Skull and Spine DR - shouldn't these scale?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Dunadin777

I'd have to disagree. Being able to take, endure, and feel a lot of damage compared to other people is not nearly so outlandish as the concept that you can take twice as much punishment to x location without being injured or even feeling any significant pain.

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.

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by JCurwen3

Um... speaking of "to start with", are there any rules anywhere about these DR figures for babies and small children? I know newborns have soft skulls, especially in some areas; they might have a fractional DR better than flesh alone but not enough to warrant a full 1 DR. And at some point that becomes 1 DR, and then later on 2 DR (different values for the spine too, of course). If there aren't rules, any suggestions?

You could inflict some pretty good damage on an infant without it suffering from probable death in GURPS terms. I'd almost shrink away from the possibility myself if I didn't feel that it was an RP minefield and that such turnings need challenging, but it's there if you want it...

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by Anthony

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.

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.

[Dunadin777]

Originally Posted by Anthony

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.

I'm not sure what your point is here, which makes me think my previous point is unclear. Being able to absorb more damage that still results in injury is a much more realistic variation that to say someone's CNS-housing is twice as resilient to any damage than their neighbor. If you give a human a DR 6 spine, then there's a good chance a bad judo-chop to the neck could break the attacker's hand.

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

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.

Right. Muscles are used and needed for proper adventuring, so therefore any damage they 'absorb' has to be real injury.

[JCurwen3]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

You could inflict some pretty good damage on an infant without it suffering from probable death in GURPS terms. I'd almost shrink away from the possibility myself if I didn't feel that it was an RP minefield and that such turnings need challenging, but it's there if you want it...

True, but that's due to how GURPS injury and HP and all that work.

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)...

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by JCurwen3

Would you think it would at least be appropriate to buy the extra DR (skull or spine only) with the Size limitation, for a discount?

No, but it's already at a discount for location, Skull Only is -70%, I'm sure you can find a few more limitations if you want.
Personally I'd also make it all semi-ablative with slow healing.,

Originally Posted by JCurwen3

Also, this only answers the question for high SM. I can't see a RAW legal way to lower DR (for the little guys... or for maybe the odd humanoid that tragically has soft cartilage where his skull bones should be).

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.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Dunadin777

I'm not sure what your point is here.

My point is that having twice the hit points (including twice the threshold for disabling wounds) isn't realistic.

[bocharuk]

Originally Posted by Grouchy Chris

How thick is a T-Rex's skull, anyway?

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?

[DCB]

Otherwise a ST 15 human will have a skull and spine that's 50% more resilient to injury than the average human, and a ST 20 human will have a 100% more resilient skull and spine. That's just ridiculous.

It's not clear that's obviously true, but it turns out that it is -- there is no discernable correlation between human skull thickness and height/weight/bodytype. source

this might be why there are so many human skulls with saber-toothed cat fang holes in them

FWIW, Smilodon seem to have favoured larger prey, and it's not clear whether they regularly attacked humans:

"Smilodon may also have attacked prehistoric humans, although this is not known for certain." source

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by DCB

FWIW, Smilodon seem to have favoured larger prey, and it's not clear whether they regularly attacked humans:

"Smilodon may also have attacked prehistoric humans, although this is not known for certain." source

I would like to see a citation for that comment in the wikipedia article, because there are a lot of skulls with neat saber cat puncture holes in them. Not nearly enough to suggest we were a main part of their diet, but quite enough to make it clear humans were not safe from saber cats.

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).