Body Slamming A Swarm

[martinl]

Note: Do not attempt this in high-realism games.

Last night my luchadora street urchin body slammed a rat swarm in order to do some large area injury. We did not find any body slamming rules in Basic, and were trying for speed, so we went with "Thrust damage +2, large area, based off of wrasslin', counts as an all out attack."

In the cold light of day, it seems to me this might actually just be a standard slam attack, with the target braced on a hard object, at a speed somehow calculated from max jumping height...
...I also seem to recall "falling on top of someone rules," those might be even better.

Are there published body slamming rules? How would you folks handle this?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by martinl

Are there published body slamming rules? How would you folks handle this?

The slam is a standard attack in volume 2 of the Basic Set. Look in the first chapter on combat, near the end of the section on unarmed combat.

[naloth]

The new DF rules for slamming are a bit easier to use:

New (DFRPG Exploits p.40):
thr-2, modified /per die/ by velocity off the Speed/Range table
1 yard = -2 per die
2 yards = flat
3-4 yards = +1 per die

[Anthony]

Assuming you mean 'falling on top of someone' when you say body slam, see the falling rules, and particularly 'damage from falling objects' on B431.

[Refplace]

Also consider the Trampling rules.

[Varyon]

Without a jump, a body slam can probably be approximated as a fall from 1/2 your height. For an SM+0 character, that's 1 yard and a velocity of 5. For a beefy ST 14 or so luchador, that's 0.7d of falling damage to him, and I'd probably double it for the rats if they're on relatively unyielding ground (they probably break his fall enough he doesn't get the damage doubled, fortunately), to 1.4d. That's roughly 1d-1 cr to him, 1d+1 cr to the rats. If he jumps first, he adds his jump height to the starting height of the fall; without something to springboard off of, and assuming Basic Move below 8 and Jumping-14, and jumping without a couple seconds to prepare (that is, jumping in combat), you'd add 16", and will boost to roughly 5.5 yards/second, which you would be justified in rounding up to 6 (after all, a 1 yard fall only has a velocity of around 4.6 yards/second, but GURPS rounds this up to 5). That's 0.84d and 1.68d, respectively, for 1d-1 to the luchador and 1d+2 (or 2d-1) to the rats.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by martinl

Last night my luchadora street urchin body slammed a rat swarm in order to do some large area injury. We did not find any body slamming rules in Basic, and were trying for speed, so we went with "Thrust damage +2, large area, based off of wrasslin', counts as an all out attack."

The realistic version of this problem is "bugs on a windshield." How much damage do you do to something like a swarm of wasps by driving a truck through it at speed?

Alternately, how much damage do you do if you fall on top of a swarm of creepy crawlies? (Important if you hope to kill them before they swarm all over you . . .)

As a very rough guess, I'd ignore relative mass of both the swarm and the thing hitting the swarm and just base damage on relative areas of contact.

As long as the falling/moving object is capable of doing enough damage, based on speed alone, to inflict enough damage to automatically disperse a swarm hex, assume that each square yard of surface area in contact eliminates one hex of swarm.

Otherwise, figure total dice of damage for the striking object, divide by square yards of surface area, and apply that many dice of damage per hex of swarm contacted. Maybe have the swarm make a HT roll to just take half damage per hex.