Yansuf

Re: Calling all lawyers--Supers and unique legal issues

Case no 3 relates to the vexed question of double jeopardy and whether it exists for your legal setup.

 

Mr Justice is accused of murder and brought before the courts, a Grand Jury deciding that there was enough evidence to warrent a trial. The evidence is circumstantial and neither the Prosecution nor the Defence have a particularly strong case. On the basis of this Mr Justice he is acquitted. The police look at the case again. some time later they arrest Roderick James. Again the evidence is circumstantial. Lo and behold the Newspapers pull a real coup in outing Roderick James as Mr Justice, a fact he reluctantly confirms. Now here is the thing. Can he be tried for the same murder that his alter ego wa acquitted of due to Double Jeopardy ?

Double does apply, it is "black letter" law. No different from current reality.

Re: Icons - The Costume and Superpowers Store

"I think I'll take this one."

 

"Ah yes, 'The Saint.' This particular outfit come with... conditions."

 

"Conditions?"

 

"Yes. You must pay for it by stealing from the criminal and corrupt and giving all of the proceeds to those whom need it - charities, churches, orphanages, and such."

 

"Why not call it the Robin Hood?"

 

"Too cliche."

 

"Gotcha."

Actually the Saint (Simon Templar) kept 10%.

Re: Historical Late Medieval Period RPG

If you can find a copy of first or second edition Chivalry & Sorcery, they had a lot of good info.

If you have a 50 point multi-power, with two 30 point (variable) slots, can you use them both at full power if you push the multi-power by 10 points at the cost of 10 end?

Re: Which is easier to swing, an axe or a sword?

While I think most of what has been presented so far is basically true, I must protest that it is really more complicated.

Great swords (2 handers) defeat armor quite well; "bastard" (hand and a half) swords do so fairly well. But the axe concentrates weight near the end so will always strike with more force than a sword of equal weight.

Swords are easier to use effectively in defense, but most ancient cultures (not all) used shields as the main defense, so the weapon was mostly offense regardless of whether it was an axe or a sword.

Regarding the comment that knives, and axes are still used but swords are not; knives and axes are kept more for their use as tools with weapons use as a secondary. Swords are lousy tools for anything but melee.

Re: Electro Magnetic Pulse

I would think dispell is more appropriate.

Dispell technology based on solid state electronics.

Re: Genetically engineered leaders?

Remember, one man's utopia is another man's dystopia!

Re: Standard Military Gear circa WWII

Going back to the original question, what kind of duty the soldier would be given would be a very big factor in answering this.

Also if you would give the nationality of the soldier it would simplify things.

Re: Time Traveller in 1928

Of course' date=' this being Hollywood, there are people auditioning for parts. It could be this person was rehearsing a scene where she's talking on the telephone. She just happened to be rehearsing while walking somewhere (perhaps to said audition) and was using some object as a prop.[/quote']

 

Aw, you're no fun.

A reasonable explanation?

What is the world coming to?

Re: One person versus a starship?

Both of these points are untrue. While medieval steel was in general, not as good quality as modern steel - and certainly not as consistent - the best smiths were able to generate steel of hardness similar to modern steel. You're also wrong about thickness: the classic works on the subject of medival armour penetration (at least in English) are Hardy and Williams. Hardy measured multiple breastplates from the 14th and 15th century and found that the average was 2.3-3.2 mm, median for center front 2.8 mm. Williams measured different armours including a number of earlier suits and found they ranged from 1.5-2.5 mm, with a 2.1 mm median. so the median for armours was actually almost twice the thickness you suggest was the maximum (that's for Breastplates: Cuisees and guardbraces were typically thinner, Armets and simlar helmets significantly thicker).

 

If you are inteesed in the topic, I can recommend Robett Hardy's Longbow: A Social and Military History and Alan Williams The Knight and the Blast Furnace: A History of the Metallurgy of Armour in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period.

 

Edit - oh and as an aside, a musket generates about 3000 J of energy at muzzle - more than most modern small arms. The advantage of a modern assault rifle is not greater penetrating power (it doesn't, in fact, have that) but finer machining and consistently performing ammo, meaning much better accuracy, much, much lighter weight, faster firing and reloading times and ammo that you can carry around without sweating too much about it getting damp. Indeed, these advantages (apart from the ammo) are why the assault rifle replaced the much more powerful and longer ranged bolt action rifles in the first place. It's about utility, not KE.

 

 

 

Which means in fact that pulp era bullet proof vests were in fact the same thickness as the better quality medieval armour ...

 

 

 

How do you figure that? The thickness overlaps and the quality of the old pulp era bulletproof vests - often using metal that was poorly tempered, if it was tempered at all - was not a great deal better than the medieval/renaissance equivalent. Of the suits measured by Williams about 10% were of medium carbon content, heat tempered with less than 0.4% slag. These had VPH (Vickers Pyramidal Hardness) of 366-374, giving resistance to penetration about 50% greater than modern mild steel. Of course, it fair to mention that about 40% of the armour of the lower class troops he measured was simply iron, with VPN of 130-175 and perhaps half the ability to resist penetration of modern mild steel.

 

Still we can do better than that: Williams and Krenz did a series of calculations on the energy used to make dents in proofed armour. These vary widely (as does the armour: I notice that in one case the breastplate here is 7.7 mm thick! More than 4 times your supposed maximum, though to be fair, it's renaissance rather than medieval). Still, we can see that the stopping power of some of these armours was well in excess of 700 joules - not enough to stop a Casull, but probably enough to stop the bullet from a .357 magnum at close range. Though not all medieval armour was of that quality ... some of it without doubt was.

 

I'm not trying to suggest that medieval style armour is an effective substitute for modern body armour - clearly it isn't! For a start, modern rifles would blow clean through the best medieval armour even at decent ranges (the good ol' Lee Enfeld - my first rifle - generates 3000+ joules at muzzle: more than enough to defeat any of these armours). But you are underestimating the effectiveness of these, many of which are demonstrably good enough to stop modern handguns and some carbines. That suggests that modern weapons should get AP for free versus older armour of this type: that'd model reality closely enough for a working solution.

 

cheers, Mark

Sorry to disagree.

Hardy & Williams were dealing with Jousting Armor, not field armor. Measurements of field plate at the Higgins Museum in Worchester MA are where I got my figures.

Having worn 16 gauge steel plate (SCA) and having worn flak vest plus full pack (army) I can assure you plate of over 2 mm thickness (steel) would not allow a man to vault onto his horse, which was one of the critical tests for knighthood.

Kinetic energy is NOT all that matters for penetration. To really get into why is beyond scope of this forum, but if you look at actual test data you will quickly see that energy is only a small part. (FMJ bullets penetrate much better than lead balls.)

Modern rifles do have much more penetration than any black powder musket.

And hardness is not all that matters for armor. Pre-industrial revolution steel was generally much weaker in strength (both yield and tensile) and had lower toughness than modern steel. The 0.25" number for minimum steel to stop small arms assumes structural steel, which is not hardened, but is very tough.

If you have a source for tests of medieval (either actual or recreation) armor being able to resist modern firearms, please give the source. I have never seen one, and would have GR8 difficulty believing it if I did read it.

Re: A funny challenge for a Damsel Brick

Let's see what I can make the palindromedary cough up...

 

[ATTACH]37259[/ATTACH]

 

You can probably buy END and REC down, and if you want to munchkinize, drop the 8 pts or so I put into professional skills and invest in a Bimbo martial art

Grab : Gimme a hug!

Escape : Hey, what kinda girl do you think I am?

Throw : Got you where I want you!

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Copyright Palindromedary Enterprises

Instead of throw, I would use Slap: How dare you!

Re: Presti's Weapon Rebuilds

Real European chain weapons will not hit the user unless he is a fool.

The chain is kept shorter than the haft, so by holding the end of the haft pointed away from you the weapon cannot hit you.

Poorly researched replicas of such weapons usually have the chain far too long.

Not being familiar enough with Asian weapons, I will not comment on them.

Re: Supergenius from Fringe **SPOLIERS**

Yeah' date=' it's much like that showm "Numb3ers." Statistics is all well and good, but it's very, very, very, very unlikely to narrow things down to a single tangible possibility every stinking time. If you want some good statistics fiction, read Asimov's Foundation: psychohistory can predict the overall trends of galactic society, but that's only because the influence of individual human decisions and physical events are completely overwhelmed by enormous scale and numbers.[/quote']

 

And even there, the mule screwed it up!

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine

But why is he carrying a butter knife instead of a sword?

It looks more like a machete to me.

Re: One person versus a starship?

Actually the best quality plate provides pretty decent protection against bullets - certainly enough to stop musket fire, and at range, enough to deflect modern small arms fire. It's also hot, heavy and requires a lot of maintenance. Modern armour is a far better match for a modern soldier's needs, of course.

 

cheers, Mark

Stopping fire from black powder muskets does NOT equate to reasonable defense against modern firearms.

Rule of thumb from WWII period: it requires 0.25" (6.35 mm) of steel to defend against a rifle with standard military (FMJ) ammo.

WWII rifles are generally 2d6+1 RKA in HERO. Medieval plate armor thickness maxes out at around 1.6 mm, and the material was not as strong as early 20th century steel.

Pulp era (1920's to WWII) "bullet proof" vests used much better steel plates, which tended to be around 3 to 3.5 mm thick. These vests would provide reasonable protection from pistols, but not from rifles. In fact, when the "357 Magnum" first came out, it was touted as able to penetrate "bullet proof" vests.

Now HERO rules do not reflect reality well here: 45 auto rounds tend to do more damage to a human than 9 mm parabellum rounds do, but the latter have better penetration. Still, the pulp "bullet proof" vest is around rPD=6. So against 20th century firearms old plate armor would be at most rPD=2, probably rPD=1 for most.

Of course, the non-resistant PD would be higher; as would its protection against unpowered weapons such as knives, arrows, etc.

Re: Alternate Timeline Campaign

The Cult of Mars 2

 

In the aftermath of the Great War came The Martian Plague. As the fighting men from across the globe returned from the War to End All Wars, a mysterious disease began to infect millions of people. While medical professionals believes it to be based on influenza, the public at large was convinced that the cause was a weapon left behind by the Martians, and used by their worshipers.

 

The death of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt in 1919, who was considered the front runner for the 1920 Presidental Election, convinced many that the plague was deliberate. The take over of Russia by Lenin and his Communist movement was seen by many in the West as an action of pro-martian anarchy. The term "Red Menace" began to have a dual meaning.

Now this I like!

Re: UN to Appoint First Ambassador to Space Aliens

Actually' date=' historically it's a deeper question than that. If the aliens -- or some other group of beings you encounter for the first time -- are not legally human, then killing them isn't homicide.[/quote']

 

But it may well be murder. Depends on where you are, and the exact wording of the law.

In New Hampshire, the definition of murder does not use the word homicide or refer to "human", it uses the term "person."

 

630:1-a First Degree Murder. –

I. A person is guilty of murder in the first degree if he:

(a) Purposely causes the death of another; or

( Knowingly causes the death of:

(1) Another before, after, while engaged in the commission of, or while attempting to commit felonious sexual assault as defined in RSA 632-A:3;

(2) Another before, after, while engaged in the commission of, or while attempting to commit robbery or burglary while armed with a deadly weapon, the death being caused by the use of such weapon;

(3) Another in perpetrating or attempting to perpetrate arson as defined in RSA 634:1, I, II, or III;

(4) The president or president-elect or vice-president or vice-president-elect of the United States, the governor or governor-elect of New Hampshire or any state or any member or member-elect of the congress of the United States, or any candidate for such office after such candidate has been nominated at his party's primary, when such killing is motivated by knowledge of the foregoing capacity of the victim.

II. For the purpose of RSA 630:1-a, I(a), ""purposely'' shall mean that the actor's conscious object is the death of another, and that his act or acts in furtherance of that object were deliberate and premeditated.

Re: Guess the inspiration behind this superteam!

Flying Kick: Acrobatic martial artist with Superleap

 

Blue Bolt: Mutant energy projector who fires laser beams

 

Shield: Another powerful martial artist with an impenetrable shield he can use to block attacks or hurl with great skill

 

Scarlet Swift: A speedster

 

The Great Grappler: A four armed brick who specializes in grabbing

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary thinks this will be hard to guess

Well, Shield and Scarlet Swift sound like Captain America and Quicksilver, so I tried various combinations of the Avengers; but none worked out.

Wanna give a hint?

Re: Zeppelins

Has anyone tried this game yet? It looks really cool.

I did a play test session at Gencon. It was interesting. I intend to buy the game when it comes out.

Re: Telepathic Hearing

You could make mental defense increase the difficulty of the Int roll. For example, with a normal Int roll of 13, to read someone with 6 points mental defense the required roll is 13-6=7.

Re: White Dwarfs

I believe it is "any suitably advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"

That is "Clark's Law".

Re: White Dwarfs

Out of curiosity, what is "Clark's Maxim"?

Re: Doc Savage Adventures that never were

This is a fan site for us frustrated Doc Savage fans:

 

http://www.miscmayhemprods.com/doc/

 

Yeah, don't we wish.

I would love to read some of those.

Right after i see the movie "The Night the Reindeer Died."

Re: Champions Villians Book I pdf now available in hero online store

I suspect that's a holdover from converting the 5th ed. versions. Plus there is the suggestion in 6th that characters built on a lot of points could have more than 100 points in complications. I think the point of the change in 6th was to simplify/streamline things for both players and GMs.

Perfectly reasonable explanation. But why do the sheets not show the correct number?

Re: Campaign Concept Source: "No Ordinary Family"

Dad - ...(is he an actual police man or does he just work there?)

He is a civilian employee, not a police officer.