Hit Points...to be, or not to be?

[Arcanjo7Sagi]

Originally Posted by Tyneras

Indeed. Fiction tends to treat the neck likes its made out of Styrofoam when decapitation happens. In reality it's more like trying to cut through a 4x4, there's a reason the head and neck are braced when going for that execution style. Even then, executioners sometimes had to hit the neck 3 or 4 times to sever the head, and that's a helpless, unmoving target!

One of the reasons for having invented the guillotine. Make the process faster, easier for the executor and with less suffering for the convict.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Plane

4e abandoning 3e damage amounts required for decapitation because that's too lethal makes me think they don't want this idea used too broadly, as in to be considered obviously lethal in 4e an attack ought to at minimum do more damage than the generic 3e decapitation thresholds, or else why abandon them?

You're coming at this from the wrong direction. The "obviously lethal" rule is for when there's a risk the normal rules for injury would create a situation the GM and/or players would find ridiculous, and is meant to be applied on a "feels right" rather than mechanical basis. A normal human who swallows a TL 9 HEC thimble grenade should die when it explodes, but could take as little as 12 HP Injury from it, and even with its average of 42 HP Injury there's a chance of survival - so when this happens, the GM can just avoid rolling and say the character is dead. Basically the check for if you should use the rule isn't "How much damage does this do" but rather "Does it make sense for the character to be able to survive?" If the latter answer is a firm "No," use the rule - otherwise (including "I'm not sure"), roll and see what happens.

Originally Posted by Balor Patch

The issue wasn't that it was too lethal, but that decapitation is much, much harder than just killing someone and the rules didn't reflect that.

Having a character above -5xHP die without any real chance to avoid it (with one or more HT rolls) was likely seen as unfair, so it was removed. At least, that's my take, but I think the only 3e book I have is Vehicles.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Having a character above -5xHP die without any real chance to avoid it (with one or more HT rolls) was likely seen as unfair, so it was removed. At least, that's my take, but I think the only 3e book I have is Vehicles.

Soemwhat unfair but It was still -2x HP and a failed HT roll for a single blow to the Neck location. Eh, strikes as more likely a theoretical problem than a response to actual problems.

It's a little bit of a problem that an average human can take 59pts of cutting damage to the neck in a single blow and survive now. Of course, that's not a common problem either.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Soemwhat unfair but It was still -2x HP and a failed HT roll for a single blow to the Neck location. Eh, strikes as more likely a theoretical problem than a response to actual problems.

If it took 2xHP wounding to decapitate, and only did so on a failed roll against HT, that's really not that different from how it works now.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

It's a little bit of a problem that an average human can take 59pts of cutting damage to the neck in a single blow and survive now. Of course, that's not a common problem either.

The most that's theoretically survivable for an average HP 10 human is 29 cutting damage to the neck, for 58 HP Injury (which I assume is what you were getting at). Even if the character does manage to pass 4 rolls against HT (or pass 3 and fail one by less than 3), if using bleeding rules he's pretty well guaranteed to die in a minute or two. It does seem a bit off that a strike that would lop off both legs in one go wouldn't kill someone outright with a hit to the neck, but as you note, this is quite the edge case.

[Arcanjo7Sagi]

Originally Posted by Varyon

If it took 2xHP wounding to decapitate, and only did so on a failed roll against HT, that's really not that different from how it works now.

Ah, yes. The decapitation rules. If I remember correctly, someone with high HT in 3E was almost immune to having a severed head. Or did I forget something?

[Gnome]

Originally Posted by Plane

I figure it exists to cover the situation of saving time where even the minimum damage roll possible would take you below -5xHP.

I really don't see the point of printing a rule like that for this purpose. If minimum damage would kill someone automatically, you don't have to roll--this seems sort of obvious, and has nothing to do with helpless victims, as it's true in general! Clearly this rule is specifically about helpless victims (like the one described in the OP!).

I also don't see the relevance here of decapitation. It's much harder to decapitate someone than kill them (I have no particular opinion about the 3e vs 4e decapitation rules).

Clearly applying this rule requires a GM call, as do so many rules in GURPS. Given that the text includes the word "obvious," I wouldn't apply it as a GM if there were any doubt, or if one of the players seemed doubtful about the lethality of the attack. But the rule is specifically about helpless victims, so it cannot be a simple reminder that you don't need to roll if minimum damage is an automatic kill.

[Arcanjo7Sagi]

Originally Posted by Gnome

I also don't see the relevance here of decapitation.

Some people may like details. For some players, more rules toward realism is almost like porn. =P

Personally, I like it when books have rules covering the most diverse situations. I like that the option exists, at least for certain types of games.

I understand that for certain players or GMs, certain rules are unnecessary. If you prefer more cinematic and exaggerated games, it is clear that more detailed and realistic rules are unlikely to be used in your games.

Furthermore, even in the most realistic games, there may be situations where there is no need for rules. If you are playing with normal characters of up to 150 points, you are unlikely to roll damage dice to someone who is falling from an airplane, without a parachute, more than 2 km high, for example. Or roll damage for a plane crash in the same game. Or even a knife in yours enemy throat when he are asleep.

But there are characters and games that are in between, where such rules can be useful.

Let's take the example of the crashed plane. It is obvious that a Superman or Hulk would never die in a plane crash, but there may be several other less exaggerated Supers characters that would leave us the doubt. So, how much DR or HP does it take to survive a plane crash, for example?

What I'm trying to say is that there may be games where rules for these and other situations are useful. Games where there is a margin of doubt about the survival of the characters.

[Otaku]

Aye. Some of the rules that seem pointless are because the edge cases are not edge cases in certain genres, with certain fantastic elements included, etc.

Oh, and since it seems to be in doubt, at least going by Compendium II, page 53, a cutting blow had to do at least one point over (full HP) damage requires a HT roll to avoid decapitation, which decapitation usually meaning instant death. Note that I am "translating", as 3e uses some terms differently, and 53 is a listing of different hit locations and the information about them e.g. it doesn't take into account if you're a being that can survive having its head cut off. XP

[Bruno]

I hate to be the "Well Actually" person, but (a very small number of) people have survived plane crashes and ejecting from aeroplanes from really absurd heights. The only kinds of things I really feel confident making absolute statements about rapid lethality involve "absolutely definitely cutting off all O2 to the brainstem while it continues to operate at a normal metabolic level". Instant lethality needs instant vaporization of the brainstem, otherwise I refuse to make statements about "oh totally you'll die instantly".

Phineas Guage had an epic industrial accident: a big honking 6' iron rod got fired through his head, landing some 30 feet away. He survived, and may have only passed out briefly, if at all. His co-workers took him to town in a cart and he hung out in a chair outside the general store waiting for a doctor to wander by for "treatment". This was the 1800s, so "treatment" is in quotes. He got a brain infection, the doctor tried to wash it out, he survived. He had mold growing in the wound, the doctor tried to pick at it a little, he survived. And he got better (accounts from within his lifetime seem to indicate that he was weird and crabby for about a year or two afterwards, which makes sense for the pain he must have been in and adjusting to a brain injury and a hella concussion).

It's absurd that he survived. It's even more absurd that he was highly functional. It's also absurd that people die after falling out of a chair, but that happens pretty regularly. Our intuition about what is and isn't survivable is pretty garbage. Trauma medics and surgeons have some skills and experience to make better educated guesses, but most gaming groups aren't lucky enough to have one.

Nobody builds a game system to handle this sort of case, but it's reasonably approximated by "wow, rolled minimum damage!" and a series of good HT rolls. The chances that come up via those die rolls are probably a few orders of magnitude higher than IRL, but for gaming purposes 0.001% vs 0.00001% survivability for a situation that doesn't happen multiple times a session seems irrelevant. PCs tend to be at the center of exceptional circumstances anyways.

Which is a long and winding way of saying "I use game systems to handle the outcome of actions because I'm pretty sure picking results that seem 'realistic' is going to get some stupidly unrealistic results. I might as well go with the systems that the game we're playing actually suggests, so we at least are consistently unrealistic."

[thrash]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Our intuition about what is and isn't survivable is pretty garbage.

Another case in point: Wenceslao Moguel apparently survived execution by firing squad, including a coup de grâce at point-blank range.