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Old 10-28-2019, 10:49 PM   #21
whswhs
 
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Default Re: Fixing Injury Tolerance [Basic/Powers]

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Originally Posted by naloth View Post
Pillows are usually homogeneous while a locomotive is a machine/unliving. If you have a pillow that's 5 lbs and a train that's 5 lbs, GURPS would imply the pillow does more slam damage? Something seems off that the pillow should have should have x2 the HP for a potential collision given the same weight.
For soft objects, per p. B431, you have normal damage, whereas for hard objects you have double damage. If the object is elastic, it gives from DR 2 to DR 10 against collision damage to the person who collides with it. You could plausibly apply that to objects colliding with humans instead of the other way round.
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Old 10-29-2019, 07:14 AM   #22
naloth
 
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Default Re: Fixing Injury Tolerance [Basic/Powers]

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
For soft objects, per p. B431, you have normal damage, whereas for hard objects you have double damage. If the object is elastic, it gives from DR 2 to DR 10 against collision damage to the person who collides with it. You could plausibly apply that to objects colliding with humans instead of the other way round.
The colliding with an Immovable Object collision rules? I agree that should be part of all slams, but for some reason Campaigns explicitly has that under collisions with stationary Immovable Objects. For that matter "Falls and Armor" seems like it should apply to all collisions (and perhaps all slams) with falling as an example of a collision.

Personally, I find it easier to use HP for mass and something else (IT) to represent structure integrity. Having said that, I'm leaning toward idea that IT:Unliving and IT:Homogeneous shouldn't have any IT:DR by default. IT:DR can easily be added separately where it makes sense and I don't see any reason why the dying would make it harder to chop a corpse into bits.

For "durable" machines and homogeneous targets you could have IT:DR with "Not vs any type of piercing damage or impaling injury" -40%*.

*Yes, it's priced generously high. Piercing attacks are absurdly common above TL4. IT:DR is pretty expensive relative to HP at the lower levels, and this gives you an Achilles heel at the higher levels that most attackers will stumble on by accident. The fact that you're buying reduction to that type of injury separately shouldn't affect the cost reduction of IT:DR.

Last edited by naloth; 10-29-2019 at 08:03 AM.
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Old 10-29-2019, 07:57 AM   #23
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Default Re: Fixing Injury Tolerance [Basic/Powers]

Yes, the problem is that you can get HP +25 for the same price as IT:DR /2, which has a lot of benefits (you can even take Homogeneous to justify taking it without increasing mass).
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Old 10-29-2019, 08:21 AM   #24
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Default Re: Fixing Injury Tolerance [Basic/Powers]

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Originally Posted by Sorenant View Post
I won't risk copying the table here but I think it's the least "important" part of that book (which is excellent by the way, definitely worth the purchase), as it's just a more convenient form of showing that Basic already covers:
Living has HP equal to 10*(2/Longest Dimension), Unliving doubles that while Homogeneous quadruples.
If these are such fundamental principles in GURPS, then why don't any of the Stone Golem or Earth Elemental templates in various GURPS books have absurd numbers of HP? They are basically man-shaped blocks of homogenous stuff after all, so according to everyone here they should have roughly 40 HP, right? The SM+1 stone golem in DF has HP 30. The SM+1 "Walking Wall" Earth Elemental in DF has HP 15. The SM0 golem in Fantasy has HP 15.

I'll answer my own question: HP measures how much damage it takes to kill something. This quantity depends on the supernatural properties of the walking stone-man (or whatever), since in real life such a thing could never be alive and could never be "killed," and so it's an arbitrary GM decision how much HP to give it.
It's unfortunate that the collision formula uses HP (as opposed to ST or some separate Mass attribute), but let's not let a single annoying-to-use formula ruin an otherwise perfectly useable abstraction in GURPS.
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Old 10-29-2019, 09:04 AM   #25
naloth
 
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Default Re: Fixing Injury Tolerance [Basic/Powers]

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Originally Posted by Gnome View Post
I'll answer my own question: HP measures how much damage it takes to kill something.
Sure, but that's the not only thing HP is used for.

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It's unfortunate that the collision formula uses HP (as opposed to ST or some separate Mass attribute), but let's not let a single annoying-to-use formula ruin an otherwise perfectly useable abstraction in GURPS.
It's not a single formula.

Pretty much any book where there is guidance on how much HP to give something you'll see that the recommendation is to do a calculation based on mass and fudge it a bit if necessary. We can't easily reality check a zombie or golem, but I have plenty actual stuff with GURPs stats. I suspect you'll also find if you compare machine and vehicles weight and ST/HP, that the values aren't far off the Unliving/Machine column.
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Old 10-29-2019, 09:43 AM   #26
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Default Re: Fixing Injury Tolerance [Basic/Powers]

There probably should be a line about it in the Basic Set, together with a note saying "the normal rules for buying up HP do not apply to people with Unliving/Homogenous". But I understand that space is at a premium.
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Old 10-29-2019, 09:43 AM   #27
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Default Re: Fixing Injury Tolerance [Basic/Powers]

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
One of the issues with Injury Tolerance is that Unliving objects as supposed to have twice the HP of living objects while Homogeneous/Diffuse objects are supposed to have four times the HP of living objects. This means that a corpse would have twice the HP of the person that they were beforehand, while a sack of ground meat made from the same person would have four times the HP, which is paradoxical.
An Unliving object is an object that has less reliance on vulnerable internal parts than living beings in order to continue to function. A (non-animated) corpse is not an Unliving object in GURPS rules; it does not require undamaged lungs, brain, or kidneys to continue to hold together, which is the only thing that the hit points of a corpse represent. A corpse is a Homogeneous object: it lacks vulnerable internal parts or mechanisms. It doesn't matter what organ of a corpse you damage; the corpse continues to be a "functioning" corpse. Since the organs don't matter, a corpse is Homogeneous.

Since hit points represent the structural ability to continue to function, it makes perfect sense that a corpse is less vulnerable to hit point loss than a living being. To destroy a corpse, you need to rip it apart. To kill a living being, you don't.

There is thus no problem with the rules as written.

(The structural integrity of a sack of ground meat would depend on the hit points of the sack, not the contents. A 20-gallon cloth sack — DR 0, Homogeneous, HT 10, HP 5, Combustible, immune to crushing damage — could take 10 points of spear-stabbing before starting to make HT rolls to see if the bag rips open, 15 points of shooting from a Desert Eagle pistol, but only 5 points of sword-slashing.)
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Old 10-29-2019, 09:52 AM   #28
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Default Re: Fixing Injury Tolerance [Basic/Powers]

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Originally Posted by Gnome View Post
If these are such fundamental principles in GURPS, then why don't any of the Stone Golem or Earth Elemental templates in various GURPS books have absurd numbers of HP? They are basically man-shaped blocks of homogenous stuff after all, so according to everyone here they should have roughly 40 HP, right? The SM+1 stone golem in DF has HP 30. The SM+1 "Walking Wall" Earth Elemental in DF has HP 15.
DF is very gamest as opposed to simulationist*, giving them full HP would have probably made too tough for the game role they play.

Or possibly its simulationist of "that other game"!
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Old 10-29-2019, 09:55 AM   #29
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Default Re: Fixing Injury Tolerance [Basic/Powers]

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Originally Posted by Gnome View Post
Sorry, I don't have the template toolkit.
Fantasy pg 51 seems to be about SM, ST and HP but doesn't mention Unliving or Homogenous.
Fantasy and Update just cover the formula for living things. The formula for Unliving or Homogenous is in basic, per the page reference I gave.
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Old 10-29-2019, 10:14 AM   #30
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Default Re: Fixing Injury Tolerance [Basic/Powers]

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Originally Posted by GURPS Zombies page 76
• Living zombies. Zombies without Injury Tolerance (Unliving) or (Homogenous) – the infected, face-eating drug abusers, and so on – don’t need further adjustment unless they have ST modifiers explained by bulking up (as with many serum-infused zombies) or emaciation (as for wasted Vodou slaves). In those cases, simply leave HP at ST; that is, forget about the HP modifier.

• Unliving zombies. Zombies with Injury Tolerance (Unliving) – including just about all undead ones – can theoretically possess up to twice the HP of living beings of similar mass. For typical humans who had 10 HP in life, this means up to 20 HP and a bonus of up to HP+10 [20]; for SM +1 constructs the size of living things that would have 15 HP, this means up to 30 HP and a bonus of up to HP+20 (Size, -10%) [36]. However, the full bonus only suits well engineered constructs; undead in states of decay get less. Halve the bonus for intact, mummified, or (somewhat) rotten corpses, and ignore it for skeletons or extra-rotten corpses. Add the result to any adjustment for ST; e.g., a mostly intact undead zombie might get HP+5, but if it has ST+4, it needs only a net HP+1 [2] to attain this.

• Homogenous zombies. Zombies with Injury Tolerance (Homogenous) can have up to four times the HP of living beings of comparable mass. That means up to 40 HP and a bonus of up to HP+30 [60] at SM 0, and up to 60 HP and a bonus of up to HP+50 (Size, -10%) [90] at SM +1. This is fine for golem-like constructs of solid flesh or bone; just remember to adjust for ST, too (thus, an SM +1 zombified construct with ST+20 would have HP+30). Dramatic necessity overrides this rule for solidified spirits, though – they might be Homogenous, but they aren’t made from any kind of ordinary matter. Treat them like living zombies.
Personally I would give skeletons the full bonus, but remembering that skeletons tend to weigh only 12-15% of the body weight; 150lbs person's skeleton would be 18lbs-22.5lbs, thus 11-12 HP. With HP above 5 taken with Massless +0%.

Last edited by NineDaysDead; 10-29-2019 at 10:43 AM.
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