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Old 02-12-2012, 08:36 AM   #11
vierasmarius
 
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Default Re: Unintentional slam suicide

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Originally Posted by trooper6 View Post
You are upset that colliding with an elephant's butt or a Giant Stone Armadillo will hurt more than running into a super-hard and absolutely-immovable stone wall. You ask if you are missing something very important. I'd say you are. Your calculations are all off.

Your calculations for that stone wall are totally off. You give the stone wall 10hp. "2*10*5/100 = 1d." Stone walls do not have 10hp. If you turn to B558, you'll see the listed hp for stone walls. Since you describe it as super-hard and absolutely-immovable, I'm going to go with the stats of an 8' wall. That's 188hp (not 10!). The calculation for that slam damage? 2*188*5/100 = 19d.

You give the elephant 50hp, B460 lists it at 45hp, but let's look at the calculations both ways. At the listed 45hp you get, 45*5/100 = 2.25d =2d. At 50hp you get, 50*5/100 =2.5d =3d. So you are looking at either 2d or 3d slam damage. *Much* less than the 19d for running into the stone wall.

So now this giant stone armadillo. It has 400hp? That means it is thicker and bigger and harder than that stone wall so it would make sense it would do more damage than the stone wall...though it only does 1d more...so they are quite equivalent. Your only hope would be that not all of that 400hp comes from mass (see Martial Arts p.49 the box on extra hit points)...but since we are talking about a Giant Stone Armadillo...it does seem like those hp represent mass.
It shouldn't matter how big or thick an object you slam into is. The only case in which the HP of the wall should matter is if you could potentially break right through it, capping the max damage you could inflict / receive. Using the RAW's logic, the Earth has roughly 1.88 Billion HP, which means a Move 0.5 collision (such as stepping on the ground) should instantly liquify a human with 19 Million dice of damage.

Of course you don't use the collision rules for the planet. That's what the "falling" rules are there for. But there isn't any difference between colliding with the Earth and colliding with a wall or a giant armadillo. The rules as they are make no sense.
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Old 02-12-2012, 08:51 AM   #12
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: Unintentional slam suicide

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Originally Posted by Silhouette View Post
That was a combat situation.
He was standing near the cliff's edge (conveniently and invitingly close, I should say), and I was hoping to throw him down.
Turn the page from B.371 to 372 and tell your GM you were trying to do a _Shove_ instead of a _Slam_. This might even be true. :)

Not only do Shoves only do knockback rather than injury they actually do more Knockback and this might have been a reasonable strategy fro knocking someone of your own size and weight (i.e. HP) over the cliff.

Option #2 is the "it was only a dream" defense and your GM should sieze upon that to explain _his_ claim that there was a 400 HP Giant Stone Armadillo on the battle mat. The cliff would have obviously have given way under the enomrous weight (hundreds of tons) of a 400 HP creature.
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Old 02-12-2012, 08:54 AM   #13
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Default Re: Unintentional slam suicide

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Originally Posted by vierasmarius View Post
It shouldn't matter how big or thick an object you slam into is. The only case in which the HP of the wall should matter is if you could potentially break right through it, capping the max damage you could inflict / receive.
It shouldn't matter if I'm slamming into glass or metal? A small kid or a big sumo wrestler? If you use falling damage for everything...then it doesn't matter *what* you are slamming into, and that also doesn't seem right.
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Old 02-12-2012, 09:01 AM   #14
Desthro
 
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Default Re: Unintentional slam suicide

This seems like a particularly inconsistent rule.
It should only apply to the smaller mass, and not the larger mass.
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Old 02-12-2012, 09:03 AM   #15
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Default Re: Unintentional slam suicide

There is an elegant house rule to treat objects that you can't shove and knock (12xBL, Basic, p.353) as effectively immobile. And this was mentioned in some other Slam/Shove thread about auto-knockbacking elephants with one-yard slam.
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Old 02-12-2012, 09:06 AM   #16
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Default Re: Unintentional slam suicide

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Originally Posted by trooper6 View Post
It shouldn't matter if I'm slamming into glass or metal?
Why should slamming into an 8ft stone wall do less damage than slamming into an 80 ft stone monolith? Which is exactly what the rules for collisions with immovable objects support.
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Old 02-12-2012, 09:07 AM   #17
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Default Re: Unintentional slam suicide

Well in line with the spirit of what you were trying do...

Since it is in combat, yeah you technically ran 10mph into something dense. But I would say, since you were trying to slam him off the cliff, you were trying to give him a "hard shoulder" like football player.

The simple answer is:
I would apply all damage to an arm. Your shoulder and or arm is broken/shattered but all damage passed that threshold is dropped. I think you're still alive.

If you want be more detailed some damage could also be given to the face and torso. You could add that your collar bone is also broken. But I would only do this to the effect of forcing you to roll to remain conscious (HP <= 0).

The main problem is you're dealing with a creature that is entirely fantastical. Given the HP that you put in your example combined with the face value of the collision RAW the only thing analogous would be running full steam into a mountain with the intent you hit chest first. Which could probably kill someone but I don't believe fully simulates your actions.
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Old 02-12-2012, 09:07 AM   #18
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Default Re: Unintentional slam suicide

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
Turn the page from B.371 to 372 and tell your GM you were trying to do a _Shove_ instead of a _Slam_. This might even be true. :)

Not only do Shoves only do knockback rather than injury they actually do more Knockback and this might have been a reasonable strategy fro knocking someone of your own size and weight (i.e. HP) over the cliff.

Option #2 is the "it was only a dream" defense and your GM should sieze upon that to explain _his_ claim that there was a 400 HP Giant Stone Armadillo on the battle mat. The cliff would have obviously have given way under the enomrous weight (hundreds of tons) of a 400 HP creature.
Sorry for the confusion: "400 HP Giant Stone Armadillo" was just a synthetic example of "huge hard monster who won't try to harm you in response, and probably won't even notice the collision", not the actual monster I've encountered (also, I never tried to collide with elephant's butt, that also was a convenient example).

Thing I collided with was some kind of huge lizard, (probably, because we failed our IQ rolls badly to identify it). "Only a dream" is not an option, because "sneaking inside a huge cave" was a part of our quest, and we definitely knew that there is something huge living inside, and there was broad explanation about "what does he eat", e.t.c...

And considering my roleplay, that definitely was a slam.

Bad for me :-(
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Old 02-12-2012, 09:12 AM   #19
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Default Re: Unintentional slam suicide

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Originally Posted by trooper6 View Post
It shouldn't matter if I'm slamming into glass or metal? A small kid or a big sumo wrestler? If you use falling damage for everything...then it doesn't matter *what* you are slamming into, and that also doesn't seem right.
It matters what the material is, whether it's hard, soft, sharp etc. That could reduce damage (slamming into pillows) or change damage type (a wall of blades.) If you slam into a wall of glass, the most damage that you could inflict or receive would be the damage it takes to break through it (though you'll likely take additional damage from all the broken shards.) If you're slamming into a kid, the damage would be based on the lower of your HP scores, so you'd both take less damage. There would need to be a rule to represent "powering through," since people aren't just billiard balls on a flat surface, and that would let a Sumotori better leverage his ST in a slam. But the basic rule should be that slams are based on the lower of the parties' HP scores.
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Old 02-12-2012, 09:13 AM   #20
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Default Re: Unintentional slam suicide

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