Blunt trauma question

[thulben]

A player in my game brought up an interesting question last night regarding blunt trauma. Specifically, it seems like you'd have to have some serious armor before that rule would ever come into play. That is, you'd need flexible armor with DR 5+ (vs crushing) or 10+ (vs cutting, impaling, or piercing) for this to come into play. We're not missing anything here, are we?

[davidtmoore]

Originally Posted by thulben

A player in my game brought up an interesting question last night regarding blunt trauma. Specifically, it seems like you'd have to have some serious armor before that rule would ever come into play. That is, you'd need flexible armor with DR 5+ (vs crushing) or 10+ (vs cutting, impaling, or piercing) for this to come into play. We're not missing anything here, are we?

Nope, not missing anything. You'd also have to be taking some heavy damage for it to take effect. What's described - the high-pressure, small-area impact onto the armour being dispersed into a low-pressure, wide-area impact against the body - happens at all scales, but at damages below DR 5/10 it's happening below the granularity of the GURPS damage rules. If you have a DR 8 ballistic vest and get shot for 7 damage, the armour stops the bullet and you probably have a very minor (sub-one-damage) bruise with no system effects.

It's most likely to be relevant around TL9 or 10, where personal armour cimbs into the teens but bullets start to do 3d or 4d as standard. At that point, you really don't resent a 1 HP bruise too much.

[DanHoward]

The blunt trauma rules as written aren't really applicable in a Low-Tech campaign. The upcoming Low-Tech 4e will have some optional rules that are related to blunt trauma.

[PK]

Originally Posted by thulben

A player in my game brought up an interesting question last night regarding blunt trauma. Specifically, it seems like you'd have to have some serious armor before that rule would ever come into play. That is, you'd need flexible armor with DR 5+ (vs crushing) or 10+ (vs cutting, impaling, or piercing) for this to come into play. We're not missing anything here, are we?

No, you're quite right. The blunt trauma rules are more of a high-tech thing, when you've got DR 12 Kevlar and the like. At lower TLs, the only serious drawback to flexible armor is that most post-lock wrestling/judo moves (Arm Lock, Wrench Limb, etc.) do damage that ignores it.