Whats the damage of a Peregrin Falcon?

[Blood Legend]

Both on a successful attack and when crashing into the ground at maximum speed.

[Icelander]

The latter is easy to figure under GURPS rules. HP times Move, doubled for a hard surface, divided by 100 to figure the number of dice.

As for the former, it's a lot less certain. Does the peregrine falcon strike at maximum velocity or does it pull up at the last second to avoid taking too much slam damage itself?

[Blind Mapmaker]

For the latter case: a male Peregrine Falcon is roughly 1 kg which barely gives him 3 HP, average max. speed is 320 km/h which comes out at Move 89 more or less, which gives 3d damage from the collision if the ground could reasonably be called soft or - more likely - 6d6 if the ground was hard. That's more likely than not enough to kill it outright.

Now, the Peregrine Falcon does normally hunt birds only and takes care just to hit one wing of his target, likely avoiding a full-on collision that would damage him severely. In GURPS that would probably be a specific airborne unarmed technique to avoid most (or even all?) of the slam damage. Conceivably a similar technique might mitigate some damage when attacking ground-based targets that are not very well-braced from the sides, but I don't know enough about the physics involved to say how feasible that would be.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Blind Mapmaker

Now, the Peregrine Falcon does normally hunt birds only and takes care just to hit one wing of his target, likely avoiding a full-on collision that would damage him severely. In GURPS that would probably be a specific airborne unarmed technique to avoid most (or even all?) of the slam damage. Conceivably a similar technique might mitigate some damage when attacking ground-based targets that are not very well-braced from the sides, but I don't know enough about the physics involved to say how feasible that would be.

The benefit of Strikers is that they don't take damage from parries or hitting hard surfaces, much like a normal weapon, right?

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

The benefit of Strikers is that they don't take damage from parries or hitting hard surfaces, much like a normal weapon, right?

Yeah, but hit something close to the ground while diving at Move 80 with your Striker and you'll end up hitting the ground at only slightly less than that if you are flying at far more than your normal flying Move.

[Blind Mapmaker]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

The benefit of Strikers is that they don't take damage from parries or hitting hard surfaces, much like a normal weapon, right?

Game-mechanically you could define the talons as strikers, sure. That would make sense if it's just a monster write-up and you as the GM would make sure the falcon acts like in real life. If this is for a shape-shifting template, you might soon run into a player who uses this to attack cars etc. A technique would make more sense for such a template IMHO.

[Joe]

Originally Posted by Blind Mapmaker

the Peregrine Falcon does normally hunt birds only and takes care just to hit one wing of his target, likely avoiding a full-on collision that would damage him severely. In GURPS that would probably be a specific airborne unarmed technique to avoid most (or even all?) of the slam damage.

I'm not sure how compatible this is with RAW, but if I were faced with this situation while GMing, I think I would rule as follows:

1. The falcon needs to target hit location (wing)
2. The slam damage taken by the falcon maxes out at the blow-through damage of the target's wing. For any realistic falcon prey, this is going to be 1 HP, max.
3. The falcon would then use some sort of "aerial slam" technique (perhaps even a perk?) to reduce that 1pt of damage to 0.

Again, I'm not sure how compatible that is with RAW, but that's probably what I require off the top of my head, just to keep the game moving.

[Bruno]

To my understanding, Peregrin falcons do not strictly "slam" other birds, and definitely not at 320km/hr[1] - they use their great speed to execute surprise attacks from an unexpected distance; prey birds have Peripheral Vision, and an aerial fighter enjoys a +4 to Dodge instead of +3 when Retreating in 3-space so you can see why this is important.

The Peregrin falcon also hunts ground prey, and there's no "magical" saving itself from damage by going for the wing on a lizard or rabbit. Going for a wing on a duck is common sense - you can take out substantially larger birds by crippling them mid-air and letting them crash-land than trying to just kill them yourself.

I don't see the need for a special technique to remove the damage from a Slam, because I don't believe it's a Slam. I'd call it an All Out Attack (Strong) that takes advantage of the fact that when you're above your maximum Basic Move you automatically move forward a certain distance regardless of your action taken in order to avoid Move restrictions. You can even give them a Targeted Attack technique (Talon "punch" to Wing).

[Blind Mapmaker]

You raise good points, Bruno, and not knowing much about the birds in question I can only offer that from reading around on German sites. There it looks like the impact itself kills or disable the prey. Peregrine Falcons don't even open their talons when attacking like this and the talons are not made for striking, but gripping the prey. I am not sure whether they would even have time to do anything more than that, but it could be. They are used to going fast. On the other hand they seem to kill by biting to the neck and I really can't see that happening.

Unfortunately, the 3rd edition bestiary is not very helpful in this regard. Anybody know a spell to summon an ornithologist?

[GodBeastX]

Martial Arts book allows you to replace Thrust damage with Slam damage for purposes of impaling weapons when slamming. This is for things like jousts, and I've used it for flying enemies with talons in Dungeon Fantasy before.