Face & Neck location damage multiplier

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

No I haven't, what I've said is that if there are similar rules for the torso (which there are) then such rules don't distinguish between the two areas.

Except they do, along exactly the axis you keep harping on.

On penetrating torso hits, you have a chance to hit the vitals. On penetrating face hits, you have a chance to hit the brain.

How is that not the difference you're talking about?

[Phoenix_Dragon]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

However you then still have the basic premise that wounds to the neck and face are as immediately damaging as wounds to the torso?

None of those are equal in immediate effect on the target.

The torso is the least immediately dangerous. That's not to say it's not dangerous, of course, but it is less so than the others. A cutting attack does good damage, and an impaling attack has a chance to hit something vital, turning a dangerous hit into a very dangerous hit.

Face is the next most immediately dangerous. Any hit has a chance of striking something vital and doing massive damage. If it does not, however, there is not anything vitally important that is damaged, so it is no more likely to be life-threatening than a torso wound that misses anything vital. It is, however, painful, and more likely to immediately impair or incapacitate the target due to pain. A hit to the torso that might do almost nothing could stagger or drop someone when delt to the face. This is also ignoring special sub-locations of the face, such as nose or jaw, which while they deal no more damage, have increased additional chance to immediately impair or incapacitate the target.

Neck is possibly the most immediately dangerous, barring face hits that cut into the brain (Though it's so close to the face in immediate danger that I could easily see it argued that I've got them ranked backwards). Cutting attacks deal more damage to the neck, and any blow has a chance to hit something vital that makes things even worse. Major wounds from crushing attacks are particularly nasty; one to the spine will immediately incapacitate the target (See Martial Arts), while one that hits elsewhere will cause choking instead (See BioTech). It also shares the pain effect of the face. All of these make it more likely to immediately impair and incapacitate a target. It also has much more severe bleeding (For which First-Aid is useless) and possible long-term impairments, which make neck wounds less survivable.

(Including the optional, high-realism injury rules, of course)

HP loss is a notable but small part of the total threat that a wound causes, and those other effects can make a huge difference. I think you're discounting them too readily.

For some anecdotes, I've known a good number of people who have been shot, most by low-caliber rounds. The guy that was shot in the face had a wound that was not seriously life-threatening or long-term impairing; it did little actual damage, but was incapacitating due to the shock and pain. The guys who were shot in the legs and hips suffered similar amounts of actual injury and required similar periods of time to heal from it, but were both less immediately impaired (Suffering mainly impairment only in the limb in question, instead of overall ability), and suffered less life-threatening injuries. They did, however, tend to suffer longer-term impairment of the limb in question, and some never recovered to 100% functionality in the limb in question. Barring hits to vital structures (Mainly circulatory and central nervous system, and to a lesser degree, respiratory system), that seems pretty standard for such injuries.

[NineDaysDead]

Originally Posted by Bruno

People get shot, stabbed, and punched in the face on a pretty regular basis. It's not lethal. Your face is very much like a crumple-zone for the "important" part of your head ie your brain.

A broken nose, crushed cheekbones, fractures around the sinuses, lost teeth, or even a broken jaw isn't going to kill you. It will make you miserable but that's different.

It does suggest that it should be possible to scar the face for reduced appearance with enough damage though.

Originally Posted by Bruno

No, and I never implied as such. But when you set aside chance of brain injury (which you have) and bleeding (which you have) and disfiguring or long term injury (which you have) all you have left as a difference is that getting punched in the face hurts more - which GURPS already covers by making it terribly easy to get stun/knockdown on the face.

Are there rules for disfiguring the face in 4th edition?

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by NineDaysDead

It does suggest that it should be possible to scar the face for reduced appearance with enough damage though.

Are there rules for disfiguring the face in 4th edition?

Critical head blow table, results 12 and 13, also potentially loosing an eye (See One Eye disadvantage) but that might just make you look dashing and mysterious.

Nothing more rigorous that I can find off the top of my head, but "attractiveness" is such a nebulous concept that it's hard to come up with hard-and-fast rules - it's also so heavily culture-bound that they'd never be generic.

[Bruno]

One of my co-workers has a prominent ear-to-ear scar, as a memento from one of his extended series of very bad room-mates.

He was another case of "walked into the ER complaining loudly about the guy who did it", and he's got neither protective fat nor protective muscle - he's just skinny and stubborn.

The ears are of course another part of the face where getting them taken off in a fight really is just a flesh wound. It's not even a major impediment to your hearing, although if you wear glasses it's hugely inconvenient.

[Green-Neck]

Necks previously discussed...
http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=54486

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

That's fair; I just felt that it beared saying, because a lot of "broken record" debaters on the internet actually think they're going to bring people around to their point of view just by repeating themselves.

No worries, there always the risk of doing that (although I'm trying not to) however there is also the risk of people repeating their responses without addressing the points raised*. At some point you just agree to disagree

*sorry not saying you are!

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

Yeah, that's where pretty much everybody seems to disagree. In real life, it is close-enough-to-jazz for exactly as much more dangerous to be stabbed, chopped, or shot in the face or neck as the extra bleeding rules in MA would suggest.



I did explicitly label it as anecdotal evidence (ie: worthless in the face of anything better). Got anything better?

What examples of people having died being stabbed through the face or neck, yeah I might be able to come up with few ;-).

But then one anecdote doesn't refute another, anecdotes don't prove anything either way.

Also anecdotes of people surviving wounds in the face and neck fall into the trap of confirmation bias.

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Except they do, along exactly the axis you keep harping on.

On penetrating torso hits, you have a chance to hit the vitals. On penetrating face hits, you have a chance to hit the brain.

How is that not the difference you're talking about?

Because its still the same 1 - 6 chance. The hidden target might differ but the chance is the same. Basically the rule is saying you are as likely to hit by luck an area that is particularly dangerous to hit in the torso as you are in the lower head from the front.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Bruno

One of my co-workers has a prominent ear-to-ear scar, as a memento from one of his extended series of very bad room-mates.

There is pretty much no location that can't be hit without having a chance of surprisingly minimal injury, especially if the attack was impaling. Including the brain, unless you're dealing with a very powerful attack. The neck does have an usually high density of critical parts (the carotid and jugular are as life-critical as most things you'll find in the center torso, and don't have the armor of the breastbone and rib cage; likewise the spine is somewhat more accessible), so it would probably be realistic to treat it as a vitals hit.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Phoenix_Dragon

None of those are equal in immediate effect on the target.

The torso is the least immediately dangerous. That's not to say it's not dangerous, of course, but it is less so than the others. A cutting attack does good damage, and an impaling attack has a chance to hit something vital, turning a dangerous hit into a very dangerous hit.

Face is the next most immediately dangerous. Any hit has a chance of striking something vital and doing massive damage. If it does not, however, there is not anything vitally important that is damaged, so it is no more likely to be life-threatening than a torso wound that misses anything vital. It is, however, painful, and more likely to immediately impair or incapacitate the target due to pain. A hit to the torso that might do almost nothing could stagger or drop someone when delt to the face. This is also ignoring special sub-locations of the face, such as nose or jaw, which while they deal no more damage, have increased additional chance to immediately impair or incapacitate the target.

Neck is possibly the most immediately dangerous, barring face hits that cut into the brain (Though it's so close to the face in immediate danger that I could easily see it argued that I've got them ranked backwards). Cutting attacks deal more damage to the neck, and any blow has a chance to hit something vital that makes things even worse. Major wounds from crushing attacks are particularly nasty; one to the spine will immediately incapacitate the target (See Martial Arts), while one that hits elsewhere will cause choking instead (See BioTech). It also shares the pain effect of the face. All of these make it more likely to immediately impair and incapacitate a target. It also has much more severe bleeding (For which First-Aid is useless) and possible long-term impairments, which make neck wounds less survivable.
.

None of that seems to go against what I'm suggesting though. I'm not arguing that hits to these areas are instant death sentences, I'm arguing that they are intermediate in terms of immediate effect on a scale between torso and brain.

I take you point about hits to the face either being superficial or really bad, however short of putting in some kind of unique threshold dependent rule I would argue that is modelled by low damage rolls compared to high damage rolls. Which makes sense because high damaging rolls tend to indicate blows that have connected more and thus more likely to have gone through the 'crumple zone' and hit the good bits behind.

Also to be fair you could make similar arguments about almost all parts of the body, the vitals in the torso that count as 'vital' are also covered by less important tissues.

Basically it comes down to this I think wounding multipliers on location should reflect a meat: immediately crippling good stuff, ratio. All the locations seem to follow this except the lower head and neck. Once you past the surface there really isn't very many areas in these locations were you can stick something without hitting something pretty damn important to continuing to live in the short term.

If nothing else why can I severe the leg of a St10man with a 8 point blow from a sword, but the same blow to his neck has him fighting to stay concious while I wait for him to bleed out? And if he makes his HT roll he can still act more freely than if he's lost his leg!

Now don't get me wrong dead is dead and that chap's not going to last long, but for a system that's very good at giving us several different ways of getting there and isn't shy to have legs and arms flying off and the immediate mechanical effect of that happening, why does the neck get left out. Short of the assumption that a mortal wound to the neck from cutting is decapitation, headless chickens obviously having very high HT scores!

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Anthony

There is pretty much no location that can't be hit without having a chance of surprisingly minimal injury, especially if the attack was impaling. Including the brain, unless you're dealing with a very powerful attack. The neck does have an usually high density of critical parts (the carotid and jugular are as life-critical as most things you'll find in the center torso, and don't have the armor of the breastbone and rib cage; likewise the spine is somewhat more accessible), so it would probably be realistic to treat it as a vitals hit.

Yep I agree with this.

I go back to something I posted earlier.

Leaving side the most superficial wounds if you were randomly stabbed in the torso, you'd count yourself pretty unlucky if it hit something vital enough to warrant a immediate x3 effect, if you got stabbed in the neck, you'd count yourself pretty lucky if you didn't.