Slam Damage is Very Weak

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by JCurwen3

I've wondered this before, but if you have the Move and SM to hit like a bullet... shouldn't there be a point when your slam counts as some kind of piercing damage?

Waaaaay back in 3e on the GURPSNet mailing list we chatted about how much ST do you need before someone punching is doing bullet-type damage. 3e of course had bullets doing a heavily-modified version of crushing rather than their own damage type, in 4e it would be large piercing. IIRC the verdict for 3e was around ST 80-100ish; when converting that to 4e I'd convert based on damage, not lifting.

It's still an interesting question, and we have more regular ways of determining bullet-y stuff in 4e now, so it would be an interesting thought experiment to run again. But off topic for this thread, so I'll go start another one.

[Figleaf23]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

Body slamming is intended to be a poor way to deal real injury between people, because it is.

If body slamming was highly damaging, football and hockey would be blood-sports.

[Figleaf23]

Originally Posted by JCurwen3

I've wondered this before, but if you have the Move and SM to hit like a bullet... shouldn't there be a point when your slam counts as some kind of piercing damage? Especially if you're slamming head first with a pointy helmet.

Now imagine a human sized hero that can shrink to bullet size and retain their mass and damage and HP and all that, and can move towards a target at the velocity of a bullet. Is this still just "crushing" damaging? If so, what would it take for them to make these sorts of slams impaling or piercing?

And isn't any cutting damage just the result of "crushing" where one dimension is appropriately thin enough relative to the other dimension and the target to count as a cut?

A full reworking of the GURPS damage/wounding functions is on my personal 5e wishlist.

[Figleaf23]

Originally Posted by B9anders

See the Human Missile technique in Supers.

I'll add that to my list of reasons that generically applicable crunch from Supers ought to be packaged separately and made available to players. It seems like there are at least half a dozen items in that book which are frequently needed in campaigns outside of the Supers genre.

Put them in a new 'Power-Ups: Patches', find other similar items from any other genre-books, compensate the authors appropriately, and get this material into the hands of players.

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Figleaf23

I'll add that to my list of reasons that generically applicable crunch from Supers ought to be packaged separately and made available to players. It seems like there are at least half a dozen items in that book which are frequently needed in campaigns outside of the Supers genre.

Put them in a new 'Power-Ups: Patches', find other similar items from any other genre-books, compensate the authors appropriately, and get this material into the hands of players.

Generally applicable? There I can't think of a single use for that rule outside of supers... not all of supers is 4-color supers. Camp Halfblood is as much a supers setting as Marvel's Manhattan.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by roguebfl

Generally applicable? There I can't think of a single use for that rule outside of supers... not all of supers is 4-color supers. Camp Halfblood is as much a supers setting as Marvel's Manhattan.

Well, Field Sense is something that would be appropriate in any of:
Bestiary,
Bio-Tech,
Aliens
Ultra-Tech,
Teenage Mutant Platypodes.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Well, Field Sense is something that would be appropriate in any of:

Field sense is not Human Missile though.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Field sense is not Human Missile though.

Figleaf said there is stuff (at least a half-dozen items) found in Supers that will be useful outside Supers. Human Missile may or may not be applicable outside Supers too. Maybe in Wuxia or even Mecha.

[Figleaf23]

Originally Posted by roguebfl

Generally applicable? There I can't think of a single use for that rule outside of supers... not all of supers is 4-color supers. Camp Halfblood is as much a supers setting as Marvel's Manhattan.

Whatever the name happens to be, if the 'Human Missile' mechanic is the key to unlocking the threshold between two damage types, then I think it's pretty generically important.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Figleaf23

Whatever the name happens to be, if the 'Human Missile' mechanic is the key to unlocking the threshold between two damage types, then I think it's pretty generically important.

It's not, though. It's (basically) like the Lethal Punch/Kick technique, but for the kinds of flying characters that can slam by putting their fists together over the head and ramming something.