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Old 05-12-2017, 12:18 AM   #48
Tomsdad
 
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
Default Re: High Amounts of non penetrating damage. Bullets VS Plate Carriers

Quote:
Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
It's not much momentum, but it's around 3.5 kJ force. A punch over 1 kJ is remarkable, so that rifle round should have more crushing damage than even a rather strong punch. The issue, of course, is that not all crushing damage is created equal - I believe a punch tends to have a good deal more momentum than a 5.56 NATO round, so the punch should cause more knockback. GURPS simply ties knockback to damage for the sake of simplicity, so things can fall apart a little here, but I don't think it does so overly much for the mild cinematic default of GURPS.
Your right, but I think that just really means you shouldn't be giving bullet Cr, but instead keeping them to Pi. Whoops, yes I'd been saying momentum for the last few posts but slipped to force in that last one, sorry ;-)



Quote:
Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
Indeed. Part of my planned Overhaul is to basically replace* the damage roll with a roll to represent hit placement, for a similar effect (as well as possibly some add-on effects - a bullet to the arm isn't very likely to cripple unless it hits the bone, in which case it's very likely to cripple if it has decent damage; effects of hit placement on whether an impaling weapon gets stuck are possible as well), and which also dictates the damage cap. As it stands, a low-damage roll with high-powered rifle still does the character's full HP in injury, while the Overhaul would change this to a glancing blow.
...
A couple of points:

Against a limb a rifle bullet won't do full HP in injury (it's capped at half HP*).

When it comes to rifle bullets even if they don't hit bone they can take a reasonably large chunk of flesh out (thanks in part to key holing**). However I do agree the practically automatic nature of them doing so is a problem. And shorter and less powerful pistol rounds are on average too capable of doing so as well.

One tweak here might be to apply doubling the threshold for dismembering / severing rule from HT "limb hits" (HT pg162) to the crippling threshold as well. That will not really effect a lot of rifle wounds, but will limit pistol rounds ability to do so a bit


*well OK half rounded up or half +1

**TBF This gets complicated as not all rifle rounds in all limbs will have the space/time to turn 90 degrees to get the largest wound track, lots of variables here! But equally crippling at it's most basic just means you disrupted the limb's ability to function enough for it not to be used. There are several ways you can do this in a limb without breaking a bone or ripping out entire muscles. But then that said limb's can keep working through a lot of damage as well (including broken bones)! Basically as ever with the effect of damage on people, lots of variables!

Either way If we're really looking at this I'd would adjust the crippling threshold for legs vs. arms, (legs and arms are rarely the same size/mass)

Last edited by Tomsdad; 05-12-2017 at 12:31 AM.
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