zslane

This is the Hero System, after all. It is both a boon and a curse...

I think the main reason it seems so appealing to write things up twice, once for supers and once for "realistic" campaigns, is because the world of superheroes is so relentlessly ignorant/indifferent of/towards reality that there is substantial dissonance built into the genre before you even begin discussions like this. You simply can't take a realistic world, with all its objects written to perform realistically, and throw superheroes into it and expect the resulting game experience to look and feel like a superhero comic book. So, something has to change. You either drag superheroes into a more realistic form or you recalibrate the world (and the simulation) so it behaves in the ridiculous manner seen in the comics. That's why I feel it is easier to go with the Paper Scenery approach. It's not like only certain superheros can make mincemeat of the world around them; all of them have that potential...it merely comes down to the specific powers they have and how many DCs they can generate. In a sense, it isn't the characters that are unusual--relative to each other they aren't--it is the rest of the physical world that is absurdly weak by comparison.

Both of those solutions are what I call "nerfing the military hardware"...also known as the Paper Scenery gimmick.

It's what I've been saying too. I think we only differ in terminology. You say "altered" and I say "nerfed". :-) But something's gotta give. Either you give characters special attacks intended to get past the realistic armor numbers, or you nerf the military hardware so the special powers aren't necessary. Comic book writers never have to worry about this sort of thing. If a reader sees Thor one-shot a tank and asks, "How is that possible?", the writer need only say, "He's Thor, he's powerful. There is no other explanation necessary." That's not good enough for an RPG. If a player tells the GM he intends to one-shot a tank, the GM will reasonably ask, "How is that possible?" And if your damage output isn't enough to penetrate the tank's listed armor stat, you're out of luck. Writers have always had the luxury of assuming their characters could just do whatever they wanted them to do, with no understanding of physics or materials science or anything. While that 100-ton lifting capacity may have seemed like enough to make trashing a 1960s-era tank "reasonable" back in the day, that's simply not adequate anymore. But writers don't know that, nor do they care. Gamers, on the other hand, do not have the luxury of ignoring such realities. The writeups for things like Abrams tanks are going to make it painfully obvious just how obsolete the "100-ton STR Brick can trash any mundane object" perspective is. In a game where everything is measured and defined numerically, we can't just hand-wave the abilities of our characters just because comic book writers do that in the source medium. Tank armor has probably doubled in terms of rPD since Thor first hit the scene in the pages of Journey Into Mystery, and yet most Marvel writers would probably assume Thor's strength is still equivalent to the old FASERIP rating of 75, or maybe a little higher (like 90). That's not nearly enough to trash an Abrams, but you wouldn't know that by reading his comic...

I think Hugh nailed it on the head. The problem isn't necessarily one of "realism", but that in order for characters to damage modern military hardware (written up such that everything is energy-consistent), they have to be built on far more points than would be allowed in any campaign. Dr. Destroyer may have a KA capable of "Hulking" an Abrams, but are PCs going to be allowed to have that attack? I daresay not. So, since we're not about to let PCs have attacks capable of tearing apart a Helicarrier like the Hulk or Thor can, what are we to do? Clearly we have to nerf the vehicles instead. The whole point of this thread is to find ways to allow PCs to do what we see in the comics (and, I suppose, in the movies). I say that comic/movie writers are allowing superheroes to trash modern hardware with the same ease they did in the 1960s, which makes no sense given the steep performance increase of military hardware since then. Iron Man may have tech that keeps pace (notice the teeny little missile that insta-kills that tank in the first Iron Man movie), but Mjolnir is just a magic hammer, and it hasn't changed in millenia. The Hulk may earn XP, but there is nothing in-universe I know of to explain a steady increase in his base STR that matches the military technology improvement curve.

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 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.

Dice can appear streaky, but that is because humans have an intrinsic need to find patterns in everything and to assign deterministic causes to everything, even random events. A series of single die rolls has a fairly high variance because each individual die roll is independent from the others. However, most rolls in the Hero System involve adding several dice together, which pulls results towards a bell-shaped mean. This is a nice way of keeping outcomes closer to a comforting average and away from the discomforting extremes. So unless a campaign is making heavy use of KAs under 2D6, dice totals should gather noticibly towards the average (and for those who hate a linear STUN multiplier die roll, I recommend rolling 2D3-1 instead of 1D6-1). Unless, of course, the dice are loaded, flawed, or not being rolled honestly by players.

STR/melee attacks (like a swooping eagle) aren't generally subject to the visual fx requirement. A blowgun without IPE would have darts that are somewhat big, colorful, slow, and make a lot of noise whistling through the air. In cases like that, the ability to perceive the projectile, independent of the visibility of the shooter or target, is not too difficult to imagine/contrive; if not, then be prepared to put IPE on it. A super sniper rifle with a cinematic silencer would require IPE. But like I said, the whole IPE issue tends to only matter to Champions campaigns--heroic level games often suspend the visual fx requirement(s) on the grounds of "realism" (or some other strong genre convention).

A 25 MEGS strength Superman is "only" a STR 125 character in Champions. If Superman can turn a tank into tiny metal shards in DC Heroes, then either tanks are woefully underperforming, in terms of their armor, in that game, or tanks are supremely over-powered in Champions.

Note quite. The visible power fx make the general location of the hidden attacker discernable, but does not necessarily make the attacker targettable. It is the price one pays for using a power lacking IPE. And for anyone not specifically watching the security panel? Anyone merely glancing towards the space between Luke and the panel should be able to sense the TK with three Senses. As I've mentioned before, the user and the target can't be the "visual components" that satisfy this requirement because they, being independent entities from the power in use (characters and objects are not powers), could be hidden from any or all Senses, and yet the power's use must still be perceptible to three Senses.

I have no problem with that. It just means that he still gets to use his claws when restrained. No biggie. But if someone believes Wolverine can't use his claws when restrained, then he believes in a version of Wolverine in which the claws are a restrainable focus.

To you (and your house rules) perhaps, but not to the RAW. In order for the silly gestures to be visible (i.e., a "visible component"), the character has to be in plain sight as well. If he or she isn't, then neither are his silly hand gestures or furrowed brow. How else, then, is the power supposed to be visible? The RAW requires that the power still be visible to three Senses/Groups, two of them common, even when the user of the power is not. Another example, Luke is hiding behind a cargo container and using his Force TK to tap on the security panel of a ship across the loading bay in order to unlock it. According to the RAW, there must be something that makes it clear to anyone looking at the intervening space between them that TK of some kind is being used, the origin of which is tucked behind a cargo container and the other end of which is somewhere on the ship (even though the security panel may not be within plain view). In fact, nobody may realize which end of the TK is the source and which end is the target given that neither are easily discernable. But the fact that TK is "happening" must still be evident beause its power fx are visible to three Senses.

Right. And that's why in other threads I've advocated using published game stats for these characters. The only thing to then agree on is which RPG to pull from for any given character (since there have been several incarnations of both Marvel and DC superhero RPGs over the years). So, if you take the Hulk and his Unearthly (100) strength, how easily can he "tear apart" a tank in FASERIP? How easily can Superman do the same thing with his 25 MEGS strength in DC Heroes?

Well, Wolverine is put at a disadvantage when you tie him up because his focii are in his hands. It is in the nature of focii that binding them often makes them unusable, and that's part of the reason they are a Limitation and not merely part of the "costume". Gestures can be anything from a complicted series of hand movements, a simple dance step, or touching one's temples. Classic wizard limitation. Now, in most cases of TK I see on tv, the user throws around silly hand gestures because producers/directors don't think viewers will understand what's going on if they don't do that. Consequently, I don't regard them as absolutely necessary for the power to work in most cases. If anything, those characters are burdened with a -0 "Silly Unnecessary Theatrical Gesture" limitation, not a real Gestures limitation. Maybe that's what Force TK is also...?

Are your players using loaded/trick dice or something? If so, you might want to look into that.

Yeah, awesome villain look.

Hmm. I regard Acrobats and Leaping Ninjas as full instances of the martial artist archetype. That doesn't really lend credence to the notion that maneuvers designed originally for them were also designed with speedsters in mind.

My mistake. When you proposed, parenthetically, that he "had to do so" (touch his temple), I read that hard requirement as a Gestures limitation. And it is restrictive in the sense that if his hands are tied behind his back, he can no longer use his TK. That sounds an awful lot like a classic Gestures limitation to me.

Being able to see the attacker and being able to see an attack power are two separate things. A visible attack can help someone perceive a less-than-openly-visible attacker. But an invisible attacker does not confer any invisibility to his powers. Only IPE does that.

I refer to the Ultimate Hulk. He dealt with everything while enraged, and it was horrific. I refer to the Age of Ultron (also a movie) Hulk. He dealt with Tony's Hulkbuster armor while enraged. Refer to... countless other examples of an enraged Hulk who would rend and tear instead of flip and throw and bend. I'm not sure how a kinder, gentler Hulk helps us discuss the problems of modern tank armor durability vs. superheroes with massive STR (or any attack power for that matter, I suppose).

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.

I don't believe this is correct. The gestures involved in an attack with the Gestures limitations are not a "visible effect" of the power as it pertains to fulfilling the Sense requirements of a power's fx. They are merely the gestures that fulfill the requirements of the Gestures limitation. If the character is hiding in a closet and touches his temples (as he must do) and attacks with his psionic blast (or whatever), then his compulsory gesture is hardly making it a visible (or obvious) attack. The gesture itself can not serve as a visible power effect since the gesture is not always visible under all conditions (nor is the attacker, which is why the attacker can't be a component of the visible power fx either).

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.

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...