Quote Originally Posted by pendell View Post
Minor quibble: I have argued elsewhere on this forum that the explosion of a gate is roughly equivalent to a kiloton yield. Others with physics backgrounds agreed with me that the yield would be anywhere from half a kiloton to two kilotons.

So Carry2 is right in comparing the destruction of the Sapphire Gate to a "small nuclear explosion". That's not entirely accurate, because there would be no radiation damage. But it is roughly comparable. Not to a Hiroshima blast, but to that produced by an atomic
demolition munition .

O-chul's survival of being hit in the face by a concussive blast which would suddenly accelerate him from a standing stop to a high speed and propel him up an away for dozens, maybe hundreds of meters, then the sudden stop at the end, to say nothing of the extreme temperatures he experienced resulting in the obvious burn marks, is nothing short of miraculous. His survival is due to Rule of Funny, and the fact that as a high-level D&D character he is a superhero compared to the normal human population. He can take damage that can kill most men, as evidenced by his subsequent torture for the amusement of Team Evil.
I think it's pretty cool to try and draw a relation to real world examples of how big an explosion is, it can put it into context (although when it comes to bombs and explosives, I think we have a hard time imagining just how powerful it is either way).

What makes it difficult is that in D&D, characters are absurdly durable by real world standards. In the real world, if you're sword fighting someone and you take even one good hit, the fight is pretty much over, and recovery would likely take months (if you recover at all). In D&D characters can get hit repeatedly by swords and not even flinch. You can, quite literally, shoot a flaming meteor into someone's face and have them treat it as little more than a scratch.

It's pretty hard to then look at real world explosions, and how devastating they are to our bodies, as an analogy to what an explosion in D&D would do so someone. Given the absurd level of damage D&D characters can absorb compared to a real person, I wouldn't be surprised if you actually could drop a nuke on someone's head in D&D and have them go "Eh, I've had worse".