Low Velocity Slams, a Murphy?

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

I never connected the two rules, thanks for bringing it to my attention. Thice nicely solves a lot of my problems.

I do think that I like the Stand Fast extra effort option, and I may start using it. By may, I mean I will.

For Technical Grappling, I'd toyed with a Ready maneuver plus a crouching posture allowing an enhanced resistance to slams and shoves, a la (US) football linemen and sumo wrestlers.

[Ts_]

Originally Posted by seasong

Er, yes, exactly? That is why I presented it as a side note and noted the special assumption.

But that's really arbitrary and dividing the bonus by 100 is not the point of changing scale, imho. It's also disconnected from the rest of the system with a disruption in mechanics. I'd rather have smooth curves that don't depend much on scale. (Though they might work better / be more accurate around certain values, while extreme values need a finer/coarser scale.)

Regards
Ts

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by seasong

Just thought I would push the ridiculousness:

Lleweyllelewellen Buttercup, a pixie known for her ferocious drop-kicks.
Size Modifier -4 (1'6" tall; 2.5 lbs.)
HP 2
Weapon Master
Sumo Wrestling at DX+2
Drop-Kick at Sumo Wrestling+0
Wearing heavy boots

Move 1 yard + All-Out Attack (Strong) + Drop-Kick

Slam damage is 1d+6 (0.02 translates to 1d-3 from HP; +2 AOA(S); +2 WM; +2/die Sumo Wrestling; +3 Drop-Kick with heavy boots)

Note that the slam damage is sufficient to do a yard of knockback to the average human, as well!

As a side note, here's what centi-scale does to that (assuming that you don't multiply damage bonuses by x100 as well):

Slam damage is 2d+11 (0.02 translates to 2d from HP; +1/die AOA(S); +1/die WM; +2/die Sumo Wrestling; +3 Drop-Kick with heavy boots).

A HP 10 opponent would deal 10d+0 (0.1 translates to 10d from HP) in return.

Not that it makes the general thrust of your argument much less ridiculous, but note that Weapon Master bonuses are not cumulative with skill-based damage bonuses from unarmed skills. You use one or the other, not both.

[Dunadin777]

I might be missing something obvious here, but why not adjust such low-velocity slams the way you would a contest for really high attributes? Multiply the lower of the two collision factors enough to get it to about 1, then multiply the higher one by the same amount. Once the dice are rolled, divide by the same number and then add bonuses. That should make the difference between a .02 pixie and a .1 human much more respectable.

Though I might be misreading the issue--lunch break logic at work here. :D

[seasong]

Originally Posted by Dunadin777

I might be missing something obvious here, but why not adjust such low-velocity slams the way you would a contest for really high attributes? Multiply the lower of the two collision factors enough to get it to about 1, then multiply the higher one by the same amount. Once the dice are rolled, divide by the same number and then add bonuses. That should make the difference between a .02 pixie and a .1 human much more respectable.

Multiplying the number of dice and then dividing the damage by the same result does not have good results.

A ST 10 human's 1-yard slam die is 0.1d. If we multiply that by 50, we get 5d. If we roll 5d and get all sixes, for 30 damage, and then divide that by 50, we get 0.6 damage. If the human had rolled a 6 on 1d-3, he would have gotten 3 damage.

[Dunadin777]

Originally Posted by seasong

Multiplying the number of dice and then dividing the damage by the same result does not have good results.

A ST 10 human's 1-yard slam die is 0.1d. If we multiply that by 50, we get 5d. If we roll 5d and get all sixes, for 30 damage, and then divide that by 50, we get 0.6 damage. If the human had rolled a 6 on 1d-3, he would have gotten 3 damage.

Point. I still think scaling it similar to attribute scaling is probably going to be the way to go, but the 'simple fix' definitely doesn't fix anything.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Ts_

Yep, I read that. It's a weird hard limit though. It doesn't work for a speeding super as it completely disregards Move. It also implies that a ST 50 elephant (BL 500) with a full move running start can only shove a 24x500 = 12,000 pound object. Which is to say, it might just be enough to shove a normal adult male elephant.

Is this actually a problem? Can bull elephants easily buffalo other bulls of the same mass?

[Ts_]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Is this actually a problem? Can bull elephants easily buffalo other bulls of the same mass?

Well, I would assume that physics work that way. The energy of the running elephant has to go somewhere. Unless it's all absorbed (in damage), the defending elephant would be at least pushed back. This implies a chance to be knockdowned, though how the rules should work exactly on a quadruped multi-hex figure ...

Sadly, the internet doesn't tell me what an elephant can push over and what not and there are no videos of an elephant charging & hitting something. They can slowly unroot trees from a stand by pushing. From all I know they can do serious harm to 1-2t jeeps.

Here's some violent video of a Rhino fight containing quite a lot of shoving and KD (though still no high-speed slamming): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HALuffTzOK0
But that's a larger male vs a female, and it's below the threshold. Still, shoving from a stand.

Oh, from a fantasy point of view that violates physics: I think, giants should be able to push each other around just like giant robots.

Regards
Ts

[Anthony]

The slam rules have always been silly, because even if hp scaling with mass is assumed accurate, both parties in a collision should take the same amount of damage, regardless of the actual velocity, unless one or the other is more durable (whichever suffers inelastic failure first suffers most of the damage, but that's mostly an issue of DR, not HP) -- in particular, collision damage should typically be based on the smaller object.

As for knockdown, the chance of knockdown should be based on damage vs the target's resistance -- slams should just be dramatically increased knockback relative to their damage, and again, applies to both parties.

[Phoenix_Dragon]

Originally Posted by Ts_

True, the rounding is weird. But: The bonuses should scale as well. The WM is going to have a +60 bonus on this deci-scale roll. So in a 1-yard slam it would be something like 1d+60 for the WM vs. 5d for the elephant.

...or you could base all the bonuses off the converted damage, and get the much more sensible results I posted. I believe that's how the damage-scaling rules work already, even. Even if not, we're already well into houserule territory already, what's one more to counter such a major oddity? As should be noted, most of the bonuses -- AoA (Strong), Mighty Blows, Weapon Master -- scale by the number of dice rolled, so they are not being hugely penalized.

Yes, it makes them have less of an effect on very-low-velocity slams. That is the entire point of this thread. Rather than comparing the results of these tweaks on some scale of fairness versus the RAW, we are comparing the final results, and the final results are much more realistic. For the deci-scale method, not only does it keep normal people from knocking down elephants, but it still gives cinematic-powered large-shield Focused Fury Weapon Master Shield Rush good odds against a warhorse (1d+8 vs 2d deci-scale). It also makes it so that low-velocity slams are not more likely to knock down your target than high-velocity slams, like the current rules do!

Also, I like the mention of centi-scale damage for a pixie collision (Human does nearly twice as much centi-scale damage on the impact, and neither hit hard enough to inflict even a single full-scale HP on each other). I'd like to amend on my previous suggestion that one should probably keep scaling down until both are doing at least a full die of damage at that scale, otherwise you end up with the same problems as now, only for smaller creatures.

I suppose there might be some good weight to the idea that a participant in a collision should never be able to take more dice of damage than they would take in an identical-speed collision with a hard object (And probably before modifiers like All-Out (Strong) or Weapon Master). This way a person being bumped by an aircraft carrier at 1 knot, or walks into the side of the ship at a slow walk (1 yard per second) gets stopped or gently pushed out of the way rather than being exploded into pulp. It also means that if you try to slam Godzilla, you'll probably rebound and knock yourself down, but you won't leave a giant gory spatter all over his foot and the surrounding pavement like some horror-themed water balloon.

(Okay, this is going straight into the houserules file)