Combining Damage Multipliers

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Plane

Should also be option to shoot through eyes without hitting brain, like aiming directly from side through bridge of nose.

Another thing is you should be able to aim at the skull THROUGH the face rather than directly at skull

You can in Martial Arts(MA137). Well, not aim, but you can hit the Skull via the Face.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I don't have a problem with any Gurps level damage obliterating the eye. A single hit point is massive. It's 1/5th that required to break the femur of a young man by way of a lasting crippling injury.

1/6th, actually.

But quite a lot of people take damage to an eye that puts it out of action, and then recover, along with their vision. So there should be a level of damage that allows that.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Rupert

1/6th, actually.

But quite a lot of people take damage to an eye that puts it out of action, and then recover, along with their vision. So there should be a level of damage that allows that.

Yep, the issue isn't that eyes aren't relatively easy to destroy compared to other parts of the body, it's that with the x4 brain injury multiplier eyes are impossible to cripple unless base HP is very high.


I tend to count the eye as HP/10 object in front of the brain without a location injury mod (so weapon injury mods apply). And any damage that get past the HP/10 threshold then goes on to get the x4 brain injury multiplier

This functionally means any attack that get past it an into the Brain has likely destroyed the eye anyway. But low damage attack with low injury multiplier can damage the eye and don't get x4 injury.

I also ignore the "DR0 =1" rule for attacks that have fractional AD for eyes though.

[Plane]

Rupert's comment below reminded me of something else from MA, under 72's "go for the eyes"

The new "Eye-Poke" option has a "miss by 1" rule which introduces a new location: "bone around the eye".

That's basically also "skull via the face" except surpassing skull DR doesn't appear to continue on to the brain.

I'm not sure why though since I think the brain is wide enough that poking through orbital bone would still carry on to the brain.

A miss by 1 to the eye (-9) is like a -8 hit location (hardering than hitting the skull from the front) ...

It seems like "bone around the eye" is like a sublocation of both the face AND the skull somehow.

Originally Posted by Rupert

You can in Martial Arts(MA137). Well, not aim, but you can hit the Skull via the Face.

Forgot about that one, random chance on impale/pierce/TBburn ... impossible with others though since that's nose.

Similarly seems impossible for impale/pierce/TBburn to randomly hit the nose...

That just seems incredibly strange how this is split by damage type.

I think I'd rather just have "always hits nose" or "always hits skull" being random effects of face hits.

With maybe something like "on a -1 you can opt to NOT hit those things and guarantee a normal face hit" (ie "I really don't want to risk cutting off my opponent's nose, just slash his cheek!")

That is of course assuming you're not using this:

The GM may reserve extra die rolls for randomly targeted attacks.

in which case you wouldn't need to worry about the 1d rolls when doing normal targetting.

I can similarly see (if you just want to ruin someone but not give them brain damage... or are worried about DR2 preventing damage) someone using impale/piercing to want to guarantee a normal face hit.

- -

Another idea: you could in theory cut off the nose from behind! Either by:

1) reaching around with a cutting weapon
2) shooting THROUGH the neck/skull/face so that overpenetration hits the nose

The first ignores cover, the second does not, so I don't know if maybe we should have extra penalties somehow for the benefits provided by the first?

This is sort of in the sense of how "I lob the grenade over the wall" ignores cover DR compared to "I shoot through the wall" except using curved melee attacks instead of AE explosions.

Not exactly possible under current rules. I figure getting the proper angle would be per B408's "Ignore the cover and try to shoot right through it!" which is -2 (same as "partial cover" so I often get them mixed up).

It would probably make sense to ignore the -2 for ignoring ("shooting through") cover for those with Penetrating Vision though.

It jumps to -10 (like blindness) for "completely concealed" but I could see a lot of intermediate penalties (-3 to -9) for situations where you could guess a pretty good idea of where something is.

Like for example: if you can clearly see the back of someone's head, even though you can't see the nose directly, you know noses are in the middle of the face, so you would have a pretty good idea of where the nose ought to be.

If, however, they had something which made it hard to perceive the shape of the skull (or perhaps the angle at which the head is inclined/declined/turned) like a huge hat, big afro, a shawl, etc... bigger penalties than -2 would probably be appropriate.

- -

The "reach around" thing for cutting also seems important for necks. We know after all IRL that the front/sides of the neck is more vulnerable to cuts than the back. If we assume that all cuts from behind are to the back of the neck, that gets pretty weird. There's a reason (besides grappling benefits) that killers will reach the arm around and "pull-cut" rather than "push-cut" with the edge against the back of the neck.

This obviously requires being closer though, since to get the proper angle you need the fist in front of the neck instead of behind it. This could fall below the resolution of C/1 hexes (though perhaps could reduce Reach 1 to Reach C?) but could be at least represented in "Matter of Inches" terms in how it effects Reach C variations.

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

I also ignore the "DR0 =1" rule for attacks that have fractional AD for eyes though.

I like to ignore that rule altogether and instead represent it's spirit by giving some small amount of universal "epidermis DR" (flexible, of course) to everything except the eye.

It only really does anything if you use 0.1 increments of damage though. "1/50 HP" seems like a good guideline. 0.2 DR (for an HP 10 human) becomes 2 DR with Armor Multiplier 10, 1 DR with Armor Multiplier 5, and 0.4 DR with Armor Multiplier 2.

Armor Divisor 2 would reduce that to 0.2 (still easier to penetrate the eye) but Armor Divisor 5 would reduce it to 0 (below the new 0.1 resolution threshold) making it just as easy to penetrate as an eyeball.

If eyeballs should ALWAYS be easier, then have no min resolution: AD5 = DR 0.04 and AD10 = DR 0.02. How many decimal places you want to work with (and round do) depends on your crunch tolerance.

0.2 DR is basically a perk (1/5 of DR 1 [5]) but my suggestion is LESS than a free perk for HP 10 humans since it would be flexible -20%, skin -20%.

This also makes kittens a little less lethal to humans since their minimum basic damage of 1 cutting is reduced to 0.8 penetrating damage which will only cause 1.2 injury instead of 1.5 injury.

I guess you could even give some kind of "free DR" even to eyes on a micro-scale. Instead of 1/50 HP it could be 1/50 the eye's HP (1/10) meaning 1/500 HP. So an eye would have 0.02 DR for an HP 10 human using that.

1/10 is actually a pretty huge amount of HP for crippling an eye considering it only takes 1/4 HP to cripple an extremity using joints.

Especially with the "targeting multiple" rules resulting in lower fractions: it eventually becomes easier to cripple extremities/joints than eyes the more you get, whereas I can't find rules for easier-crippling of eyes with extra ones.

Since it's "divided by number" for limbs" and "divided by N*1.5" for extremities, I'm thinking "divided by N*5" is a natural implication for eyes.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Plane

.....

.

1/10 is actually a pretty huge amount of HP for crippling an eye considering it only takes 1/4 HP to cripple an extremity using joints.

Especially with the "targeting multiple" rules resulting in lower fractions: it eventually becomes easier to cripple extremities/joints than eyes the more you get, whereas I can't find rules for easier-crippling of eyes with extra ones.

Since it's "divided by number" for limbs" and "divided by N*1.5" for extremities, I'm thinking "divided by N*5" is a natural implication for eyes.

Well for anyone with less than 20 HP, HP/10 is 1 HP. Which means a 2 point injury will cripple it, 2 points is the 2nd smallest amount the system recognises (and a 1 point imp injury will reach that threshold as well) so I don't think it's a huge amount really.


Ultimately we are at the shallowest end of the granularity pool here, so I get your point. But if we're directly comparing it to extremity joints you have to take the other relevent variables into account for a true comparison in actual play.

Eyes are harder to hit than extremity joints, and eyes can be targeted by fewer attacks types than extremity joints

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

a 1 point imp injury will reach that threshold as well

It occurs to me that if we don't use brain's x4 that I don't actually know what multipliers to use for the eye. I figure the face per B161 under No Brain:

a blow to the skull or eye is treated no differently than a blow to the face

B399 only changes the multiplier for Corrosive Attack (one thing to keep in mind for the thread suggesting we change that from damage type to enhancement) so I figure all others function using torso multipliers.

Actually never looked closely at B399's face entry... completely overlooked the part about major wounds to face blinding one eye (I guess you flip a coin?) and super-major wounds (ie 100% HP) blinding both.

The weird thing about that is... it doesn't exactly give a guide as to how Nictitating Membrane would go about impeding that.

So I think a better guideline for that rule (considering it normally takes >10% HP to cripple one eye, not >50% HP or >100%) is instead to rule that any attack on the face w/ Corrosive Attack is automatically an attack to the eyes as well, but at 1/10 damage.

I'm thinking 1/10 since the benefit of "not automatically crippled on a major wound" (50% reduced to 5%) is offset by "takes damage even if it's less than a major wound" which is important if using Cumulative Wounding.

If someone wants to do more than 1/10 damage to eyes w/ Corrosive Attack, I think maybe just allow the eye to be targeted using it (normally not allowed) to get the 1/5 damage suggested by the first threshold.

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Eyes are harder to hit than extremity joints, and eyes can be targeted by fewer attacks types than extremity joints

Corrosion attacks to face and eye rakes to face can both target eyes at -5 which is less than the -7 it takes to target extremity joints ;) Plus there's a random chance of any face hit hitting the eye even if it normally can't.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Plane

Actually never looked closely at B399's face entry... completely overlooked the part about major wounds to face blinding one eye (I guess you flip a coin?) and super-major wounds (ie 100% HP) blinding both.

Major wounds by corrosion damage only.

The weird thing about that is... it doesn't exactly give a guide as to how Nictitating Membrane would go about impeding that.

Via the bonus to HT rolls to recover from the injury, though given it's from corrosion damage if the DR is enough that if the attack was directly to the eye it wouldn't have crippled it it probably isn't unreasonable to rule that in that case the eye wasn't crippled even though the face around it was ruined.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Rupert

Major wounds by corrosion damage only.

As the following paragraph indicated ;)

Originally Posted by Rupert

given it's from corrosion damage if the DR is enough that if the attack was directly to the eye it wouldn't have crippled it it probably isn't unreasonable to rule that in that case the eye wasn't crippled even though the face around it was ruined.

corrosion damage just short of a major wound (like taking 4 HP to face) does nothing even though that would be enough to cripple an eye