Increasing lethality

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

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

You could also say the initial wound must exceed at least HP/8 (rounded up), or some such number, to get bonus damage to the vitals. Maybe it could become HP/10 for Skinny, HP/6 for Fat, and HP/4 for Very Fat. That's just numbers off the top of my head, and first thing in the morning, so it might be a stupid idea after I'm fully awake.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by RyanW

You could also say the initial wound must exceed at least HP/8 (rounded up), or some such number, to get bonus damage to the vitals. Maybe it could become HP/10 for Skinny, HP/6 for Fat, and HP/4 for Very Fat. That's just numbers off the top of my head, and first thing in the morning, so it might be a stupid idea after I'm fully awake.

I quite like that!

Although I'd say you wouldn't necessarily need to do the last adjustment, as one assumes the heavily built would have more HP already so to do both would potentially be double dipping.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by malloyd

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.

Yes, I looked at that, but it means the vast majority of attacks at TL6+ involve an armour divisor, and also doubling HP and adding to melee damage rather than doubling fixed a lot of the ST-damage scaling that people didn't like then (and still don't like now).

[Rupert]

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.

Well, this is of someone who wasn't really functional after being hit, but made a full recovery.

This happened while I was serving, and given where I was when I heard about it, some time in 1989-1991.

There was a training accident during a live-fire exercise, in which a machinegun giving covering fire didn't switch off the area the men were assaulting through during a battle drill. One of the instructors was hit by a burst of fire from a C9 light machinegun (a Canadian licensed built FN MINIMI) firing 5.56x45mm. He took three hits to his upper legs, and three to his lower body.

While he was choppered to a hospital ASAP, he spent a while lying on the ground with only basic battlefield first aid, then what an ambulance crew could carry in to him.

While 5.56x45mm isn't a "full power rifle" round, it's pretty good at wounding when fired from a weapon with a decent barrel length, which a C9 has.

Assuming no rounds hit his vitals the soldier most likely took 5d x 3 + (HP/2 +1) x 2 damage (yay for crippled limbs not passing extra damage on to the main HP pool). The leg hits put him slightly negative, the three body hits almost certainly force three, maybe four death checks. Using the bleeding rules, with or without the HT (capping direct bullet damage) and MA rules (making bleeding harder to stop), he had plenty of time to bleed more hit points as well.

I'd say he was both tough and lucky (being in good health and very fit helped too, no doubt).

[Ji ji]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

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 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 its wake both in the immediate and long term.

But ultimately at for 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 factors involved in outcome.




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

I was not anymore aware that the cap is on wound and not on damage, as I HRed it being applied before wounding mod since the beginning :D

It’s even more coherent with the basic design assumption that damage models penetration and wounding mod models the trasversal area of damage.

My HR on firearms are more complex. I use my spreadsheet for damage and wounding mod, but that’s another issue. The core HR are:

- Blow-through damage cap is HP*wounding mod.
- Specific locations’ wounding mods and caps are multiplied by the weapon’s secondary wounding mod (something like primary wounding mod ^0.8 IIRC)
- expanding bullets multiply blow-through value by x (usually 2) and basic damage by 1/(x^0.5)

The results are coherent with the real world data I have, apart from an excessive lethality of low-power bullets on a vital hit.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Ji ji

I was not anymore aware that the cap is on wound and not on damage, as I HRed it being applied before wounding mod since the beginning :D

It’s even more coherent with the basic design assumption that damage models penetration and wounding mod models the trasversal area of damage.

I agree it fits the penetration model. But I don't like it because you pretty much get auto death rolls on stuff like Muskets etc. And anything Pi+ with HP suddenly becomes very desirable

But that said I do like it for Pi-!

Originally Posted by Ji ji

My HR on firearms are more complex. I use my spreadsheet for damage and wounding mod, but that’s another issue. The core HR are:

- Blow-through damage cap is HP*wounding mod.
- Specific locations’ wounding mods and caps are multiplied by the weapon’s secondary wounding mod (something like primary wounding mod ^0.8 IIRC)
- expanding bullets multiply blow-through value by x (usually 2) and basic damage by 1/(x^0.5)

The results are coherent with the real world data I have, apart from an excessive lethality of low-power bullets on a vital hit.

Interesting.

On the last point about excessive lethality of low-power bullets on a vital hit. TBH I think it's more about what GURPS calls vitals and how it treats all of them the same.

Or put it this way do I think an average of 27pt injury from a 9mm though the heart is excessively lethal? No not at all


Same bullet through the Inferior lobe of a lung? Certainly not great*, but not as lethal as above. Still not something you just walk around with and rely on first aid for though!

But then I guess you could also argue the Lungs, heart, and liver together are more than 1 in 6 or 17% of the torso (even more so once the default torso was revised to be the chest!)

However as I said earlier this is an RPG not a medical text book. So 1 in 6 chance of hitting or -3 to directly target a subsection of tissues in the upper torso that gives 3x injury multiplier, bleeds badly and is hard to treat? Probably about right!



*edit: to be clear some hits to the lungs or the area they are in can be very serious and immediately interfere with respiration etc,etc

[Ji ji]

Maybe a 2x for vitals is enough, and high damage rolls and critical hits can account for very good shots bringing large destruction of heart/coronary arteries/spinal cord/aorta.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

On the last point about excessive lethality of low-power bullets on a vital hit. TBH I think it's more about what GURPS calls vitals and how it treats all of them the same.

Or put it this way do I think an average of 27pt injury from a 9mm though the heart is excessively lethal? No not at all


Same bullet through the Inferior lobe of a lung? Certainly not great, but not as lethal as above. Still not something you just walk around with and rely on first aid for though!

I don't think GURPS considers lungs as 'vitals' - hitting them doesn't produce 'instant' death in real life the way hitting the heart, liver, and great vessels does. The optional rules preventing First Aid from stopping internal bleeding would apply to lung hits, though a kind GM might rule that the 'bleeding' is air entering the chest cavity and allow First Aid to prevent that.

[VonKatzen]

Originally Posted by Rupert

I don't think GURPS considers lungs as 'vitals' - hitting them doesn't produce 'instant' death in real life the way hitting the heart, liver, and great vessels does. The optional rules preventing First Aid from stopping internal bleeding would apply to lung hits, though a kind GM might rule that the 'bleeding' is air entering the chest cavity and allow First Aid to prevent that.

This is one area where technology makes all the difference, too. With NV AI and advanced surgical beds on your spaceship stuff that would be fatal or crippling becomes more of a nuisance. Of course Ultra-Tech weapons are also likely to blow you to pieces. The lethality of a high energy microwave laser is hysterical, and accurate!

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Rupert

I don't think GURPS considers lungs as 'vitals' - hitting them doesn't produce 'instant' death in real life the way hitting the heart, liver, and great vessels does. The optional rules preventing First Aid from stopping internal bleeding would apply to lung hits, though a kind GM might rule that the 'bleeding' is air entering the chest cavity and allow First Aid to prevent that.

I agree (although bad as bleeding from the liver can be I'd hesitate to say hitting the liver is akin to the heart*).

But the picture in on 399pg definitely has lungs as vitals. But actually not the liver! So I'm wrong on that. Huh I've really internalised the liver being a GURPS 'vital' wonder if it mentioned anywhere else?!




*but again we get into what makes GURPS vitals vital, how does a RPG system model major organ damage either as general set of rules for different organs or for specific rules for specific organs etc, etc. FWIW if I really got into it, I wouldn't treat the kidneys like the heart or the lungs either!