[HT] Small Calibre firepower

[jacobmuller]

The question for me wouldn't be "Does it ever happen?" but "How does it happen in GURPS?".
Is the bullet sliding around your skull, as 2pt damage is 0 injury, a 3pt damage result giving 4 injury, ie it hasn't really creamed your brain but, like being smacked with big stick, it kinda rattles things around...

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by jacobmuller

The question for me wouldn't be "Does it ever happen?" but "How does it happen in GURPS?".
Is the bullet sliding around your skull, as 2pt damage is 0 injury, a 3pt damage result giving 4 injury, ie it hasn't really creamed your brain but, like being smacked with big stick, it kinda rattles things around...

I'd use T-Bone's Grazes rule from Pyramid 3/34 (and his website). A poor hit (one which succeeded by 0, or which the target failed to Dodge by only 1) does half damage, and the DR is doubled. So a 2d pi+ bullet grazing the skull would do effectively 1d vs DR 4, giving a good chance of no significant damage, and even on a max damage roll wouldn't be immediately lethal.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

I'd use T-Bone's Grazes rule from Pyramid 3/34 (and his website). A poor hit (one which succeeded by 0, or which the target failed to Dodge by only 1) does half damage, and the DR is doubled. So a 2d pi+ bullet grazing the skull would do effectively 1d vs DR 4, giving a good chance of no significant damage, and even on a max damage roll wouldn't be immediately lethal.

That still has no step between 'bounce off and do nothing' and 'penetrating brain trauma'. It just makes the former a bit more likely.

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

That still has no step between 'bounce off and do nothing' and 'penetrating brain trauma'. It just makes the former a bit more likely.

Ah, true. For that case, I'd second the house rule that non-penetrating Skull hits are treated as Face hits. This is especially important if using the bleeding rules, since the external scalp is quite capable of bleeding profusely. So for the case of a 2d pi+ Graze, it could inflict 1-6 injury without penetrating, or 4-8 if it penetrates. Hmm... probably want to use the higher of the two to avoid weird edge cases... so if you roll 5 vs effective skull DR 4, you'd inflict the higher of (5x1.5) or (1x4), in this case 7 damage. For non-graze hits this shouldn't be a big issue.

[jacobmuller]

LOL sometimes I'm amazed at how dense my skull is:D
Non-pen Skull = Face and Graze it is. Makes the UT subdermal skull armor more bearable.

[Phoenix_Dragon]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

For that case, I'd second the house rule that non-penetrating Skull hits are treated as Face hits.

Ironically, I've always had a bit of an issue with skull-hits that fail to penetrate having zero effect, but I didn't even think of that houserule until I was actually typing it out.

Good catch on that edge-case, by the way. I always like finding those special cases to patch out, like the pi- grazing hits I mentioned.

Edit: I'd probably put the cap on the face hit, instead of boosting brain-hit damage. Say, a skull hit that fails to penetrate the skull instead is treated as a regular face hit, but with a cap on injury of 4 points (The minimum injury a skull-penetrating hit can deal). It might be worth treating that as akin to the "blowthrough" behavior for the torso, and have further damage beyond that apply for bleeding rolls.

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by Phoenix_Dragon

Edit: I'd probably put the cap on the face hit, instead of boosting brain-hit damage. Say, a skull hit that fails to penetrate the skull instead is treated as a regular face hit, but with a cap on injury of 4 points (The minimum injury a skull-penetrating hit can deal). It might be worth treating that as akin to the "blowthrough" behavior for the torso, and have further damage beyond that apply for bleeding rolls.

Ah, yeah, that makes sense. A blow that doesn't penetrate the skull only has so much tissue that it can damage.