same formula: Acceleration = Force / Mass The Acceleration of my fist is directly related to the force of my muscles and the mass of my arm. Also your argument does not explain why throwing a 100 Kton object on somebody's head does not do 2,000,000d6 damage.

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? So, SuperStrong characters are punching like complete wimps. I may design my next Brick with massive points in MA defined as "Punches Proportionately". Yep, from now on all my high power characters are going to have to do millions of dice of damage.

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? I must not be understanding your point here. The rule for making holes in wall would allow a normal (non-area-effect attack) to make a vast hole in a wall just by doing enough BODY. It sounds to me like you are suggesting applying that "wall rule" to vehicles and planets as well, if so then you could still destroy them with a non-AE high-power attack. But again, I am probably misunderstanding you here. As for the "realism" angle, what do you think would happen if you channeled near-infinite energy into a hex of ground? It seems to me that you'd probably get a shock wave which would destroy the planet anyway. IMO having a 200d6 EB destroy a planet is not un-realistic, saying that you can hit a single target with a 200d6 EB and not have an impact on nearby objects IS unrealistic.

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? X joules of energy = Yd6 damage is exactly what is supported by the current damage of most fire arms, and it is exactly what is supported by the Optional Velocity Damage Table (althought I admit that it is the Optional Velocity Damage Table). Of course it is going to be pretty hard to fully map real world events in a game system; however, I don't think that "ball park" results are too much to ask for. IMO there are some real issues with HERO in the area of exponential vs linear progresssion, but I don't think you'd have to totally redo the system from the ground up in order to fix these problems. Figuring Force and Kinetic Energy is very simple (and these relate to real world physics). And I'd be willing to go with a simplified model which uses these factors in a game. For game purposes, I'd be willing to say that Energy = Damage. It is you who are saying that "Energy = Damage" is NOT good enough. I agree totally that the standard rules for movement and velocity are linear. I'm not sure that I get your argument here. You seem to be basing your conclusion of: "each doubling of mass becomes marginally less effective at adding damage" on the premise that: "The amount of damage inflicted on any object struck by an attack is affected by many more factors than mere mass: Velocity, material, construction, shape, and hardness as well as similar questions about the object struck" This argument presented shows that a heavier object might not do as much damage as a lighter one, due to other relevant factors. However, it does nothing at all to show why just increasing the mass of your projectile would automatically cause these other factors of the attack to decrease. Because, as you say, "We don't calculate any of those in Hero," it seems to me that the logical assumption is to assume they are staying equal. And, if you are willing to assume "all other things being equal" as the mass of the projectile doubles, then it seems that the reasonable conclusion is that the impact would double too.

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? I don't agree. Note: Actually I believe that it is probably a Life Support issue, but assuming that LS doesn't cover survival in the sun. . . . For me, your statement above is like saying surviving a 120 mm tank gun in most games should require massively appropriate SFX and concept backup and not buying a large amount of resistant defenses. The forces you are subjected to at the heart of the sun are of a definable quantity (in physics terms). They should be able to be stated out in the same way that the damage from any other attack would be stated out.

Re: What is HERO about? Hmm. . . looking at GURPS (3rd Edition), and thinking about how it compares to HERO. . . . How are these 2 Universal Systems different and what does it mean about their core values? First I would point out that 2 people may take different paths to the same destination, so the differences in the games may not be the result of actual differences in ultimate goals. That being said, I think that GURPS focuses more on the level of normal humans. It has about the same stat range for normals as HERO (avg 10, max 20), but in GURPS there is a huge difference between INT 8 and INT 12. In GURPS you roll your stat or less on 3d6. 8 INT has an INT roll of 8 or less 12 INT has an INT roll of 12 or less Skills are also based directly on stats (not stat / 5 like in HERO). So as you can see there is a much bigger difference between people with "normal stats" than there is in HERO. On the other hand, GURPS does not handle the high end very well, I've seen a GURPS nuke rated at 1.5 million dice of damage. GURPS is also not as generic as HERO. GURPS has a magic system, and if you don't like it you must wait for a new source book (like the GURPS version of the White Wolf Mage:TA), or write your own rules. The same goes for psionics. It does seem like GURPS was more designed for human level events, whereas HERO is intended to be about a larger scale of events. But I do think that HERO is the better game (at least from a generic perspecitve). HERO it is able to deal with a wider range of characters, from normal humans to cosmic power supers, and HERO gives you more control over how your character's powers work.

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? It there a specific rule that you can quote me where it says that a planet must be attacked HEX by HEX? I know that you could attack it in that manner, and in most cases that is probably what you'd want to do anyway, but I want to see were it says that it must be dealt with in this manner. You could attack a door of an aircraft carrier rather than attacking the whole craft--but the attacker would always have the choice of attacking the object as a whole instead. If you rule that large objects must be attacked in a "piece by piece" fashion, you would end up throwing out the current rules for breaking objects, and also the rules for breaking walls (you also end up making Area Effect attacks more powerful). But then again perhaps there is something written in the rules where it says that things must be done in this manner.

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"?

Re: Has HERO achieved maximum desirable complexity? Those are some good points! That is a bit different than what I actually had in mind, but it is something for me to think about. My initial concept of a game "which is more complex than it needs to be" would perhaps be exemplified by RIFTS. In RIFTS, rather than having a more simple exponential scale, instead uses multiple linear scales. In RIFTS you can have many different types of STR. A character might have any one of the following: 14 Normal STR, 45 Extraordinary STR, 38 Robotic STR, 28 Supernatural STR, There is a different chart and different Rules for each type of STR, there are also different types of damage in RIFTS. Which is stronger, a 23 Supernatural STR , or an 85 Robotic STR? IMO RIFTS is an over-complex system, because even with all this extra complexity the system is still very limited in what it can easily represent. For example it can not easily handle a planet busting weapon (unlike the HERO system which can handle an attack of such magnitude very easily). An exponential system only needs one type of STR to cover a much greater range of ability. But it then occured to me that some people may feel much differently. Some people feel that having to deal with the mathematics of an exponential system is more complex than dealing with several linear systems. Upon reflection it seems like there are perhaps different kinds of complexity. A game might be called complex due to the sheer volume of rules it has. This would probably be the most obvious kind of complexity. A game might be called complex if it requires some specific background (possibly mathematical) to play it. A game might be called complex if it requires learning a great deal of information/terminology in order to begin to play it. This concept could also be thought of as complexity that the Player has to deal with, as opposed to complexity for the GM. I've actually heard all of these accusations of complexity used in reference to the HERO system. Each of them can be dealt with differently.

Re: Has HERO achieved maximum desirable complexity? Obviously Complexity VS Simplicity is one of the major trade off factors in a game. However, it is also true that many games have more complexity than necessary. IMO HERO is pretty good about its complexity, although I do not believe that it is perfect. So I do think that looking to streamline the rules is always a good idea. Also I would be willing to see more complexity if this addition resulted in extra options, for example, the ability for a character to fly Mach 3 in combat.