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Originally Posted by Gnome
If a knife held to a hostage's throat isn't "obviously lethal," then I don't know what is.
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Depends on which knife and which hostage. Is it a dull butterknife? Is Ben Grimm?
The ideal would be to have a stat-based way (derived from how much damage you can do and how much damage it takes to kill a foe) that allows us to measure when to apply lethality handwaving.
4e abandoning 3e damage amounts required for decapitation because that's too lethal makes me think they don't want this idea used too broadly, as in to be considered obviously lethal in 4e an attack ought to at minimum do more damage than the generic 3e decapitation thresholds, or else why abandon them?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gnome
This rule exists specifically to preclude the weirdness described by the OP (the seeming non-lethality of a knife held to the throat of a hostage when using the GURPS injury and damage system), so it's strange for you to say to "follow the rules" instead--this is a rule, straight from Basic.
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The straight rule is actually not straight at all though, because it doesn't define "obvious" meaning a GM could rule that an attack that could at most do 1 cutting damage (1d-5) is "obviously lethal" to a high-HP foe, even though that's probably not "obvious" in other gamers' opinions.
It sounds like your advice is to ignore this rule, not to "follow the rules," which is fine of course, no one has to use every rule in the books.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gnome
Or do you think this rule exists to handle a different scenario than the one described?
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I figure it exists to cover the situation of saving time where even the minimum damage roll possible would take you below -5xHP.
http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/faq/FAQ4-3.html#SS3.4.5.4
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Originally Posted by 3.4.5.4 What happened to the Neck hit location?
The rules are the same as for Third Edition, except that there is no automatic or resisted decapitation anymore. It can only happen as a special effect of an ordinary killing blow to the neck.
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I think the "resisted" is referencing 3eB248 "Throat" rules:
If the neck takes full hit point damage from an edged weapon, a successful HT roll is necessary to avoid decapitation!
Not sure about the "automatic" part, maybe that got introduced elsewhere?
If we don't even have "full HP to neck chance of auto death" rules anymore in 4e, then the "obviously lethal" rules in 4e must be intended to be even more extreme.
I'd estimate perhaps 2xHP in a single hit, given the Extra Head formula.
Even then, I think it's feasible to treat decapitation via means other than insta-death. You'd immediately suffocate (FP loss 1/second) and be Mute, and suffer Quadriplegic and make a HT check to avoid Stun (it's a Major Wound) and whatever HP is left, you're beeding out (HP loss 1/30 seconds?) maybe if you're a mage you can still get off a no-ritual spell in 1 or 2 seconds before losing consciousness?
In the case of decapitation, if we were going to actually crunch the numbers, I think since this fulfills two "1 per 30" situations on MA138 (both "dismemberment" and "neck") we ought to at least make that as frequent as 1 hit point per 15 seconds.
Basic Set decapitation handwaives seem possibly outdated as of Martial Arts introducing the spine location though. I can buy DR 100 (Spine -80%) [100] because I want it to be really hard to attach my spinal cord, and severing the spinal cord is an inherent aspect of decapitation.
Spine takes >HP to cripple (11 injury for 10 HP, which requires 8 penetrating damage using cutting 1.5 multiplier boosting it to 12... which requires 11 basic damage due to spine having DR 3) and you need twice the pre-limit injury to destroy body parts (22 injury for 10 HP... requiring 15 penetrating damage) which takes 18 basic damage to do.
11 to cripple spine (22 to destroy w/ 15 basic cutting) is not only beyond 3e's full HP req to potentially decapitate, but even beyond the Extra Head formula of 2xhp/#ofheads
12 injury isn't quite