Judo Throw Perk?
 

In Martial Arts, the Judo Throw technique notes that a judoka can throw for damage at Judo -1 for Thrust-1 damage.

I'm wondering what y'all think about a perk (I'm thinking it might be comparable to Ramming Speed) that allows a judoka to use her opponent's size against him:

Fall Harder: This perk allows a judoka who makes a damaging throw to replace her ST score with the opponent's regular (not current) HP score to calculate damage. For example, a small judoka with ST 8 could throw a large opponent with 15 HP and inflict 1d crushing damage instead of 1d-4 crushing damage.

What do y'all think?

Re: Judo Throw Perk?
 

I'd be inclined to require the throw to be a follow-up to a prior Parry, rather than something you can do during a normal grapple, but it feels about right. It's arguably a bit too powerful for a weak character, but I don't think it's unreasonably so. Speaking very roughly, the amount of damage done with this Perk is about equivalent to the foe suffering a fall from a height consistent with their HP - around 3 yards for HP 15, around 5 yards for HP 25. Actually it seems to get stuck at around 5 yards for a good long while. Falling from a height equal to one's own (or, rather, for what one's height should be, for characters with HP in excess of what their SM implies) doesn't seem too far off for a well-executed throw that uses the foe's momentum against it, so I'd say it passes the sniff test for a Perk.

Re: Judo Throw Perk?
 

Thanks for the feedback. This was basically my take on it, too. I actually did think about restricting this to a throw after a parry, but since a throw following a grapple is resolved by a Quick Contest of Judo vs. the best of ST, DX, or grappling skill, I decided it wasn't really a problem. I figure if the tiny judoka can get the grapple in the first place and beat that high ST, she deserves to do the higher damage. I did think about penalizing the throw by difference in Size Modifier somehow though....

Re: Judo Throw Perk?
 

Maybe something like "when using this option, if the character has a lower SM than their target, the attack roll (Judo roll in the QC) takes a -2 per difference in SM." So, a gnome (SM -1) up against an ogre (SM +1) would be at -4 when using this option... but if the gnome pulls it off, there's likely a sizable damage bonus in play (an average, ST 10 gnome would deal 1d-3 cr with a damaging Judo throw - but with the Perk and against an average, HP 20 ogre, this instead becomes 2d-2, going form an average of 1 damage to an average of 5).

Re: Judo Throw Perk?
 

If you just treat them as suffering a 1-yard fall it wouldn't even be necessary. I just assume by default that should happen with any forced posture change to a lying position from standing.

It shouldn't take skill to do that, if anything it should take skill to knock someone to lying without them falling and hurting themself.

Re: Judo Throw Perk?
 

With the exception of an HP 10 or so foe, most of the falls using this Perk function as though they are from much higher than 1 yard. "fall equal to half the foe's height or your thr-1" could be a default option; this one is more akin to "fall equal to the foe's height," and that's using HP as a proxy for SM.

Re: Judo Throw Perk?
 

i imagine if you did a combination pickup+drop that would cause a 2 yard fall?

Re: Judo Throw Perk?
 

While it makes sense for humans with ST in normal range, I'm not sure how it scales to the extremes or different body plans. For instance a tiger has more ST than human but not more height, and I'm not sure it should be so easy for a sprite to one-shot a giant. Not a judoka myself, but I'm wondering if there should be an upper limit, like 50% more than the thrower's own ST?

Re: Judo Throw Perk?
 

Well ... look. The amount of damage we're talking about here isn't likely to one-shot anyone short of a critical hit. The impact damage isn't a function of height, it's a function of mass. I'm not sold on using HP as the determiner, but I suppose it's the cleanest available metric.

While my own martial arts days are forty years behind me (ugh, it really has been that long), this brings to mind working out once with a college friend. Sue was a peanut who didn't weigh as much as a hundred pounds, and I was nearly a foot taller and a good deal heavier. In straight up striking, she couldn't hurt me much with the toughest shots she could manage, but she was very good with hip throws. If we went to grappling, she could definitely knock the wind out of me with a throw.

Re: Judo Throw Perk?
 

As RGTraynor notes, this isn't one-shotting anything - it does the same damage as an unskilled (for no damage bonus) attacker with ST equal to the target's HP throwing a punch. The height comparison I did was basically just as a "sniff test" to see if the idea looked broken - the fact fall height tended to be around the target's linear measurement (if scaling size normally; plenty of targets are more HP-dense) was a "yeah, this makes sense at GURPS resolutions" kind of thing, not "this is what is actually happening in this situation" (also, I'll note that the fall height seemed to cap out at around 5 yards, and I think as HP got rather high actually started to go down).

Sprite vs Giant is just another iteration of the classic "Judo Throw an elephant" situation. You can see a (rather long) discussion here. If you skip to the last page, you'll see a resolution - Kromm suggests a limit of not being able to Judo Throw a foe with ST more than twice your own (here we may want to use HP that is twice the thrower's ST instead), and Douglas Cole gives an alternative option of not being able to Judo Throw a foe that weighs more than 4xBL, but that's clearly far too low (nobody would be able throw someone else of even comparable weight, unless extremely strong for their own weight). I'd be inclined to use the Shove or Knock Over limit (12xBL) at a minimum. Assuming characters with ST/HP that is consistent with their weight, having twice the ST/HP means having 8x the weight. An average human weighs somewhere around 8xBL, so this would work out to a limit of around 64xBL (!), which is actually above the Shift Slightly limit (50xBL). Honestly, 24xBL seems more appropriate to me (this is the Shove or Knock Over limit if you have a running start, which seems roughly appropriate for using a foe's momentum against them).

Re: Judo Throw Perk?
 

Looking at my comment here: http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.p...7&postcount=61 and some of the follow-ups, this seems to come out of nowhere. It may be that I simply made a mistake and it should be 8x, or meant to say "unpenalized JT up to 4xBL" but even so, for a person of average weight only throwing someone of 80lbs is just EASY.

Edit: In this post I mention "at normal human densities" a limit of 3-4x the Judoka's ST, which may be a BL-->ST swap error.