[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Icelander

GURPS Basic Set: Campaigns, p. 423 actually contains a rule to the effect that neither death nor unconsciousness means dropping instantly and silently. What I'm doing is applying the GM's judgment given as the rule there within the constraints of a realistic setting, by using the guidelines established for people who do this in reality.

How many times per post do I have to lay this to rest to make you stop throwing this strawman at me? It's insulting to be told over and over and over again the blatantly obvious which I have been taking as implicit and explicitly agreeing with as necessary.

You're doing considerably more than that, though. You're inserting an unspecified duration after the rules indicate death or unconsciousness in which the character can still take circumscribed action, which I cannot interact with via rules because it has no rules. And which, frankly, appears to manifest or vanish depending on whose strategy it would inconvenience.

Originally Posted by Icelander

What you can do with your whole body is BLx8 while one arm is BLx2. That means that an average person with ST 10 can hold someone with their whole body and both arms, but only a superstrong person could do it with one arm.

One thing you can do with both arms is BLx8, and one similar thing you can do with just one arm is BLx2. Neither of those things is keeping a limp human from collapsing. In fact, neither of those things is much like it, since the things in question are lifting an object, not holding it up.

Originally Posted by Icelander

And if someone is willing to go prone, the grappler has a choice between letting go, following him down or keeping him upright using a multiple of BL.

Is that a rule somewhere?

Originally Posted by Icelander

Regardless of the specific multiple of BL we pick, the weight characters can handle with one arm is 1/4th of what they can handle with both arms and whole body.

Meaning that any normal human will have trouble holding a heavy, potentially resisting human up with one arm while making a series of Attacks with the other. Which is why it's better to make the attacks before he knows you're there and switch to holding him up after you've thrust your knife into the side of his neck and cut forward, a total of 2-3 attacks in GURPS terms.

I'd argue that the whole body is not significantly less involved with one arm than with two arms for this activity.

Originally Posted by Icelander

Any damage above HP means that a struggling sentry will succumb to unconsciousness within a few seconds. Damage above that doesn't actually matter much to you.

And if he's not damaged more than HP? "The player doesn't know if his first thrust killed the sentry, stunned him or just nicked him." More stabbing resolves that last case.

Originally Posted by Icelander

Remember, the rules don't say that death comes silently, so even doing 60+ HP of damage is no guarantee that the last turn of life for the sentry won't be loud.

...

Originally Posted by Icelander

Mentally stunned people can't elect to drop prone until they recover, so the first second is All-Out Attack (Double) Grapple + Thrust before the opponent gets a turn and then All-Out Attack (Double) Thrust + Cut while he's mentally stunned.

Even if he has Combat Reflexes, this happens before he can try to break free, shout, drop or fire his weapon. Obviously, this only works if you successfully sneak up to him, but that's pretty much a given. If the sentry detects you as you move into position, it's probably not going to work and your backup will have to shoot him.

Which is marginally less catastrophic if your backup has a suppressed firearm; actually making this post on topic!

Fair enough on mental stun rendering the first second safe from deliberate trouble, but it's still not so simple...

Physically stunned people can't avoid dropping prone and dropping their weapon. If you stab a guy in the neck (especially if your stab counts as three separate major wounds) before you're prepared to hold him up, something unfortunate is very likely to happen.

Originally Posted by Icelander

After the first two seconds of All-Out Attack, if you release one hand of the sentry, he's probably going to drop whether you want to or not. Not certainly, no, but the odds are too great for you to risk it.

I assume this is predicated on the 'you can't hold a body upright with one hand' principle?

Originally Posted by Icelander

Fair enough. Even in GURPS RAW, though, the sentry will become unconscious at some point during your wait and he'll eventually bleed out in his coma. For your purposes, it really doesn't matter at what point he was medically dead.

I agree it's more realistic to have a rule for arterial bleeding, but it's not needed to model the fact that characters need to wait after they stab the sentry in order to be certain that they are truly incapable of making noise.

Since you were restraining him as he lost consciousness and prevented him from crying out, his death was as silent as you could make it. Killing him harder, with more HPs of damage, wouldn't accomplish that.

What killing him harder would do is force him to actually be in a state where he can no longer cry out. If you just wait 30 seconds grappling with a <0 HP sentry he's pretty sure to have failed a consciousness check as you say unless he's got amazing composure, but you have no way to be sure he's going to have actually departed that apparent middle state where he's still allowed to mess with you...

And even without that, you've got a certain number of seconds of active grappling before the resistance stops, right? Which is the dangerous part. (Well, after the sneaking up part and not botching the initial strike, at least.) Hugging the probably-dead body for a bit to be on the safe side is inconvenient but unlikely to go awry unless somebody shows up in that window. More stabbing can shorten the active phase pretty significantly, by forcing more and harder checks.