Knowing Your Own Strength - Tank Smasher

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Infornific

If I was running a supers game and trying to keep damage in a limited range, I'd probably give the higher powered characters surge type abilities - Power Blow for bricks, Fatigue burning attacks for blasters, etc - to represent maximum firepower and otherwise set up the rules to keep routine damage more modest.

I wouldn't use Power Blow, I'd buy ST with the Costs FP limitation, just like you're making the Innate Attack guy buy each level (with Costs FP) instead of giving him an IA multiplying skill.

Seriously, Power Blow is just wacky.

[Bruno]

The other option, of course, is to just allow Power Blow like skills for things like Innate Attack.

Since Power Blow doubles your effective ST, not your damage dice, the Innate Attack version shouldn't give you a flat doubling/tripling of IA levels. Flat doubling/tripling make it way better than the ST version, which will just make the disconnect between the two ways of dealing damage worse. I haven't done the math to see what the equivalent is, but definitely keep an eye on the effect on Thrust damage, not on the actual ST level.

[naloth]

Originally Posted by Infornific

The problem is that in the comics the Hulk can smash tanks and do pretty impressive property damage but he'll be running around the same fight scenes as squishy normal humans like Hawkeye. Somehow, the more fragile characters never get hit with any attacks that will squash them flat.

That's an issue I would tackle in two ways:

First, characters like Hawkeye can undoubtedly afford some survival advantages beyond that of a normal human (luck, buying success, perhaps flesh wound rules, etc) to survive stuff that would outright squish him. GURPS has those options now, and if you're taking an essentially normal human along side another character like the hulk (or facing opponents in that range) you should definite invest if you want to survive.

Second, GURPS lethality could be dialed down a bit without compromising any of its realistic properties. There's quite a few reasons to believe that a x2 increase in lifting power wouldn't translate from a bit of damage to turning people into a red mist. The proposal to "reign in" ST/HP/dmg was to keep the ranges manageable, affordable, and more survivable.

GURPS by its nature doesn't really handle that well. <snip> GURPS tends to default closer to reality, which is to say someone or something that can dent a tank can splatter a normal human.

Arguably because it's set up not to, rather than because it can't do both.

What I proposed would look more like this:
Human ST 10
Spidey ST 30 (10ish ton lift) 5d+2 thr (punch 5d+5)
Thing/Colossus ST 40 (100ish ton lift) 7d (punch w/brawling 7d+14 or 11d w/bonuses)
Assault Rifle (formerly ~7d/shot) now does 4d/shot
The basic book tank [DR 700, 300 HP, main gun does 6dx30(2), machine gun 7d] becomes DR 37ish, HP33ish, main gun that does ~9d(2), machine gun ~4d/shot

Spidey's ST is neither too cheap for an innate attack or the benefits it gives him (quite a bit of HP and lifting power) at 200ish points. After you spend another 160-200 on DX, more on web shooters, high IQ, spidey sense, enhanced move/dodge, and survival advantages he rounds out to about 1k points.

Thing/Colossus comes about the same or cheaper by having a bit more ST, buying some DR (20ish), and maybe a few levels of IT:DR.

The new damage/defense works out like this:

The normal human gets pasted quite easily by anything wanting to kill him.
-A single un-targeted Spidey punch can kill (~22 avg dmg) and will easily hospitalize a normal. Needless to say the 11d (~38 dmg) will turn most people into a smear.
- The machine gun (~14dmg per shot) will generally take 2-3 shots to kill someone (real life bears this out pretty well) without taking hit locations into account. A normal human could survive the tank's main gun (~32 dmg) ending up with a big hole or missing body parts, presumably because anti-tank rounds aren't good for small squishy targets.

Spidey can't easily hurt DR20+ and would presumably want to use an improvised weapon to up his damage a bit. As for taking hits he can survive a few non targeted bullets from a machine gun, a hit from the anti-tank gun, or a solid hit from either of our ST40 bruisers. Any of those would put him negative, but not be life threatening. Given that many of his points are in dodging rather than taking hits, it's a reasonable compromise. Spidey outlasts opponents by not being hit rather than absorbing damage.

The ST40 bruisers have enough damage to slowly pound on the front tank's armor (which mirrors comics fairly accurately - they bend turrets, rip off small pieces, or hit them multiple times in the durable sections, do an AoA for more damage) and more than enough damage to out after weaker parts. Against each other ST40 doing ~11d damage against DR20 works out to 18 damage or just under 1/2 their HP. That's proportionally similar to two regular human fighters (1d-2 thr, +2 karate = 1d) might do to each other punching it out. Edit: and the anti-tank gun does a respectable ~22 damage per hit to our ST40 DR20 guys, which is survivable but not something they would want to get hit repeatably with.

Splatter (death) still happens easily enough, but if you jiggle the scale you can still get aesthetically pleasing fights with between technology and Supers without having to buy insanely high levels.

[naloth]

Here’s an easier to understand comparison:

What we have now:
Human: ST 10, thr 1d-2, no DR. Total 0 points.
Spidey type: ST 29/90 [275], BL 1620 lbs, thr 10d, IT:DR/3 [75]. Total 350 points
Bruiser (Thing/Colossus): ST 32/320 [375], BL 10 tons, thr 33d, IT:DR/10 [150]. Total 525 points.
Assault rifle 7d, Main tank turret 6dx30 (2).
Tank DR 700, HP 300

Proposal 2 (repriced ST, ala post #66)
Human: ST 10, thr 1d-2, no DR. Total 0 points.
Spidey type: ST100 [300], BL 1 ton, thr 11d: Total 300 points
Bruiser: ST 320 [460], BL 10 tons, thr 33d: Total 560 points.

Proposal 3 (rescale ST, DR, and item stats)
Human: ST 10, thr 1d-2, no DR. Total 0 points.
Spidey type: ST30 [200], BL 1 ton, thr 5d+2d: Total 200 points
Bruiser: ST 40 [300], BL 10 tons, thr 11d: Total 300 points.
Restated assault rifle 7d becomes 4d.
Restated main tank turret from 6dx30 (2) to 9d(2).
Restated tank DR 700, HP300 becomes DR 37, HP 33.

Presumably all characters will have at least brawling at DX+1 for +1/die and it’s somewhat appropriate to restrict the finer fighting arts from high ST (no schools that teach techniques for people that can bench more than ton).

- Human v human doesn’t change at all.

- Spidey v human is much less deadly doing 5d+7 instead of either 10d+8 or 11d+9, which from a comics perspective works out. He has hit a few people at full strength and crippling them without hitting the –HPx5 instant death cap in a single blow.
- Spidey v Spidey does works about the same using all 3 models. [10d+8]/3 is 14ish or about half the current versions 29 HP. 11d+9 is ~47 which would be just under half proposal #2’s 100 HP. 5d+7 works out ~24 which is a serious blow (under 2/3rd HP) making the last mirror match more dangerous but still not lethal.
- Spidey v Bruiser would do a fair amount of damage if the Bruiser didn’t have any DR. Presumably any bruiser would have enough DR to shrug off up to rifle fire (generally 10-20 DR) mitigating most of the damage. Conversely the Bruiser can hit Spidey for 146ish damage (49 after IT:DR) about halfway between 0 and –HP for both case one and two. In proposal 3, he’s hit for 47 – again about halfway between 0 and –HP.
- Against the Tank, the main gun does enough to mist Spidey (630 avg damage) in a single hit for both the current situation and HP100 Spidey. Against proposal 3, the main gun does closer to 32 damage, enough to drive him negative but not as badly as getting punched by the Bruiser. Spidey can’t really hurt the tank in any of the 3 cases, so I’m not going to dwell on it.

- Bruiser v human is less deadly going from a red mist to a few HT checks for survival. 33d+31 or about 146 puts upwards to HP24 down to -5xHP instantly and at pushed HP10 guy well below the -10xHP. The damage from proposal 3 is closer to 47; between -3xHP to -4xHP.
- Bruiser v Bruiser is about the same in all 3 given the above numbers. Each hit should knock off about half HP in the first 2 cases (15 against HP33 or 146 against HP146). The damage ratio is a bit more in proposal 3 (47 dmg vs HP40), although it’s expected that a Bruiser would have a bit of DR (20ish normally) to balance that out. For the first two situations DR20ish isn’t very significant against attacks going 21+ damage when you have IT:DR/10 (saves 2 HP) or huge pools of HP.
- When shot by the Tank, the main gun does enough to usually force a death check on the Bruiser and buying enough DR to stop that is very expensive. (DR100 costing a base 500 points would only reduce 50 damage after all allowing the other 580 through. The alternative is to buy supplemental IT:DR which alters how other fights work out.) Under the proposal 3 revision damage drops only about 2/3rds of the Bruisers health and even DR 20 would reduce it quite a bit more since each point of DR is more valuable (effectively log progression).
- The present or proposition 2 Bruiser can potentially damage a tank, though ST320 is only about 1/5 the damage to punch the front armor. He’ll need to pick it up and let falling damage actually injure either it or the people inside. Under proposal 3, the Bruiser can damage HP past the front armor doing about a 1/3 of its HP per hit (more with AoA for another +1 dmg/die), pick it up (like prior), or start ripping pieces off (contest of ST).

What does all this mean? A lot of the Supers aren’t going to be characters with high ST. Most of the X-men probably fit into the 9-16 range with perhaps a single level of IT:DR. For the present situation or even proposal 2, that means a single hit will at least maim if not kill them outright (-HPx5). It also means that to significantly injure (say half HP) even Spidey level bricks (without any DR) they need a very powerful (15d+) attack – which coincidentally will also outright kill other HP10-16 people. Proposal 3 is scaled that a 10d attack is impressive enough to down a Spidey level character or significantly injure a bruiser. A 5d attack with enhancements becomes a good middle range attack.

Comparing points costs: IA still scales faster than ST for pure damage. Everything a bit cheaper, but you don’t need absurdly high levels either. 100-150 points of DR will be strong protection. 300 points of DR gets you to battle tank levels of DR. Building the Fantastic Four becomes rather easy instead of a balance nightmare (strong blaster, force field/inviso girl, stretch brainy brick, super strong brick), and a 500 point mentalist probably will be of similar utility to the 500 point brick.

[chimchim]

Disclaimer not entirely serious post.

I read this thread from start to finish and all the way through my mind why on earth would a super engaging a t72 close enough to punch it not simply climb on top and punch through the paper thin armour on top lol.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by chimchim

Disclaimer not entirely serious post.

I read this thread from start to finish and all the way through my mind why on earth would a super engaging a t72 close enough to punch it not simply climb on top and punch through the paper thin armour on top lol.

I know you aren't serious, but I suspected this was going to pop up and it's worth addressing:

This argument (the situation is fine because nobody punches a tank on top) takes the problem VERY literally and in a specific fashion that ignores the broader problem that the tank example represents.
Supers face foes that are "as tough as a tank" (or a battleship, or whatever, as appropriate). Godzilla doesn't have a heavy front plate and thin armor everywhere else. Most giant robots appearing outside giant-robot-genre stories don't have nearly enough detail in them to have armor vary by facing, although it's pretty traditional for there to be a concealed hatch that weaker members of the team can use to sneak in while the big bricks are trying to keep it occupied.
Too, heavy-hitter super villains tear into bank vaults and through various armored structures. Nobody has to build a bank vault to drive drive around in! Your classic early 20th century bank vault door is about a yard thick of steel or iron. After the depression wrapped up there were less people trying to rob banks with brute force, and modern banks have moved to steel-clad reinforced concrete because it's cheaper; faced with metahumans I suspect vault armor would have advanced along with tank armor, and a vault can afford exceedingly thick walls.

The Teikoku Bank in Hiroshima had two bank vaults built by Mosler. They survived the atomic blast intact with all contents unharmed. The US military had a Mosler built in the Nevada nuclear test site to drop test nukes on, and it survived too.

[(E)]

This is slightly off topic but I was struck by the incongruity of punching a meter thick steel door with a 700mm long arm.

Edit: It leads to the thought how well does a punch scale up? Just the action of moving a body part X distance to strike something may have a maximum damage due to non strength related issues. This is just a thought and I know comic book reality handles thing differently.

[chimchim]

Originally Posted by Bruno

I know you aren't serious, but I suspected this was going to pop up and it's worth addressing:

This argument (the situation is fine because nobody punches a tank on top) takes the problem VERY literally and in a specific fashion that ignores the broader problem that the tank example represents.
Supers face foes that are "as tough as a tank" (or a battleship, or whatever, as appropriate). Godzilla doesn't have a heavy front plate and thin armor everywhere else. Most giant robots appearing outside giant-robot-genre stories don't have nearly enough detail in them to have armor vary by facing, although it's pretty traditional for there to be a concealed hatch that weaker members of the team can use to sneak in while the big bricks are trying to keep it occupied.
Too, heavy-hitter super villains tear into bank vaults and through various armored structures. Nobody has to build a bank vault to drive drive around in! Your classic early 20th century bank vault door is about a yard thick of steel or iron. After the depression wrapped up there were less people trying to rob banks with brute force, and modern banks have moved to steel-clad reinforced concrete because it's cheaper; faced with metahumans I suspect vault armor would have advanced along with tank armor, and a vault can afford exceedingly thick walls.

The Teikoku Bank in Hiroshima had two bank vaults built by Mosler. They survived the atomic blast intact with all contents unharmed. The US military had a Mosler built in the Nevada nuclear test site to drop test nukes on, and it survived too.

a

Holy krom 36 inches of steel what were bank robbers carrying in those days the uss texas?

Okay no more humour i honestly do not see a game as centred on realism as gurps is ever producing a truly satisfactory answer to this problem with out breaking something else.