Official Gurps rule for dismemberment of an undead?

[Boge]

I couldn't find the ruling in the book, but I believe it says somewhere that undead don't suffer from impaling or cutting damage modifiers.

With that in mind, how does the ruling go for dismemberment of an undead?

If I cut a human in the arm for 10 damage, that 10 becomes 15 which is more than his 12 health and his arm is lost. On a skeleton, that damage stays at 10 (I believe), so his arm wouldn't be lost. But that wouldn't make sense as it's even less tissue to cut through than a human's arm. Logic says it's dismembered as well, but I'm looking for an official book ruling. I just can't find it.

[Mr_Sandman]

I believe Injury Tolerance (Unliving), which most undead have, only reduces damage from impaling and piercing, not cutting.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Mr_Sandman

I believe Injury Tolerance (Unliving), which most undead have, only reduces damage from impaling and piercing, not cutting.

Yes, there are ways to reduce the cutting damage modifier in gurps, but they tend to be fiddly and rarely used on official templates. Most undead use the unliving trait, which reduces damage from piercing and impaling, but not cutting.



Other games often give undead such as skeletons a resistance to cutting damage, but Gurps generally does not. In fact, in Monster Hunters cutting is the damage type of choice against both unliving and homogeneous foes (which includes almost all undead in that line), as evidenced in the warrior template, which features the Blade! wildcard skill.

[Culture20]

There might be a “body of bone” somewhere for skeletons which reduces cutting

[Verjigorm]

I usually add Fragile(brittle) to Skeletons, as well as making them lighter and less resistant to damage in general. So a ST 10 man become a ST 8 skeleton. Also, due to fragile, if you inflict 5 or more damage to a limb, you don't cripple it, but dismember it!

[ravenfish]

Bear in mind that cutting dealing more damage than crushing to unliving/homogeneous targets passes a reality check, insofar as lumberjacks and so on use axes rather than hammers. If one nevertheless wants to make one's skeletons reasonably sword-resistant, Injury Tolerance: Damage Reduction , in GURPS:Powers, divides final damage (either of all types or of a given type, such as from cutting attacks) by a given amount, allowing one to nicely counteract the increased damage from cutting weapons, or a Weakness to crushing weapons can make them a preferable tactic.