From: trip@cco.caltech.edu (Trip)
Subject: Re: Hero System damage
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 22:32:55 GMT

PCHEM14@Zeus.unomaha.edu (FALL88) writes:

>trip@cco.caltech.edu writes:

>>Minor nit: Weapon damage isn't 'system'. It's world background. The
>>fact that it's for the 'real world' doesn't change that. It just makes
>>errors more obnoxious.

>>I think the best way to fix this is to increase the upper end damage.
>>The book drastically underrates military weapons and armor. 20 Def
>>(even hardened) is ludicrous for a tank. 50 Def is probably more
>>reasonable.  Tank guns, of course, should be studly enough to punch
>>through that.

>Since weapon damage is world background, the tank defense/offense may
>vary depending on whether you want supers to be able to confront tanks
>directly or whether tanks are so potent that this is not possible.  At
>20 DEF, a high point super may be able to confront it directly in a
>brick-esque comic style.  At DEF 50, you'd have to be playing
>characters way out of the intended realm of the game to confront it in
>such a manner.  So it changes what supers are in the game world.

Verily. That's why they made the numbers so small: to have paranormals
competitive with the military while keeping them on a scale related to
normal humans. The numbers in the book are for the genre where
paranormals routinely demolish buildings and rend tanks tread from
tread. If you want a more 'realistic' game (as is appropriate for many
of the heroic-level games), heavy weapons and armor need to be vastly
upgraded. Multiplying the Def of all inanimate objects by 2 or 3
wouldn't be out of line either.

>In a game where, say, 'Superman' has a resistant PD of 40, tanks
>obviously don't have a 50, or even 40.  More like 25-30, if that.
>Otherwise, we change what 'Superman' is.

Irrelevant aside:  I wouldn't assign Superman a PD, actually. I've
always thought 'Invulnerability (tm)' should be bought as Desolid.
Sure, you have to buy a lot of your other powers Affects Solid, but
just writing bigger and bigger numbers on your character sheet always
seems kind of tacky. ("I'm invulnerable: I have 42 PD & ED!" "Oh yah?
Well, I'm more invulnerable than you because I have 97 PD & ED!")

>As to the implications of expanding the damage to tank guns being able
>to damage 50 DEF tanks, this sounds like 16d6 killing attacks.  Pretty
>hefty, leaves lots of space for handguns.  How much do we really want
>stuff like that to do though?

Anyone who is at all on the same scale as human beings who is hit by a
tank gun is going to be gone. 16d6 RKA => 56 Body average, which takes
a normal to -30. This is a fair approximation of vaporized.

>Depends on your game, especially your house rules on how damage is
>applied.  I choose to stick to an old 'sudden death' house rule, saying
>that any attack that scores your BODY in a single hit kills you
>outright. [...] If you use the existing .44 magnum (2d6 K, +1 stun x),
>then you'll score an instant kill 42% of the time.  Make it so much as
>2d6+1, and you expand it to 58%.  Anything past that is starting to get
>to be simply too vicious, even by 'real world' type standards.

That's already too vicious. My understanding is that only about 20% of
people shot with small arms actually croak, and most of them probably
don't die instantly.

>However, if you don't have such a rule, or consider 10 BODY to be
>average, or both, it gets more difficult.  With 10 BODY average people
>and no sudden death rule, it becomes impossible to kill a normal with a
>single shot from a .44 magnum without resorting to hit location rules
>(which does not really help, because it just says you can't kill
>someone with a shot to the chest).

Someone at 0 Body is mortally wounded, remember, and will die if not
given medical attention PDQ. If you have rules for bleeding at positive
Body (don't use the ones in the book; they suck), it's even easier.

Note also that 'chest' is considered to be the miscellaneous muscle and
lungs and whatnot. The heart is 'vitals'. This works fairly well: a
shot through the lungs or diaphragm isn't going to be instantly fatal,
but may do you in through blood loss, respiratory failure, or infection
later.

Trip				|   And never leave a moment too soon
President, ECNG			|   Never waste a hot afternoon
(trip@cobalt.cco.caltech.edu)	|   Nobody's on nobody's side
				|			-_Chess_
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp