What is the attack roll to lick someone?
 

At a guess i would say karate or brawling but what modifiers if any escape me. First though some background;

There is this template for a species whose tongue is worth about 30 points.

Description;
They are able to stretch the tongue between 30 and 50 cm (foot to foot and a half) out of their mouth and it's fully prehensile. In addition their tongue is highly toxic, much like some frog poisons. Flesh affected by the poison has a tendency to melt and it otherwise acts as a strong barbiturate that is highly pleasurable and incapacitating. Luckily it gets neutralized after a few minutes of contact with the air even if it doesn't get metabolized.

One of the design goals is to make licking your blade into a tactically sound decision. The precise time to neutralize the poison by air is deliberately left vague and up to GM fiat, but long enough that it would never be an issue in a combat encounter. As a blade poison it works for one strike and is thereafter mostly harmless.

Translated into GURPS:
Extra Arm (Extra-Flexible, Short, 1/4 ST)
And two alternate 3d Toxic Innate Attacks
Modifier Set 1; Side Effect (Euporia), +150%; Reach C, no parry, -35%; Always On, -10%; Sense Based: must touch with tongue, -20%; No Signature, +20%; Contact Agent, -30%.

Modifier Set 2; Toxic, Blood agent, -40%; Resistible, HT-5, -5%; Follow-up: Anything Licked recently (Cosmic), +50%.


This leads to the obvious question of how does this actually work in combat, specifically the first version which requires one to lick exposed skin. this is aimed at a DF style game but I'm genuinely curious how it would work even in more complex games.

Touching bare skin while grappling should be easy, unless the opponent is in full-plate or something so what are the modifiers and how does armor affect it?
As written I don't think the tongue could be used with striking arts (karate, brawling, etc) but all other natural weapons I can thing of use one of those, would this be a wrestling type attack? what about Judo or sumo wrestling?

Re: What is the attack roll to lick someone?
 

Either Brawling or its own form of Innate Attack skill (or Innate Attack (Breath) come to think of it).

Re: What is the attack roll to lick someone?
 

I'd go with that last.

Catchy thread title :)

Re: What is the attack roll to lick someone?
 

I'd say treat like a bite. Brawling or Karate. Maybe a perk to use Karate, but since there's no damage bonus for it here, probably not. Not a wrestling attack, but grappling first would likely make it easier to deliver, and keep people from lopping it off with a sword.

To hit bare skin, attack a hit location with nothing on it. Use partial coverage rules if appropriate.

Re: What is the attack roll to lick someone?
 

No damage bonus, but Biting Mastery is needed to use Karate to bite at all, so I'd still require it. The flexibility of Brawling is its main advantage.

Re: What is the attack roll to lick someone?
 

I'll ask son #2 (my six year old). He has developed the annoying habit of the combat lick. Ugh. You know, there is one thing I have to say about the combat lick, it has the element of surprise. It is the unexpected, and you don't ever see it coming.

Re: What is the attack roll to lick someone?
 

Silly answer here, but the first thing I thought about for a combat lick was using Erotic Art.

Re: What is the attack roll to lick someone?
 

Id also say Innate attack (breath) is the way to go, with the normal hit location modifiers for whatever areas are unarmored.

If however you choose to treat it as a bite, go with Brawling as per Teeth in the inset box on MA115.

Nymdok

Re: What is the attack roll to lick someone?
 

I'd treat it like a bite (Brawling), unless the tongue is unusually long and well suited to combat, in which case it's a Striker (with suitable modifications).