[HT] Maximum torso damage for different bullet sizes

tfaal · 07-30-2012, 06:33 PM

Hey y'all. On High Tech page 162 there's an optional rule under the heading "Body Hits" that I'm sure most of you are familiar with. It states that the maximum damage a bullet to the torso can deal is the victim's HP score, with the excess only counting toward bleeding penalties. I presume this is to represent the bullet coming out the other side, and thus no longer being able to destroy tissue. If this is the case though, a wider wound channel should have a higher maximum damage. Shouldn't the maximum amount be based on bullet size, or in GURPS terms, wounding modifier? How does this houserule seem to you?:

Code:

Wound mod | Max damage
----------------------
pi-       | HP/2
pi        | HP
pi+       | HP*1.5
pi++      | HP*2

There are a couple obvious effects of this. First off, pi++ rounds that blow all the way through someone will now bring them down to -1*HP and require a roll for instant death. Given that pi++ is usually reserved for things like autocannon, that seems intuitive to me. The other obvious effect is that pi- rounds can no longer inflict major wounds to the torso, and thus lose pretty much all their capacity to disable a target in one hit. From what I understand rounds of those calibers are of pretty dubious stopping power to begin with, so that might not be too out of line, but it still sort of rubs me the wrong way. As wimpy as a .22LR pistol may be, people *do* get stopped by them, and without a major wound check the only way to simulate that is a fright check. I suppose one could bump the max damage up to the major wound threshold of floor(HP/2)+1 if it proves to be a problem.

I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts on this from a balance perspective of course, but also from a realism perspective. Small arms effectiveness is naturally a hard subject to get good data on, since there's no way to simulate a bullets effects on a human being under combat conditions without shooting a human being in combat. Still, GURPS seems to be making the supposition that crushed tissue == lost HP, and a bigger round will certainly crush more tissue before it exits.

Side note: While we're on this topic, I'd also be interested in hearing the reasons behind the bleeding roll penalties from excess bullet damage. I've always thought of this as temporary cavitation from a high velocity bullet, but I'd be interested to hear alternate explanations.

lexington · 07-30-2012, 06:42 PM

I wouldn't reward pi++ that much or punish pi- that much. You might go .7, 1, 1.2, 1.5 instead.

The biggest issue is that pi++ isn't actually reserved for autocannon. A .45 or .40 hollow point is also pi++ round. A good roll with one of those suddenly has a chance of instant death even if it misses vital organs. Whether or not this is realistic (I vote not) it subverts the Body Hits rule, which is clearly meant to make those random Vitals hits the way of representing sudden death from a torso shot.

tfaal · 07-30-2012, 07:10 PM

I really like your proposed maximums. They scratch the same itch as my table, without getting into the "roll for instant death" situation that never makes much sense with small arms, and without nerfing pi- to death.

However, regarding hollowpoints, I'm beginning to think they should get a base damage nerf. Barring temporary cavitation and spooky ballistic pressure waves, a .6 inch diameter hole all the way through your torso is what it is, whether it's a heavy machine gun that makes it or an HP round. If hollowpoints can't overpenetrate, then their basic damage should be changed so that they never hit the overpenetration cap, whatever that works out to be.

Gigermann · 07-30-2012, 07:19 PM

[Nevermind—had it wrong]

vierasmarius · 07-30-2012, 07:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tfaal

Regarding hollowpoints, I'm beginning to think they should get a base damage nerf. Barring temporary cavitation and spooky ballistic pressure waves, a .6 inch diameter hole all the way through your torso is what it is, whether it's a heavy machine gun that makes it or an HP round. If hollowpoints can't overpenetrate, then their basic damage should be changed so that they never hit the overpenetration cap, whatever that works out to be.

Overpenetration is not actually the same as the Body Hit option, though the two are related. Calculating overpenetration doesn't just compare the injury to HP total, but the attack's armor penetration versus the torso's effective Cover DR. For example, a pi++ hollowpoint round against an average HP 10 human would deal a maximum of 20 injury (using your original house rule), but will only overpenetrate if the damage roll before Wound Modifier is greater than 20 (since the Armor Divisor (0.5) doubles the effective Cover DR).

tfaal · 07-30-2012, 07:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gigermann

[Nevermind—had it wrong]

Darn, you ninja-corrected before I could go all rules-lawyer on you. :P

DouglasCole · 07-30-2012, 07:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tfaal

I really like your proposed maximums. They scratch the same itch as my table, without getting into the "roll for instant death" situation that never makes much sense with small arms, and without nerfing pi- to death.

However, regarding hollowpoints, I'm beginning to think they should get a base damage nerf. Barring temporary cavitation and spooky ballistic pressure waves, a .6 inch diameter hole all the way through your torso is what it is, whether it's a heavy machine gun that makes it or an HP round. If hollowpoints can't overpenetrate, then their basic damage should be changed so that they never hit the overpenetration cap, whatever that works out to be.

in my old ballistics article, the nerfage works out to be about -1 per 2d, usually, with the wound increase of about 40%.

tfaal · 07-30-2012, 07:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

Overpenetration is not actually the same as the Body Hit option, though the two are related. Calculating overpenetration doesn't just compare the injury to HP total, but the attack's armor penetration versus the torso's effective Cover DR. For example, a pi++ hollowpoint round against an average HP 10 human would deal a maximum of 20 injury (using your original house rule), but will only overpenetrate if the damage roll before Wound Modifier is greater than 20 (since the Armor Divisor (0.5) doubles the effective Cover DR).

Very interesting. I'm trying to get my head wrapped around the effects of this. So, under RAW, if I fire a pi- round with no armor divisor at someone, I need to deal 20 basic damage to reach the 10 point injury cap, but only 11 basic damage to overpenetrate and hit the guy behind him with a point of damage left over. I wonder how much of that is an artifact of abstraction, and how much is intentional.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

in my old ballistics article, the nerfage works out to be about -1 per 2d, usually, with the wound increase of about 40%.

That seems reasonable. Do you have a link to that article? It sounds like it would be very helpful to me.

vierasmarius · 07-30-2012, 07:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tfaal

Very interesting. I'm trying to get my head wrapped around the effects of this. So, under RAW, if I fire a pi- round with no armor divisor at someone, I need to deal 20 basic damage to reach the 10 point injury cap, but only 11 basic damage to overpenetrate and hit the guy behind him with a point of damage left over.

That's right. And if firing AP pi- rounds (like those from the FN P90 or a similar small-calibre SMG) you could easily overpenetrate even without delivering a Major Wound. Of course, under your proposal the gap would be narrowed, so in most cases an attack that deals maximum damage is on the verge of overpenetrating. I think that's actually more realistic than RAW; such a house rule comes up from time to time on the forum, and it seems a decent option.

tfaal · 07-30-2012, 07:57 PM

Good to know that I'm not the first to see this rule as a little off. It seems to me that our present overpenetration rules weren't written with Body Hits in mind. If I had to make up overpenetration rules from scratch, I would probably rule that armor divisors do not apply to cover DR from flesh, and that the torso's cover DR is always equal to 10*the round's wounding modifier. Armor divisors and wounding modifiers are designed to fine tune a weapon's specific performances against armor and flesh, so it seems like madness to mix the two up in any circumstance.

07-30-2012, 06:33 PM	#1
tfaal Join Date: Feb 2012	[HT] Maximum torso damage for different bullet sizes Hey y'all. On High Tech page 162 there's an optional rule under the heading "Body Hits" that I'm sure most of you are familiar with. It states that the maximum damage a bullet to the torso can deal is the victim's HP score, with the excess only counting toward bleeding penalties. I presume this is to represent the bullet coming out the other side, and thus no longer being able to destroy tissue. If this is the case though, a wider wound channel should have a higher maximum damage. Shouldn't the maximum amount be based on bullet size, or in GURPS terms, wounding modifier? How does this houserule seem to you?: Code: Wound mod \| Max damage ---------------------- pi- \| HP/2 pi \| HP pi+ \| HP1.5 pi++ \| HP2 There are a couple obvious effects of this. First off, pi++ rounds that blow all the way through someone will now bring them down to -1HP and require a roll for instant death. Given that pi++ is usually reserved for things like autocannon, that seems intuitive to me. The other obvious effect is that pi- rounds can no longer inflict major wounds to the torso, and thus lose pretty much all their capacity to disable a target in one hit. From what I understand rounds of those calibers are of pretty dubious stopping power to begin with, so that might not be too out of line, but it still sort of rubs me the wrong way. As wimpy as a .22LR pistol may be, people do* get stopped by them, and without a major wound check the only way to simulate that is a fright check. I suppose one could bump the max damage up to the major wound threshold of floor(HP/2)+1 if it proves to be a problem. I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts on this from a balance perspective of course, but also from a realism perspective. Small arms effectiveness is naturally a hard subject to get good data on, since there's no way to simulate a bullets effects on a human being under combat conditions without shooting a human being in combat. Still, GURPS seems to be making the supposition that crushed tissue == lost HP, and a bigger round will certainly crush more tissue before it exits. Side note: While we're on this topic, I'd also be interested in hearing the reasons behind the bleeding roll penalties from excess bullet damage. I've always thought of this as temporary cavitation from a high velocity bullet, but I'd be interested to hear alternate explanations.

07-30-2012, 06:42 PM	#2
lexington Join Date: Jan 2010	Re: [HT] Maximum torso damage for different bullet sizes I wouldn't reward pi++ that much or punish pi- that much. You might go .7, 1, 1.2, 1.5 instead. The biggest issue is that pi++ isn't actually reserved for autocannon. A .45 or .40 hollow point is also pi++ round. A good roll with one of those suddenly has a chance of instant death even if it misses vital organs. Whether or not this is realistic (I vote not) it subverts the Body Hits rule, which is clearly meant to make those random Vitals hits the way of representing sudden death from a torso shot.

07-30-2012, 07:10 PM	#3
tfaal Join Date: Feb 2012	Re: [HT] Maximum torso damage for different bullet sizes I really like your proposed maximums. They scratch the same itch as my table, without getting into the "roll for instant death" situation that never makes much sense with small arms, and without nerfing pi- to death. However, regarding hollowpoints, I'm beginning to think they should get a base damage nerf. Barring temporary cavitation and spooky ballistic pressure waves, a .6 inch diameter hole all the way through your torso is what it is, whether it's a heavy machine gun that makes it or an HP round. If hollowpoints can't overpenetrate, then their basic damage should be changed so that they never hit the overpenetration cap, whatever that works out to be. Last edited by tfaal; 07-30-2012 at 07:18 PM.

07-30-2012, 07:19 PM	#4
Gigermann Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Oklahoma City	Re: [HT] Maximum torso damage for different bullet sizes [Nevermind—had it wrong] __________________ The Art of D. Raymond Lunceford, The Daniverse: Core Group Annex The Daniverse Game Blog Last edited by Gigermann; 07-30-2012 at 07:22 PM.

07-30-2012, 07:57 PM	#10
tfaal Join Date: Feb 2012	Re: [HT] Maximum torso damage for different bullet sizes Good to know that I'm not the first to see this rule as a little off. It seems to me that our present overpenetration rules weren't written with Body Hits in mind. If I had to make up overpenetration rules from scratch, I would probably rule that armor divisors do not apply to cover DR from flesh, and that the torso's cover DR is always equal to 10*the round's wounding modifier. Armor divisors and wounding modifiers are designed to fine tune a weapon's specific performances against armor and flesh, so it seems like madness to mix the two up in any circumstance.