[Phoenix_Dragon]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Until bleeding kicks in the only immediate difference between these two wounds is that -5 mod on the knockdown roll. Now that's not insignificant, however if they manage to make there later HT roles to stay active, the guy with neck wound is actually better off RAW as he still has two legs!

No. I've gone through the comparison of events, but you're still leaving some out. There is an entire extra roll that you're leaving out, which has a big result on the chance of immediate incapacitation.

To be active the next turn, the guy who lost a leg simply has to make a single HT roll for knockdown to avoid being stunned. The guy with the neck wound must make both a HT-5 roll for knockdown (And if he fails to even make his normal HT, he's immediately unconscious), as well as a HT roll the next turn to not fall unconscious. He's much less likely to make those rolls and be active than the guy with the leg wound. Even if he does luck out and makes both those rolls, he's still rolling HT every single turn he's active to avoid passing out, something the leg-wound guy doesn't have to worry about. That's a lot of immediate effects you're trying to skip over.

EDIT: OK not all the above is true neck wound guy is worse off RAW. however the point about the same wound chopping a leg off but not chopping a head off stands.

As pointed out, this is at least partially because GURPS avoids instant-kill effects, and partially because, while severed limbs are pretty well documented, the historic research folk around here haven't found many (If any) credible cases of decapitation in combat conditions. In addition, he amount of damage dealt to a neck to cut it off would surely be lethal if delivered to the brain, but the brain location still gives rolls to survive, which would make a very strange disconnect that cutting into the neck is more lethal than burying that sword in their brain.

If anything, I'd stay GURPS is too generous toward dismemberment, rather than too stingy toward decapitation.

Now even decapitation isn't instant (as in same second) death, and we've heard the stories about aristocratic heads saying their prayers in the basket etc.

In GURPS terms, they were still dead. Same as how failing a consciousness roll might leave a character semi-conscious, writhing in pain, but unable to act.

However take that wound above. The HT10 chap left at -6 HP is surely going to bleed to death but its going to take him 2 mins, now so long as he can keep rolling his HT he can continue to fight with mods for less than 1/3hp but its not the going to be the last spasms of reflex (I'm picturing sleepy hollow here) I know muscle memory is a thing, but I think this might be taking it too far!

And you're the one taking it too far by putting in the strawman argument of "muscle memory" and "spasms of reflex" as relevant to someone alive and conscious at -6 HP. Those might be relevant if he were decapitated, but by RAW, he isn't. If the rules did result in decapitation from that, then he'd be dead an not moving. None of the cases that anyone is proposing, including yourself, would result in the scenario you list here, which makes it look like a completely irrelevant cheap shot.

Now it's a 24 point wound already putting him at less than -HP and he's rolling to stay alive every second.

You never have to roll every second to stay alive from any amount of HP loss.

The only immediate difference between a 16-point injury and a 24-point injury to the neck is that the 24-point injury has a single additional roll in order to act on the next turn, and the HT rolls to stay conscious are at -1 each turn. For a HT10 person, that means he went from having a 2.3% chance of acting next turn to a 0.9% chance. Chances of being immediately incapacitated (Unconscious or dead) are 75% for the 16-point injury and ~90% for the 24-point injury. And even if they somehow make it into the unlikely category of staying active through that wound, they still have a 50% or 62.5% chance of passing out each turn. This is compared to a 50% chance of the guy with the leg wound being able to act next turn, and only a 1.9% chance of him being immediately rendered unconscious. He's more than 20 times more likely to be able to act immediately than if he got hit in the neck with that 8-point attack, and almost 40 times more likely to not be rendered unconscious.

I think you are drastically under-valuing the effects the neck and face locations have by not considering these things. They are far closer to vitals and brain hits than to regular torso hits in terms of immediate incapacitation and impairment.

(For reference, an 8-point damage blow to the brain, dealing 24 injury, would leave a 0.7% chance of the target being able to act next turn, and a ~99% chance of being immediately unconscious or dead, much closer to the results for the neck wound (2.3% and 75%) than the leg wound (50% and 1.9%))

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

So if we average the actual multipliers from your table

= x2.5 (mine would be x3, RAW x2) *x2 if it imp multiplier still applies, making thr average x2.66 (x3)

RAW would be x2.33, as it has the 1-in-6 chance of hitting the brain already.

-Pen

= x1.66 (x2), RAW x0.5, mine is x1.5 now if it's a limb and Pen multipliers don't apply does that boost small piecing attacks to x1 (I'd rule not)

The rules specify impaling, large piercing, and huge piercing, so of course not. In any case, RAW here would be roughly x1.1. Also, it's "piercing" (pi) not "penetrating" (pen). It took me a while to figure out you were talking about the piercing damage type and not something odd about penetrating DR.

Pen

= x2, RAW x1, mine is x2

RAW x1.5.

+Pen

= x2.25 (x2), RAW x1.5, mine is x2.5

RAW roughly x1.9.