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Icelander · 03-03-2019, 07:02 AM

Not that it's all important for the purposes of this exercise, but innate Night Vision 5 is not possible for a human in a realistic setting. As per GURPS Tactical Shooting, a maximum of Night Vision 2 can be justified as realistic for a human.

More generally, I suspect that the fact that it generally takes a long time to kill a single person with a knife and there will usually be sounds of struggle and incidental sounds while the victim bleeds out will lead to even a very skilled infiltrator being discovered before he kills very many.

This is going to come down to GM adjudication, but even a person brought to negative HP and failing a death check or consciousness check will not necessarily expire noiselessly. A lot of people sleeping in the rough will be huddled close for body warmth and even if we assume somehow that there was no system for keeping watch, there might be people having trouble sleeping and/or having to get up to attend to bodily functions.

Even with a grapple of the face area to prevent screaming of a knife victim, there might be struggling, even sounds of air escaping from wounds (especially loud for cut throats, but possibly noticeable even with a stab to the vitals) that could be enough to alert someone sleeping right next to them. Hell, even just the smell of blood or bowel contents might awaken someone sleeping close, not to mention how someone would almost certainly awaken if the person sleeping next to them suddenly spilled the contents of their body under their joint covers. Even if all the soldiers are really private and shy about their sleeping arrangements, blood from arteries, like the ones in the neck or vitals area, can spray far enough to hit a person sleeping far enough away to avoid all physical contact.

So, basically, in game terms, killing more than one of the sleeping soldiers requires more than skill and abilities, it also requires luck about factors that the infiltrator has no real control over. And in any sort of realistic setting, that luck will eventually run out.

03-03-2019, 07:02 AM	#6
Icelander Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Iceland*	Re: On the Fragility of Life Not that it's all important for the purposes of this exercise, but innate Night Vision 5 is not possible for a human in a realistic setting. As per GURPS Tactical Shooting, a maximum of Night Vision 2 can be justified as realistic for a human. More generally, I suspect that the fact that it generally takes a long time to kill a single person with a knife and there will usually be sounds of struggle and incidental sounds while the victim bleeds out will lead to even a very skilled infiltrator being discovered before he kills very many. This is going to come down to GM adjudication, but even a person brought to negative HP and failing a death check or consciousness check will not necessarily expire noiselessly. A lot of people sleeping in the rough will be huddled close for body warmth and even if we assume somehow that there was no system for keeping watch, there might be people having trouble sleeping and/or having to get up to attend to bodily functions. Even with a grapple of the face area to prevent screaming of a knife victim, there might be struggling, even sounds of air escaping from wounds (especially loud for cut throats, but possibly noticeable even with a stab to the vitals) that could be enough to alert someone sleeping right next to them. Hell, even just the smell of blood or bowel contents might awaken someone sleeping close, not to mention how someone would almost certainly awaken if the person sleeping next to them suddenly spilled the contents of their body under their joint covers. Even if all the soldiers are really private and shy about their sleeping arrangements, blood from arteries, like the ones in the neck or vitals area, can spray far enough to hit a person sleeping far enough away to avoid all physical contact. So, basically, in game terms, killing more than one of the sleeping soldiers requires more than skill and abilities, it also requires luck about factors that the infiltrator has no real control over. And in any sort of realistic setting, that luck will eventually run out. __________________ Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! Last edited by Icelander; 03-03-2019 at 07:46 AM.