Throwing Cars [Supers]

[Ra's Head]

I have some questions about a pretty common superhero attack. It is pretty common for bricks and such to throw cars at each other. I am using Supers and Basic as my main references. Here is the basic scenario:

Character has super strength 29/90, if she spends an FP, she can lift a motorcycle (0.5 tons) with her basic lift of 1,620 lb. Looking at B355, this is a weight ratio of about .6 so she can throw the thing 90*0.7 = 63 yds! That is really far. Anyone she hits with that will take her thr damage plus 1 per die so 10d+10. This is 45 damage on average which is pretty lethal to a person and it also pretty much wrecks the bike. Assuming I did this right, this seems pretty good.

Now, lets say she decides to throw a car. A car weighs 3,600 lb so she needs two hands, but she can do it. The weight ratio is 2.2 so she can throw it 90*0.25=22 yds! That is still really far. However, since it is more than 2 times BL, it will only do 10d-5 damage to something it hits. I get that she throws the motorcycle with greater velocity so the damage is higher, but it seems odd that the car does less damage. I want to make sure I am not missing anything important.

Lastly, she can heave and drop the car on someone nearby, which would be treated like a collision. This is based on Supers 121 and would do the cars HP/20 (53/20) or 3d, which is way less than the above options. In fact, it may not even knock the target unconscious, which seems weird if I imagine a car getting dropped on me. That seems like a very lethal prospect, am I missing something?

Follow up questions:
1: Using super strength to pick up and throw an object requires 1 FP for the pickup and 1 FP for the throw, right? If it takes multiple seconds to lift, each second costs an FP? Or is the entire throw all considered one action and costs one FP?

2: Given that throwing objects broadly does thr damage, and assuming training in unarmed combat, punches are doing thr damage, what is the advantage to chucking large objects? Is there any other than attacking at range?

3: If you are telekinetic and can use TK to lift and throw objects, at least at short ranges it seems you are better off using TK punches instead of picking up objects to throw. That is ok, but it feels like supers in comics like to throw objects with TK more than punch with it so I was curious if that is just a difference with GURPS and 'reality' or if there was more to it.

Thanks for your help, I am just trying to get a hold on this.

[Maz]

Your numbers seem correct. And I agree they are stupid...


If I were to run a supers game I would probably just classify various objects as weapons; give them a min ST and a damage bonus. But let the damage bonus be "per die" not a flat bonus.

You could keep it really simple and just have "small-", "average-" and "big-" vehicles. Each requiring a higher ST to use and giving +1, +2 and +3 damage bonus per die. And a range of STx0.8, STx0.4, STx0.1.

You could even let this be relative. So what count as "small" is something within BL. Average is BLx2. And Big is BLx4 (but maybe require 2 sec to cast it).


(Warning, these numbers is just off the top of my head and to give more oompf for bigger objects. But based on the experiences I have with supers in RPG (GURPS or not) you do not want too fiddly rules when it comes to picking up stuff ans smashing other supers with it... in fact the last supers game I played the only benefit of picking of stuff was you could do swing damage with it... didn't matter much if it was a lightpole or a car... and it worked fine).

----

Btw. The "dropping a car on someone". I don't have supers. But it sounds like a 1y fall for the car: (HPx5)/100. 3d damage is a lot for only a 1y fall. I think what your imagining is more like smacking someone on top of their head with the vehicle... which would be better modelled by a large area swing attack.

[Dustin]

Going along with Maz here, I would treat large objects as area-effect swing attacks, so they do extra damage and are much more difficult to avoid.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Ra's Head

I have some questions about a pretty common superhero attack. It is pretty common for bricks and such to throw cars at each other. I am using Supers and Basic as my main references. Here is the basic scenario:

Character has super strength 29/90, if she spends an FP, she can lift a motorcycle (0.5 tons) with her basic lift of 1,620 lb. Looking at B355, this is a weight ratio of about .6 so she can throw the thing 90*0.7 = 63 yds! That is really far. Anyone she hits with that will take her thr damage plus 1 per die so 10d+10. This is 45 damage on average which is pretty lethal to a person and it also pretty much wrecks the bike. Assuming I did this right, this seems pretty good.

Now, lets say she decides to throw a car. A car weighs 3,600 lb so she needs two hands, but she can do it. The weight ratio is 2.2 so she can throw it 90*0.25=22 yds! That is still really far. However, since it is more than 2 times BL, it will only do 10d-5 damage to something it hits. I get that she throws the motorcycle with greater velocity so the damage is higher, but it seems odd that the car does less damage. I want to make sure I am not missing anything important.

Lastly, she can heave and drop the car on someone nearby, which would be treated like a collision. This is based on Supers 121 and would do the cars HP/20 (53/20) or 3d, which is way less than the above options. In fact, it may not even knock the target unconscious, which seems weird if I imagine a car getting dropped on me. That seems like a very lethal prospect, am I missing something?

Follow up questions:
1: Using super strength to pick up and throw an object requires 1 FP for the pickup and 1 FP for the throw, right? If it takes multiple seconds to lift, each second costs an FP? Or is the entire throw all considered one action and costs one FP?

2: Given that throwing objects broadly does thr damage, and assuming training in unarmed combat, punches are doing thr damage, what is the advantage to chucking large objects? Is there any other than attacking at range?

3: If you are telekinetic and can use TK to lift and throw objects, at least at short ranges it seems you are better off using TK punches instead of picking up objects to throw. That is ok, but it feels like supers in comics like to throw objects with TK more than punch with it so I was curious if that is just a difference with GURPS and 'reality' or if there was more to it.

Thanks for your help, I am just trying to get a hold on this.

Like Maz, I don't have Supers, but I agree that the collision damage for heaving and dropping the car equates to a drop from 1 yard (3 feet). I don't think it's unreasonable for it to do that "little" damage. The character is just lifting the car to waist height and then letting gravity do the dirty work. He isn't using his own ST to add impetus to the vehicle, so it's perfectly reasonably for the vehicle to do less damage.

Now about that "little" 3d of damage, a bit more than 50% of the time a HT 10 character with no DR is going to go to 0 HT as a result of that "heave and drop". Slightly less than 0.5% of the time, the character will be very lucky and get off with the minimal damage of 3, taking his HT down to 7. For a normal HT 10 character, 3 HT is significant damage. Granted 3d damage is unlikely to outright kill the character absent other factors, like Bleeding.

OTOH, a "heave and drop" that gets the vehicle up to 2 yards (6 feet) does (HP x 7)/100 = 4d damage. The chance of not taking at least 10 points of damage drops to about 1 in 12 (121/1296) and the chance of taking only minimal damage of 4 drops to less than 0.1%.

Finally, if we call heaving the car overhead before dropping it 3 yards (9 feet), the vehicle does 5d damage. Colloquially, even getting the minimal 5 damage "half-kills" the character and there is substantial risk of outright killing the character by taking him to -1 x HP.

[Ra's Head]

Thanks for the replies. Yes, the supers page reference is basically a 1 yd fall. It would only come into play if you didn't actually have the strength to throw the object effectively I think.

I will probably group objects together into size bands like Maz suggests and use the throwing calculations as a guide, but not as gospel. I plan to pre-calculate values for each size band for any PC that can actually throw such things so that the players have an idea what that will do and we won't have to calculate on the fly (hopefully).

I have never really used the throwing rules before, so I appreciate the double check on what I was doing.

[Nereidalbel]

Dealing less damage when throwing something above your BL is quite realistic, honestly.

Of course, if you give the car-tossing bricks one level of Super Throw, that 10d-5 for the car becomes 10d+15, and the range increases to 44 yards. The car probably should either have a bonus to hit with or a penalty to dodge, due to its SM, though.

[Refplace]

When I wrote and submitted an article for Supers one of the things I pointed out was the value of pinning people by dropping heavy objects on them.

[AlexanderHowl]

I imagine that most normal people would also start to suffocate if they were trapped beneath a car.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Refplace

When I wrote and submitted an article for Supers one of the things I pointed out was the value of pinning people by dropping heavy objects on them.

GURPS doesn't have rules for this*, but be wary of crush damage.




* That I know of.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

I imagine that most normal people would also start to suffocate if they were trapped beneath a car.

Certainly a possibility! I did not include that but I probably should have.

Originally Posted by evileeyore

GURPS doesn't have rules for this*, but be wary of crush damage.




* That I know of.

They would had the article been published :)
More seriously they actually do, at least most of the core is there. I just consolidated and tweaked them a bit for the circumstances.