Quote:
Originally Posted by lordabdul
By default, it seems getting shot will rarely kill a character unless they get shot a lot. Assuming ST 10 and HT 12 (a common combination for a Call-Of-Cthulhu-type character in GURPS), cumulative HT rolls to avoid death will drop below 50% if you have to roll 3 times or more... which means dropping to -30HP or below, which means getting shot at least 5 times with a 9mm. So if you get shot 4 times with a 9mm, you have more chances of making it than not! (and yes you have higher-than-average HT, but still...) After the fight, you just need to get some rest for a while.
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Four or five shots to the abdomen, sides of the chest (Hitting just meat and maybe ribs), shoulder, limbs, etc.
Getting hit by that same 9mm in the vitals (Lungs, heart, etc) is a much more severe proposition. That's 27 damage, giving you an immediate death check. With his noticeably above-average health, he probably survives the shot, and if he does fail, he's probably 'mortally wounded' rather than outright dead (75% alive, 15% mortally wounded, 10% dead). Using basic bleeding rules, he's about 50/50 of having to make another death check, but overall, he's more likely to survive than not.
At this point, all you need is the optional rules in Martial Arts to make it a very, VERY dangerous injury. Despite his decent health, he's rolling at -9 to stop bleeding. In fact, he's far more likely to critically fail (16%) than he is to succeed (2%). He's 90 seconds away from another death check, and first aid does nothing for him. It will be an average of 37 rolls before he gets a success (One small comfort, he only succeeds on a critical, which stops bleeding automatically). Of those 37 rolls, an average of 6 will be critical failures, resulting in an average total bleed damage of 49. Unfortunately, he can only survive about 25 of those rolls before he hits -5x HP and automatically dies, twelve and a half minutes after being shot. More unfortunately, by the tenth roll, five minutes after being shot, he's probably failed a death check, and is probably mortally wounded.
So he needs a completed surgery within 12.5 minutes of being shot, at most, and ideally within 5 minutes. Assuming he was shot while in the operating room with everyone ready to go, that's a surgery roll at -17 (-9 for the wound, -8 for reduced time taken), plus whatever equipment bonus is available (Probably +2 if it's a decent hospital, for a total of -15), and even then he's likely to die before the 12 minute mark (Add another -1 to get it to 6 minutes, where the surgery is more likely to help). If they somehow do succeed, then they'll probably have to stabilize a mortal wound, which is trivial by comparison.
So in short, he's probably thoroughly screwed, all from a single decent shot.
Even if he's lucky enough to survive, it'll be a while before he's up to full capacity. If we assume he stops the bleeding on the very first roll, by the Martial Arts rules, he'll be at -3 DX and half move for almost two weeks (Not to mention rapidly collapsing if he takes
any injury in this time), and close to another week before he's up to snuff. Without hospitalization and physician care, it's over a month. And he's got a chance of having a lasting or even life-long impairment, but the chance is fairly small due to his good health.
And all of this applies (with slightly different numbers) to any hit to the skull, eye, neck, or arteries, too. And remember, many of these have a 1-in-6 chance of being struck any time you target their general location.
So you can make GURPS pretty thoroughly lethal just with the MA rules.