procyon

You are welcome to anything I have posted. They are just my opinions anyway. Still finishing up the Itailan MG's and grenades. Although I may skip a LOT of the grenades. Italy in WW2 had an immense variety of 'bombs' they used...

Homemade setting, with the origin of 'superpowers' loosely based on the Wild Card virus from the novels. But far more kid friendly in theme as two of the players are an 11 y/o girl and 14 y/o boy. Still retains a lot of the 'lethality' of wild cards though - so dead is dead, and not that uncommon. There are also a healthy population of 'jokers' (ie, mutants that aren't super but no longer appear human) and some of the issues that occur with that. Not as much of an alien theme though. In fact, so far in game, there are no aliens. At least that the players know about. Lots of other details that go with this (low pop growth so 2014 has a world population not much greater than 1945, a civil war over 'Joker' rights in the late '60 split the US into east and west (west is very conservative and anti-mutant/joker, etc) but it has been fun for the players so far. All the kids are actually high powered 'Joker-Aces' who are stars in their own show ('The J Team') based in Chicago that try to promote awareness and support of Joker rights while dealing with all the problems that have cropped up... My wife is the one 'Ace' (ie, human appearing super powered person) who is playing a middle aged widow with her teenage daughter who tries to avoid the spotlight but keeps getting pulled into the troubles.... Oh, and we use 4e.

Ok. Very possible. Your post says that damage is more heavily influenced by intangibles. In RL that is true. I drop cattle to butcher with a .22LR, and have tracked deer with a 12 ga slug wound for miles. But for the game, I need some rhyme or reason to what damage I assign to a weapon. And for me, equating the energy the round generates is an easy way to assign damage to weapons that can vary from a .22 zip gun to the 16" guns on a battleship without resorting to simple fiat. And in a general way, energy is associated with increasing lethality. Is a 9mm more lethal than a .22? Maybe. But no one is going to argue (ok, maybe they would) that the .50 BMG round isn't any more dangerous than a .22, or no more capable of penetrating defenses. Or that the 120mm gun on an M1 would be no worse to get hit with than the .50 BMG and it can't penetrate any heavier defenses. And that although the 120mm gun will probably ruin a couple rooms in a building, that the 16" shell from a battleship will likely level a house. Each step moves up in energy, and in its lethality. I just use a more granular approach to energy = DC's of damage, as it is easy for me to adjudicate. So when a character jumps in an A10 and uses the 30mm cannon in it - I don't have to take a guess at what damage the cannon does.

Hydra-Shok is just a brand of hollow points (HP). Federal makes them. And they never made any in .22 cal. But there are lots of .22 HP's. In .22LR, they don't tend to expand in living tissue. But a .22 doesn't need to expand to be lethal. It just needs to end up in something vital. And modeling any real world weapon in a game is going to have issues. Is the hole from a wide bladed butcher knife any less lethal than the hole poked in someone by a spearhead? Most games will have the spear doing more damage, even though the wounds would be nearly identical. But the amount of energy that the round expends is a decent benchmark for the damage it does. Is it perfect - no. But a high energy round, with all else equal, has the potential to do more work (energy is the potential to do work) on a target (ie, injure it) than a low energy round. Will it create more injury - maybe. But that is what random rolls help with. A .22LR might create a more lethal wound than a 5.56mm, the projectiles have the same diameter but the 5.56 having about 10x the energy (ie, in game the .22LR gets a max damage roll vs the 5.56 rolls minimum...). But in general the 5.56 is going to create much more trauma. The higher energy round, all else equal, will also have better capability to penetrate barriers. So a .357 HP isn't going to punch through the same amount of material as a .50 BMG HP (and yes, there are 50 cal HP rounds...). So is energy, as the defining quantity for damage of bullets, ideal? No. But it is easily measured. Is a standard quantity. And can give a benchmark for game use. If you wanted to base your DC's of damage on penetration in a standardized medium, or on the total volume of the wound channel created in said medium - that would also be a valid way of addressing it. It is just easier for me to come up with the energy of a round than to track down pentration test results.

Sounds a bit like ours that I posted over on the WWII weapons thread over on Dark Champions section. They say that great minds run in the same channels. Or fools think alike...

I graduated with degrees in Chem E and Physics. So English is pretty much a foreign language to me. I am about as far from a writer as you can get. (Don't even ask about how I ended up going back to school and becoming an RN taking care of babes in a NICU...) But the number of folks that we have hired who can't write conherently is deeply concerning to me. In the medical profession, if it isn't charted - it didn't happen. But unless it is canned text, a lot of the student nurses version of charting would get them crucified in court. And some of the actual (newer) registered nurses aren't much better. So when they have written down their hand off report for the nurse who will be assuming care for the patient, you have to get that person to translate what they have written, as it isn't in 'words'.

In a barycentric pair, one of the pair will be more massive and deemed the primary. If the pair fulfill the definition for a planet, the primary will be a planet and the less massive body will be the moon. Just as Pluto is the dwarf planet and Charon the moon.

The problem would be that Janus & Epimetheus do not actually fulfull a barycentric orbit. A barycentric orbit is centered on the two bodies center of mass, where Janus & Epimetheus orbit Saturn (and not their common center of mass at any given time) and trade momentum as they pass each other with the inner moon aquiring energy from the outer moon as it catches up on its slightly shorter orbit. As the inner moon aquires this energy, it speeds up and this additional energy pushes it's orbit farther out. At the same time as the outer moon loses its momentum/energy to the inner moon, it slows and its orbit moves slightly closer to Saturn. So as they pass, the moons trade orbital positions. But the difference between their average orbital radii is actually less then either moon's radius. It is just when passing that their respective orbits differ enough for them to not intersect. And there is no reason larger bodies could not share the same dynamic while orbitting a star. It is just (IMHO) very unlikely.

According to my kids, we share a title.

If we were to find a pair of bodies orbitting a star that were in an arrangement like Janus-Epimetheus around Saturn, they wouldn't be moons. Moons are a satellite of a primary body to include major/minor/dwarf planets. If they were small, they would likely be classified as asteroids/comets depending on composition. If they were big, it could get a little sticky. Two objects the size of Mars following the same orbit and passing one another every few years and on the opposite sides of the star at other times...isn't something that is addressed particularly well by current definitions.

Sadly I can't see the site you linked as the hospital web filter blocks it. The limitations of only having internet while at work... Your math is off a bit somewhere. You may have different numbers on the 120mm round. I am familiar with the A2 round, which is a 20 lb penetrator moving at 5500 fps at the muzzle. Which translates to around 9.4x10^6 ft-lb. It will punch though over 20" of steel at 2000 yds. (But I have never seen a recorded kill on an armored target through any substantial barrier. The pressure involved at impact liquifies most of the metal and actually combusts the depleted uranium. Now, soft targets that get hit by the spray that penetrates a barrier are in a lot of trouble. Half a pound of molten-flaming supersonic metal can be ouchie...) The 16" shell moving at about 1700 fps and weighing 2700 lbs is going to generate about 1.2x10^8 ft-lbs of energy. So I think you have a decimal or conversion misplaced in your figures. And the momentum it will transfer to the tank is going to be about the same as dropping the M1 from 3 stories in the air. (Yes, I worked as a physicist...) ETA I'm not a big fan of Wikipedia, but this sounds fairly accurate for the Iowa class BB's main gun projectiles. The Mk. 8 APC (Armor-Piercing, Capped) shell weighed 2,700 lb (1225 kg) and was designed to penetrate the hardened steel armor carried by foreign battleships. At 20,000 yards (18 km) the Mk. 8 could penetrate 20 inches (500 mm) of steel armor plate.[24] At the same range, the Mk. 8 could penetrate 21 feet (6.4 m) of reinforced concrete.[24]

Or a sane one. Which is why I like this thread so much...

Sounds like you should base your game less on comics, and more on cartoons... Like "My Little Pony".

Massey, your damage is actually pretty close to what we use for the 120mm gun on the M1. (Holy crud, I seem to have missed that the gun in the current version is rated at 8d6K - mega ouch...) The usual projectile fired (M829A2 or later) generates over 4 1/2 million ft-lb of energy. If you take the energy that the .50 BMG generates and assume that 3d6 is appropriate for it (I'm ok with it for a benchmark) - and that each doubling of energy gives a +1 DC... Then if you give the 120mm gun the benefit of rounding up, it should come in at 18 DC of damage. So 6d6K AP. Which is where we have it set at. ETA And if you follow that progression, the 16" guns on the Iowa class battleships are around 7 1/2d6K (around 250 million ft-lb) with a healthy linked explosion. (Which is how we deal with HEAT type rounds. An AP killing attack with a linked Exp.) The 18" guns on the Yamato would have pushed 8d6K. Which, honestly is about where I see 24 DCs of damage falling at. Because the M1's gun is going to tear up a hotel some. But the battleship rounds will pretty much leave a pile of rubble... And for the Golden Gate bridge going down under a 24 DC attack after a few hits - I am fairly sure a broadside from the Iowa could have managed that...

From my wife, during the investigative portion of the last game: "I like it better when I can just hit something...".

I would say that even the tanks in the 4e rule book we use are a bit over the top in durability. Not 30/20, but even 20/16 makes them fairly invulnerable to bricks. (Now, what follows is based on the fact that I still use 4e, and have no idea what the numbers are for 5e or 6e.) But where the weapons are generally (somewhat) well based in the "+1DC equals twice the power" thought, armor seems to just be completely arbitrary. Otherwise, why would the PD of fantasy type plate mail (PD 8) be considered nearly as protective as the frontal armor of a M113 APC (PD 9) and better than it's side armor (PD 6)? Armor on the 113 is over an inch thick of hardened aluminum (nearly as hard as steel actually). So plate mail is equal to 1/2" of that? And some body armor is stronger than 30mm of hardened aluminum? So the whole armor system has issues to me.

And honestly, when I have had to shoot in combat - it went FAR faster than what would be possible in Hero. FA was almost never used, other than support weapons. I provided lots of 'suppressing fire' using SA. And dumping a 30 rd mag into a window 50 yards away to keep folks away from it - all happened in less than 5 or 6 seconds. Then the next guy would proceed to do the same while I was reloading. Neither of us was missing the window. And putting rounds on a target didn't take long either. You don't just shoot once every three or four or six seconds. The footage I have seen of my unit shows that most times the first empty hasn't hit the ground yet as the shooter is putting rounds 3 or 4 into the target. That all happens in, maybe, a second. It goes VERY fast. So a mook with an AK or M16 and SPD 2 - shooting two bullets in 12 seconds - is not realistic. Treating SA's as AF3 allowing 6 aimed shots for a proficient (WF, but not highly trained) is still very slow... And the OP was about the fact that the rate of fire between a sniper weapon and DMR didn't seem right - that the bolt action was firing just as fast as a semi auto. So my post saying that if you want to give the SA a different feel, bump up the rate of fire - is aimed at the original question and how our group has addressed it. Instead of slowing the bolt rifle down so that a bow & arrow is now faster to shoot. RL gunfights leaves enormous piles of empties behind. Hero, RAW, expends the same number of rounds for a bolt action as a semi auto as a bow & arrow. Which for my group, fails the giggle test.

The fact you would even ask that question tells me you have never been in combat. I will ignore the fact that is profoundly inappropriate. To much. 9 years, 6 months - US Army. To include deployments to: DS/DS Somalia Yugo As an experiment on the 'aimed' shooting, I had my 14 y/o take out the Marlin 1894CB .38/.357 LA. It holds 15 rds of .38. I set up 15 clay targets (about 4") at 10 yards with 1 foot between targets. I wouldn't say he has what I would look at as a RL equivalent of CSL's. He broke all 15 from a standing postion in 18 seconds from the beep on the timer. With his pump 20 gauge, he smashed 6 targets at that range at 3.9 seconds after the start beep. If you don't feel that a LA deserves AF2, that is fine. For a normal SPD 2 mook, that is four aimed shots in 12 seconds. Which is painfully easy to do and far slower than my 14 y/o managed. Now, firing 2 shots a second, aimed, in a sustained manner would be beyond his ability. But that would be 'suppressive fire' where all he would be doing is dumping rounds down a hallway or at a window - which he could manage. So if you feel that 4 aimed shots from a LA in 12 seconds is inappropriate for a mook - that is fine. Or that they could just hip shoot it down a hallway at 2 rounds a second - ok. For me, those numbers feel a bit more realistic.

I like the damage negation idea. Makes much more sense than raising the armor to levels that survive battleship main guns. And although the M1's armor hasn't been penetrated in combat - a battleship round would plow right on through. In fact, I have seen chunks knocked of M1's armor from clipping buildings while driving around a corner. For the tank, damage negation with a limit of 'only vs conventional weapons' would pretty much fit the bill. Rip it off, blast it with a sci-fi blaster, or peg it with a magic hammer - all bypass the defenses. But it would still stop a rifle, cannon, missile, etc. And for big objects (like the bridge), I tend to add in a fairly healthy amount of damage reduction (say 75% for GGB) so that you can damage it with a tank round. You are just going to need a lot of them.

I put in quite a bit of time shooting. Maybe a lot. The amount of time spent aiming is going to be nearly the same, whether you are shooting a rifle or bow. But the amount of time spent readying the shot will be vastly less with the rifle. Getting an arrow out of the quiver, nocked on the string, and drawn is nowhere as quick as working the bolt on a bolt action rifle. A lever action rifle or single action pistol is even faster. Pumps & double action handguns are nearly as fast as an autoloader. I would be more than happy to pit any of the 10-14 y/o kids that I teach Junior trapshooting to against an experienced archer to see who can get the most shots into a target in 5 seconds. I would be very interested to see any set of shooters, of equal training, where the archer can fire faster than a repeating firearm. There are archers who can shoot an arrow a second or better. They are highly trained. Jerry Miculek can fire a double action revolver as fast as an M60 GPMG... And on shooting twice in a second... I just shot doubles with the kids at the trap range yesterday with my old Winchester Model 12 pump shotgun. I can (about 80% of the time) break a pair or 4" targets moving different directions at 45 mph at a range of 40 (ish) yards in less than 1 second from the time they clear the trap. The 16 y/o who was up with me can do that same feat about 70% of the time.

Ever notice that most of those big, bad, and dangerous animals are slowly creeping (or not so slowly) toward extinction. Where mice are pretty much all over the place...

Just to add to the "The GM's Workload will be increased" thought. It sounds like you haven't spent a lot of time running Fantasy Hero. You will want to make sure that you have the system down cold and know the adventure you want to run forwards/backwards - as any 'downtime' on your part is not going to be filled in with player banter and discussions. If you have to spend much time at all looking through books or browsing on your laptop - it is going to have a big impact in the flow of play. If you are waiting while the player wrestles with a huge decsion - that is angst. If they are waiting for you to look something up - that's boredom...

To me that wouldn't feel very (ok, forgive me...), real. That makes a lever action gun, or pump action - no faster than a bow & arrow. They are much faster. I have gone the route of letting pump/lever guns/double action be AF2 and SA weapons be AF3. This lets me as GM (ok, I'm still 4e) use the supression fire rules for the gangsters who just unload huge amounts of ammo in a short amount of time. Even the SPD 2 mook can empty his Glock in no time at all treated this way. Older single action revolvers and bolt actions rifles don't need reload time (like a bow), but still feel slow and can't use 'suppression' to hose down an area (which a person with a semi auto weapon can actually do fairly well). But that is just me.

Nope. Tobacco companies...

This really could be a touchy topic. The Oklahoma City bombing killed and wounded around 800 people and resulted in a slew of legistlation - some of which made it easier to execute those convicted of such crimes. 9/11 precipitated the invasion of a country by the US to eliminate the source of a perceived threat. A powerful villian could create havoc equal to those occurrences. And would probably create responses much like them. Many laws to deal with the issue. And quite likely an attempt to proactively eliminate future threats.