Quote:
Originally Posted by Bathawk
So the question is, is there a point where blunt drama becomes superfluous?
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Yes. My personal limit is about 2 minutes of reality TV. ;)
More seriously, at some point you inflict so much damage that you vaporize your target. Any damage beyond that is wasted.
As a real-world data point, it takes 2-4 hours at 1300-1800 *F to cremate a 150 lb. human body. That gives you an estimate of the amount of energy required to turn a human to ash. Lets assume that's constant exposure to a fire hex for 3 hours. That would inflict 1d-1 HP/sec. (2.5 HP of damage on average) for 10,800 sec., or 27000 HP.
Realistically, average fire temperature is a bit lower than temperatures used in a crematorium and heat in an enclosed furnace will be more efficient at inflicting damage, but good enough as an estimate.
As a second data point, people were vaporized at about 30 yards from the epicenter of the Hiroshima bomb (and possibly up to 880 yards away). Using stats from High Tech, that would be ~2330 HP of explosive crushing & ~2275 HP of burn damage, or ~4600 HP total at 30 yards, or ~233 HP explosive crushing & ~77 burn damage, or ~310 HP total at 880 yards (or ~525 HP total at maximum damage).
Assuming a HP 10 human, that means that continuous exposure to fire sufficient to reduce HP to HP x -2700 or sudden exposure to heat and blast sufficient to reduce HP to HP x -460 is good enough to vaporize, and reducing someone to -30 x HP is possibly good enough to vaporize.
The damage estimates for heat damage for nuclear bombs in High Tech might be a bit low for objects close to the blast, because the intense burst of ionizing radiation would also heat the victim.
As a dumb guess, whole body kinetic damage sufficient to reduce a living victim to HP x -100 will produce a "fine red mist" vs. scattered body parts which might still yield viable tissue. The same amount of thermal damage + blast effects results in true vaporization, or otherwise turn the victim into ash.
Whole body thermal damage sufficient to reduce a victim to HP x -30 is probably good enough to destroy DNA and leave a carbonized corpse. Toxic damage sufficient to reduce the victim to HP x -30 might have the same effect.