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Old 12-02-2013, 07:25 PM   #31
Adelus
 
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Join Date: Jul 2007
Default Re: [D&D Adaptation Question] Swallow Whole rules and mechanics?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno View Post
The whole thing in GURPS hinges on the Constriction advantage from Basic p43, with the Engulfing enhancement from Powers p45. This lets you crush, strangle, and pin your victim "hands free", and puts pinned victims "inside" you (where they can attack your insides, owch). Other useful traits are
  • Brawling (for biting skill and damage)
  • Wrestling (for keeping a hold on the little wrigglers)
  • Born Biter (for having a bigger mouth to bite with)
  • Biting Mastery (if you have Karate instead of Brawling)
  • Power Grappling (because using your ST to keep a hold on the little wrigglers is great)
  • Extra "one arm" ST (which is pretty fair for using for bite-grapple-crush ST)


If you have Biotech, consider getting Internal DR (costs 1/5th) to armor your inside from sharp food, or an Internal Innate Attack Aura (again, 1/5th cost) that does a little corrosion damage for crazy-dangerous stomach acid. Normal stomach acid probably only does 1 damage every 10 minutes or something, not 1/second... but hey, monsters!

First, bite to grapple (Martial Arts p115, Teeth box) a victim your SM or smaller. Without any other advantages, this takes full normal hit location penalties. [1] This is the grapple required as the first step of Constriction. On his turn he gets a chance to Break Free from your bite/grapple.
For unmodified Constriction (Engulfing) - if you still have him in your grasp, make the ST vs ST/HT contest to crush him. If you succeed, he's Pinned and Engulfed. Ie: you swallowed him. At this point, he doesn't have to roll to hit you with innate attacks, spines, etc. and you get no active defenses, and follows all the usual rules for being pinned.
This does plain crushing damage each turn based on ST vs ST/HT, as per Constriction.
Your victim typically escapes by escaping the Pin as usual, which is more or less "climbing back up your throat".

There are no specific rules for a victim cutting their way out of a grapple, constriction, or engulf, but I'd say if they can do enough cutting or corrosion damage in one attack to "dismember" a hypothetical arm off you (don't forget to use any "arm st" bought for bite/grapple/crushing here), they've cut a hole in you and escape - just like escaping a regular grab by cutting your arm off. And ow, your poor organs.

So, that's "defaults", and a suggestion for cutting your way out. Default really takes at least two turns, not one (Grab, then attempt to crush, subject is pinned and engulfed (ergo swallowed) once they start getting crushed).

For longer processes, add Takes Extra Time to the base Constriction, or onto the Engulfing enhancement. For shorter processes, buy an Extra Attack and limit it to only for the pin/engulf stage.

[1] the Hydra I built on the forums a while ago bought three extra arms and four extra heads and sharp claws AND teeth, so it ends up with five arm-head-bity-clawy-things, game mechanically speaking. I just called them heads of course.
I figure all the extra points spent on that combo despite not having thumbs justifies "a grapple that damages" for the usual half location penalties rather than "a damaging strike that grapples", but it may be more legit to buy one Extra Attack with limitations "only for adding a grapple to a bite". Or just live with hit location penalties :D
If you want to have an improved grapple-thing and skip over manipulative ability, buy the Extra Arms with Nuisance Effect: Temporary Disadvantage Ham Fisted 2 or so to make sure they're not very good at fine detail work while still having a strong grip.
This is all super-helpful, thanks! On the topic of internal aura attacks, I was also considering some other types like burning or cutting to represent beasties with a different means of dealing with prey - the latter of which might work for automatons with horrific grinders.

If I'm getting this straight, you'd buff the damage/hold of the "stomachs" by increasing Arm ST?

I was also wondering a few other helpful things - such as Binding with Retractable to model things like the tongues of giant toads or weird grabber appendages of eldritch things as useful traits. I remember someone else earlier in the thread (or in another) mentioning that maybe Binding could be used to model the swallowing/stomach, and its innate quality of having a binding HP/DR to break could be helpful, but I'm not sure how that would work.

For fast-eaters like a buffed version of your Hydra, would there be any way to make a Combination Attack that combines the Bite with the constriction, or use the Rapid Strike rules as such?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno View Post
For just generally eating things, I've done some reality testing. Well, not personally, but I know people.

A humanoid creature, or a creature with none of the 0 point features that tweak the effective SM of various body parts, SM Δ-8 is about enough for anyone to stuff it in their mouth and (with some chewing to break it up) swallow it. I wouldn't try swallowing it whole unless it's exactly the right shape and you're trained - I don't know what skill or perk a professional sideshow geek uses, but that's kind of what you want (at a bonus compared to, say, sword swallowing). See also some competition eaters, but they tend towards chewing their food at least a little because it makes everything easier. Technically, I'm sure there's a default. Please don't try this at home, failure by 5 probably causes Choking, critical failure probably causes Choking and aspirating food into your lungs, and pnumonia. Just bad.

At Δ-7, it's still possible for a human to take a good stab at swallowing it whole, but now you're talking into the realm of actual sword-swallowing scale feats, and it needs to be longer than it is wide or high. You REALLY shouldn't try this unless you're trained (ie, you're loosing a cushy circumstance bonus for using a smaller food item). I personally know someone who can swallow whole jumbo hot-dogs (no bun), but instead of the full skill they probably have a One-Trick-Wonder perk.
That's the last size I'd accept swallowing a roughly human-sized character whole, no chewing and no special training.

At Δ-6, it had better be long/thin in profile and you're definitely talking sword-swallowing stunt stuff because where the heck will it all go? If you plan on keeping this somewhere in your body, instead of pulling it out again like a sword, you'll want some levels of internal Payload.
I imagine these could just be done with a bite attack without requiring Constriction Attack as a justification. Would having appropriate levels of Stretching also permit this, or would that fit more as a prerequisite to having Engulfing on Constriction Attack?
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