03-05-2012, 03:12 PM | #21 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Skull and Spine DR - shouldn't these scale?
Muscle is usable to absorb blunt trauma and similar crushing damage, but it's not particularly effective or even relevant against most other types of damage.
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03-05-2012, 03:12 PM | #22 | |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: One Mile Up
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Re: Skull and Spine DR - shouldn't these scale?
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03-05-2012, 03:18 PM | #23 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: One Mile Up
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Re: Skull and Spine DR - shouldn't these scale?
Disagree: Muscle mass is basically HP when it comes to absorbing damage, IMHO. It might not be as good as Advantages that provide DR, but by itself it could be quite persuasive.
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03-05-2012, 03:24 PM | #24 | |
Join Date: Nov 2010
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Re: Skull and Spine DR - shouldn't these scale?
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Right. Muscles are used and needed for proper adventuring, so therefore any damage they 'absorb' has to be real injury.
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Finds party's farmboy-helper about to skewer the captive brigand who attacked his sister. "I don't think I'm morally obligated to stop this..." Ten Green Gem Vine--Warrior-poet, bane of highwaymen
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03-05-2012, 03:32 PM | #25 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Brooklyn, NY
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Re: Skull and Spine DR - shouldn't these scale?
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But the 2 DR for the skull and 3 DR for the spine are meant to represent thick bone "armour" protection". I'm not sure about the spine but at the very least I know they have weaker skull protection. All that means is that they're as tough as a "normal" human with infant HP, subject to the same hit location wounding multipliers, but they don't get that 2 DR that you normally have to penetrate to do injury. So punching a baby in the head should have a chance to do real injury, whereas the 2 DR of an adult might actually reduce the damage of an average punch to the head into a glancing blow (with bruising, but nothing at the level of resolution of 1 HP injury). Not that I want to go around hacking babies apart in my games. On the other hand, imagine an adult being turned into a baby (either through a mindswap, or being "de-aged" + "de-matured", or just being a freak that just flat out never matures physically). In that case it wouldn't be beating on a baby, just a baby body. ;-) Also, the man-in-a-baby-body might have superpowers. I don't know, it's possible, right? It'd sure be a funny concept for a silly game. Or superbabies fighting each other. Then we'd need to establish skull and spine DR at various stages of development (including newborn)...
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-JC |
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03-05-2012, 03:32 PM | #26 | |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Stuttgart, Germany
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Re: Skull and Spine DR - shouldn't these scale?
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Personally I'd also make it all semi-ablative with slow healing., It's a Quirk, -1 DR to the skull per -1, you can have a paper thin skull for -2 points, or if you're being really generous and pricing it at the -70% you could give -3 points for no DR to the skull at all. |
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03-05-2012, 04:01 PM | #27 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Skull and Spine DR - shouldn't these scale?
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03-05-2012, 05:32 PM | #28 |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: Skull and Spine DR - shouldn't these scale?
Digustingly thick. And, a study just came out suggesting a fully grown T. rex could deliver some 13, 000 poinds of force with its jaws. Part of that is due to the extreme skull. DR 7 seems appropriate. How much damage does a T. rex bite for in Lands out of Time?
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03-06-2012, 06:12 PM | #29 | ||
Join Date: Jun 2011
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Re: Skull and Spine DR - shouldn't these scale?
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"Smilodon may also have attacked prehistoric humans, although this is not known for certain." source |
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03-07-2012, 07:54 AM | #30 | |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: Skull and Spine DR - shouldn't these scale?
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The saber cats (which are a much larger group than just Smilodon) are generally agreed to be adapted to preying on megafauna. But like any predator, if some small crunchy prey animal walks into it while it's hungry, it's not going to turn down they opportunity... as long as it's not making life more difficult for itself. Saber cats really can't risk damage to those teeth, so things like turtles and those aforementioned hard pig skulls might not be worth the danger to those teeth, while thin-skulled humans (who are also notably weaker compared to other animals in our weight range, due to a mutation in our muscle development, so can't struggle dangerously) would make us one of the safer prey-of-opportunity choices... at least if we're alone and unarmed. We're weak enough that a saber cat can safely overpower us, but still large enough that the saber teeth are an asset in killing us, rather than a total liability - I would love to see a saber cat trying to catch a bunny. I would be running Yakkety Sax in the background too - it can't grapple with a rabbit, the rabbit is too small, and biting at a small animal like that would while it's moving would border on impossible with those fangs. It's not really built for swatting like Felis and Panthera are. We're not a good choice for a main part of the diet, due to the whole "We run in packs and carry sharp sticks and clubs" thing, and we may have been a direct contributor to saber cat decline, as well as an indirect contributor (if you buy the theory that humans are the major contributor to the extinction of megafauna, the primary prey of saber cats).
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Tags |
bestiary, damage resistance, hit points, monster creation, scaling, skull, spine |
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