Increasing lethality

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Rupert

Once upon a time (in the 3e days) my solution was to double all hit points, leaving bullet damage and DR the same. DR was then doubled vs melee attacks (and ST-based missile, maybe?), and ST based damage got one extra dice.

This seems an oddly complicated approach. You can get almost the same effect without risking messing up all kinds of other rules that use hit points or damage for something by halving bullet (and maybe other missile) damage and giving bullets a (2) armor divisor.

Halving bullet damage (or pi damage in general) and adding a (2) is something that has been proposed as a fix to gun damage ever since the introduction of the concept of armor divisors.

[Ji ji]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I don't find this to be a problem. Mostly because, in the games I run and play, characters start looking to get out of a fight once they start getting wounded.

For example, in the WWII campaign I was playing today, a lot of the gunfire is rifles and machine gins doing 6d to 7d per hit. Most combatants, on any side, will drop out of a fight after taking a hit like that. They may have made one death check to survive that far, but another hit will involve about two more. Taking cover and not coming out is considered acceptable at that point.

That is, by the way, very realistic. An adult man can withstand several pistol rounds or machete chops before being even disabled, but a single battle rifle round is usually deadly.

[fredtheobviouspseudonym]

Originally Posted by Ji ji

. . An adult man can withstand several pistol rounds or machete chops before being even disabled, but a single battle rifle round is usually deadly.

Quite accurate, IIRC.

In some 50 years of studying military history I recall two (2) instances of soldiers being able to function after a torso hit by a full power rifle. One of which I can not recall details. The other was a Commando physical training instructor in a previous incarnation. He took the hit then was able to crawl c. 1/2 mile to a beach for recovery.

That's it.

I'm sure I haven't exhausted the possibilities but would be happy to hear other tales.

[VonKatzen]

Originally Posted by fredtheobviouspseudonym

Quite accurate, IIRC.

In some 50 years of studying military history I recall two (2) instances of soldiers being able to function after a torso hit by a full power rifle. One of which I can not recall details. The other was a Commando physical training instructor in a previous incarnation. He took the hit then was able to crawl c. 1/2 mile to a beach for recovery.

That's it.

I'm sure I haven't exhausted the possibilities but would be happy to hear other tales.

This is because of how well rifles penetrate. However, a small caliber rifle (such as a Kalashnikov or AR15-variant) can also hit a whole lot of places on a man and do fairly minimal damage. But they still have better odds of hitting vital spots or causing bleedout than a handgun, which is potentially no worse than getting shanked with a piece of glass or hit with a baseball bat.

Once you start getting into stuff like a 7mm Mauser, though, that goes down significantly. Because the increased mass/size of the slug and overall energy is enough to break bones even on a fairly glancing hit, and if it hits something hard enough to be deflected it might be even worse. And once you're into the area of a .338 Lapua it's almost certainly going to kill or cripple on any hit that does not simply scratch the person's skin. This is where the overpenetration rules are too generous to characters - something with that much mass and power can deliver injuries through contact that a lighter, fast moving round won't as it passes through the body. Really the amount of overpenetration should be some fraction of the overall mass and energy of the round, instead of a flat number. A 20mm solid AP round isn't going to be limited to the same overpenetration limit as a 5.45 from AK74.

Often this doesn't matter because it kills anyway, but it could be potentially unrealistic for very tough characters like robots, who would basically be unharmed by the latter and annihilated by the former.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by VonKatzen

This is because of how well rifles penetrate. However, a small caliber rifle (such as a Kalashnikov or AR15-variant) can also hit a whole lot of places on a man and do fairly minimal damage. But they still have better odds of hitting vital spots or causing bleedout than a handgun, which is potentially no worse than getting shanked with a piece of glass or hit with a baseball bat.

I take your point to an extant, but I think your down playing hand gun rounds here (certainly by comparing them to baseball bats*)! Hand gun rounds are still more than capable of penetrating to organs so I'm not sure about rifles having better odds of reaching these places than hand guns. (more complicated stuff like fragmentation or deflection in the body reaching those places can work for both in a variety of ways here).

Don't get me wrong yes rifles rounds being far more energetic leave in general worse wounds as I agreed earlier, and all else being equal you have more chance of hand gun round (that does't penetrate to something 'vital', leaving less serious damage in it's wake both in the immediate and long term.

But ultimately a lot of the time it's where you hit not what you hit with, and while energy of the round can compensates for that it can only do so, so much



*yes I know you can actually do a lot of damage with blunt impact like baseball bast, but it really not a like for like comparison of how it does damage and the factors involved in the outcome.

Originally Posted by VonKatzen

Once you start getting into stuff like a 7mm Mauser, though, that goes down significantly. Because the increased mass/size of the slug and overall energy is enough to break bones even on a fairly glancing hit, and if it hits something hard enough to be deflected it might be even worse. And once you're into the area of a .338 Lapua it's almost certainly going to kill or cripple on any hit that does not simply scratch the person's skin. This is where the overpenetration rules are too generous to characters - something with that much mass and power can deliver injuries through contact that a lighter, fast moving round won't as it passes through the body. Really the amount of overpenetration should be some fraction of the overall mass and energy of the round, instead of a flat number. A 20mm solid AP round isn't going to be limited to the same overpenetration limit as a 5.45 from AK74.

Often this doesn't matter because it kills anyway, but it could be potentially unrealistic for very tough characters like robots, who would basically be unharmed by the latter and annihilated by the former.

One way you can increase the damage before overpenetration is to apply the cap before the injury multiplier, not after. So basically the overpenetration cap becomes 1.5xHP for pi+ will be 2xHP for pi++.

That way bigger, larger rounds will do more immediate damage (and will still bleed badly)

I personally don't like that because its a bit threshold-y in effect for hand held weapons, and for me the massive bleeding after high power wounds does the job anyway. Except for pi- where I do use it because I like the effect it gives on very high energy but very small or AP rounds.


But if you think hand guns do too much damage now on non vital areas, this will only increase it for any hand guns doing Pi+ whether from basic size or HP etc!

Another way to do it is increase the cap itself but have the injury multiplier only apply to bleeding. If you make the overpenetration cap say 2xHP so an average person will be 20pts a hand gun round will still do the same immediate damage (e.g 2d or 2d+2) and bleeding as it would under the current rules. But more energetic rounds will be able to dump as much as 20pts of immediate damage in. And of course if they also big enough to get a Pi+ or Pi++ injury mod will get the extra bleeding as well.

One point though if applied like this it makes it twice as hard for a bullet to exit i.e actually physically overpenetrate as they normally would. So maybe when calculating that particular aspect go back to the 1xHP cap to assess it.

But again this is all extra work, and if you think the current bleeding rules gets you to the same end place anyway it's not worth doing. I only really suggest it for the point you raised

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by RyanW

What you could do, as a house rule, is to say that instead of being penalized as the MA rule states, First Aid reduces the penalty for bleeding rolls by its margin of success, and stops it entirely if it reduces it to zero or less. So even severe bleeding is helped by competent first aid.

Maybe halve the reduction (and zero doesn't stop) when dealing with bleeding that would require surgery, provided it makes some sense for external first aid to actually help at all (blood vessels in limbs, for example).

I like that!

Originally Posted by VonKatzen

...
In general small arms (especially pistols) do too much damage but they should have good chances of hitting vitals (often through random luck). The 1-2 vitals hit for torso shots goes a good way towards this.
...

Sorry I didn't reply to this earlier (I pretty much agree with the whole post FWIW), but just to ask is it 1 or 2 in 6 for torso hits? I thought it was 1 in 6?

Same chance as occurs for limb hits becoming and Artery/veins hits.

[VonKatzen]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Sorry I didn't reply to this earlier (I pretty much agree with the whole post FWIW), but just to ask is it 1 or 2 in 6 for torso hits? I thought it was 1 in 6?

Same chance as occurs for limb hits becoming and Artery/veins hits.

You're right, it's 1/6. I was probably thinking of a house rule I read somewhere.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by VonKatzen

You're right, it's 1/6. I was probably thinking of a house rule I read somewhere.

Cool. Yeah I think I've seen a similar house rule on these forums, IIRC it was based on taking a rough guess of the amount of space the GURPS vitals take up in the torso. I could see the reasoning, but to be frank once you start breaking out anatomy in this context you are opening a can of worms anyway!

[VonKatzen]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Cool. Yeah I think I've seen a similar house rule on these forums, IIRC it was based on taking a rough guess of the amount of space the GURPS vitals take up in the torso. I could see the reasoning, but to be frank once you start breaking out anatomy in this context you are opening a can of worms anyway!

If you wanted to get really fiddly you could also have extremely muscular or fat characters have a lower vitals proportion :P

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by VonKatzen

If you wanted to get really fiddly you could also have extremely muscular or fat characters have a lower vitals proportion :P

Ah well I use a house rule that could do that in a different way!

So the house rule is to reach the vitals you have get through a SM+1 layer of normal Torso first*.

This is in reference to the anatomical tendency for most animal to protect their vital organs (subject to them still being able to do their jobs).

But also to get away from the game situation were tiny 1pt damage attacks from very low power attacks causing big issues with vital hits. This situation is compounded by the minimum 1pt damage for really small non cr attacks! It also makes hunting elephants and similar big animals at low TLs harder!


So if I really wanted to model really fat or muscley people's vitals being more protected** as well as having lots of HP I might say that protective layer over vitals thicker than their SM would otherwise make it.


Of course again if we're getting that fiddly I also probably adjudicate on case by cases basis as even very fat or very muscly people don't have that extra mass even distributed over each vital organ!





*I can't take credit for this one, I cribbed it from someone here!



**whee anecdote time!

I used to know a big, fat HGV driver (trucker) who got into a fight with some blokes one night. And only after the fight noticed the handle of the knife sticking out of his prodigious gut! The knife had not penetrated through his "outer layers" so to speak, so a quick swabbing, some stitches, a dressing and a shot for infection later he was went home from a knife wound that would have reached something worse on a slimmer abdomen.